— पाँच हजार सात सौ इक्कीस —
Last night was Action Movie Night, and much to my delight, we got unusually high attendance when it was my turn to choose the movie: 12 people! There was Tony, Jake, Ryan, Kevin, Ben, Chris G, Derek, Andrew, Daniel, a new guy named Dan, Shobhit, and myself.
The movie I chose was
Gremlins. The fifth one I have now chosen, since Shobhit and I started attending regularly in 2022. It's also the second I have chosen as a sort of tongue-in-cheek choice of a "holiday movie"—when I got to choose in November of last year, I went with
Batman Returns, which as it happened was the first time anyone had chosen a superhero movie, since the group started meeting in 2012. I joke that that's "my favorite Christmas movie." I could say that
Gremlins is "my second-favorite Christmas movie." I'm certainly including it in my list of "
Christmas Movie Watches 2024," just as I did the last time I watched it,
in 2020.
Both Jake and Tony, at separate times, asked me what decade the movie was from. It's from the eighties, and is actually the first time any of my movies have been from that decade. Jake asked what the genre was, though, and I told him I didn't want to say because it was a mashup of genres and might go toward giving it away.
I can't remember who it was now, but one person actually indicated trust in my choice because "you have good taste in movies." I do? I mean, yes, of course I do. But my tastes really run counter to a lot of the choices other people in this group make.
As it turns out, though,
Gremlins was maybe the biggest crowd pleaser I have chosen to date. I was unsure of how it would play with this group, but it truly exceeded my expectations. Ben had chosen my favorite comedy of all time,
Airplane!, when it was his choice on October 16, and it did not get nearly the amount of laughter that
Gremlins did last night.
In the middle of the movie, Ryan even commented on what a great pick this was. Several people indicated later that they had not seen it in many years, and something like three or four even surprised me by saying they had never seen it. Shobhit asked me later if this movie was successful, and it absolutely was—in 1984, it was a surprise smash hit. It made over $148 million in its original release, which is a genuine hit even in today's dollars. In adjusted dollars, that would be nearly $450 million today!
The average movie ticket price in the U.S. in 1984 was $3.36. By that measure, 44 million tickets were purchased for that movie in its original run. That was 18.6% of the U.S. population in 1984. Bear in mind probably some people saw it multiple times. On the
list of all-time box office adjusted for inflation,
Gremlins ranks, effectively, the 141st-most successful movie in U.S. history. Pretty impressive, actually, especially considering no one really expected that of it. From that same year, only three other movies made more money:
Ghostbusters (#1 1984, #37 all time);
Beverly Hills Cop (#2 1984, #47 all time), and
Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom (#3 1984, #99 all time).
— पाँच हजार सात सौ इक्कीस —
— पाँच हजार सात सौ इक्कीस —
Okay, now I have a few complaints to share about Action Movie Night last night. And I have to be careful about this. My guess is that no one in the group reads this blog, but I'm still going to play it safe and not use names or, hopefully, identifying characteristics.
This was the worst thing, and certainly new: someone smelled like urine. More specifically, like he had pissed his pants one or two days ago and never bothered to wash his clothes. How strongly I could smell it would ebb and flow, but I spent a fair amount of time during the movie with my hand under my nose to block out the odor.
Then, there was the chatter during the movie. One guy who apparently used to come a lot, before Shobhit's and my time, but has been coming relatively frequently again, was sitting between two others who were constantly chatting with each other while the movie was playing. There's always a certain amount of this and is to be expected, but they were cracking each other up in a way characteristic of people who have had a beer or two and can't stop giggling. This was a lot more than usual. Or maybe it just felt like it because the movie was my choice this time? I honestly think it really was a lot more than usual. It was kind of incessant, and all I could do was scream it inside my head:
Shut the fuck up!
One of them kept making pretty pointlessly sexist comments at the movie. "And that was when she got her period!" Ugh. This guy can have a tendency to say things like this, with a sort of "ironic" vibe, but one can only take so much of it. Even Shobhit said after we got back to the condo afterward, "Some of them are kind of misogynistic." And this is not something Shobhit often picks up on. Of course, then he decided that must mean the guys who said such things voted for Trump. I was like, "You really think Democrats are never misogynist?" Get real.
There was also a very minor technical issue, but thankfully it was always very brief and did not persist. The picture suddenly went out, but came back after a couple of seconds. This happened three times. Mind you, I had used my DVD copy of the movie, whereas most of the time people play their movie streaming from a laptop. But, wifi can also be spotty for that. The way this was happening though, it seemed clear to me that it was the projector and not my disc. Thankfully, after the third time this happened, all within maybe the first half of the movie, it never happened again.
So, there was an unusually large number of details to Action Movie Night last night that I found frustrating. But hey, the movie was a hit with the group, so there's that!
As for the food, it worked out well. Shobhit and I brought cucumber sandwiches, maybe the last time we'll bring that to a potluck for a while; we still had cream cheese to burn through. We used brioche bread and people really liked it. At least one of the pizzas brought was vegetarian, which was appreciated, and there was also macaroni and cheese. The guy who usually goes out of his way to get a vegetarian pizza for our benefit apologized and said he got chicken this time. He looks out for us so often that it was totally fine. Then another guy who usually gets a meat pizza noted that this time he got a vegetarian one.
I was thinking about this group recently, and how often the movies chosen kind of reflect "bro-y" tastes, even though I wouldn't characterize the group on the whole that way. For a group of straight guys, they are very welcoming and kind, very typical young(ish) Seattle guys. There was just something specific about the group dynamic last night, and the one guy who kept making the sexist "jokes." I think there may have been an element of one or two of them being certain influence on the others. I never felt specifically uncomfortable, for the record. Well, except for the stale urine smell. That was a whole other thing.
— पाँच हजार सात सौ इक्कीस —
[posted 12:34 pm]
