The Cinema
It was only as the bus began to leave our home state of the University that I revealed to my companion, a man slightly taller than me (although that isn’t much of a task) who used to be a lot more respectable than he now claims, that my original plan for this evening was to witness the adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Rum Diary” while quite drunk. He knew of the film plan, of course, but I felt he would miss the point of seeing it whilst inebriated, given he hadn’t a clue who the late Mr Thompson was. I was about to explain about Gonzo journalism, Fear and Loathing, and all the rest of it, but instead our conversation turned, as it often does, to women.
“You see,” I said, “you need to stop pussy-footing around and just go for it. Women respect men who take the initiative.”
“But Richard,” he protested, “I’m going to be living with her next year! I don’t want awkwardness between us!”
“Exactly why you need to go now! The awkwardness will clear up in no time after your inevtiable messy break-up and further descent into drunken stupor.”
He had no retort for this; he acknowledged his alcoholism and had no experience of relationships to call upon.
A commotion started near at the front of the bus as we pulled into town; a Greek man claiming that it would be quicker for him and his friends to vacate the bus at the present stop, rather than wait to get into town.
“Trust me, I’ve done this loads of times!” he cried upon deaf ears. I looked at my companion and we shared a knowing look, the one that implies that the man at the front hadn’t a clue as to what he was shouting about.
“You know nothing!” I shouted back. “Now sit down and shut up, I’m trying to inform my friend here why his life is so screwed up.”
The man glared, but obeyed. The bus pulled up again in the centre of town, and we all left together. My companion made a vaguely racist remark about the Greeks, but his accent sounded more Irish than anything.
“A friend of mine might be coming out tonight,” my friend informed me, “but I think he’s with Labour Society tonight.”
Ah, yes. After the cinema had finished displaying some moving pictures for our viewing pleasure, I had, somehow, agreed to go out on the town with my companion and some of his friends. I agreed purely because I was out anyway, and I prefer to avoid getting buses by myself where possible. Either way, I felt that, after six weeks of student living, it was time to fully immersive myself in the life I was told I would enjoy so much. I had already informed my companion of my two conditions for abandoning my usual routine of video games and Facebook in favour of “clubbing”:
- I may leave at any point, should I grow bored, annoyed, or generally stop enjoying myself.
- Due to my lack of money, he would be buying me drinks.
He frowned at the last point, but agreed anyway.
The queue for the ticket desk is always an interesting one at cinemas. It offers an opportunity to take wild assumptions at people based on their clothing, company and the small snippet of personality you pick up from listening in on their conversations, all in the context of what film you think they’re seeing. I gathered no one would be interested in “The Rum Diary”, and I was right; by my maths, at least half the people in the queue were there for “Immortals 3D”.
We found our seats in a quarter full cinema screen. Apparently the guy at the ticket desk had a very different idea of what the middle of the cinema is, as our seats were one row in front of the back. Still, we had aisle seats, so at least some form of “middle” had been understood in our communication.
It was here I began to feel very out of place. I estimated that of the, by my best guess, forty people in the screen, ten people knew that Hunter S. Thompson wrote the book the film was based on, although perhaps five of them would know him and his other works, and that two people had read the book. This was including myself.
My estimates seemed to ring true. A number of girls arrived, clearly heart set on seeing Johnny Depp in a film because they find him attractive, while the rest of the audience was male students who heard it was a film about drinking, oh, and Johnny Depp was in it. I nestled deep into my chair and sighed.
The film rolled, but I couldn’t watch it. Not because of the quality; the film was nothing like the book, but was an interesting product in its own right. No, I was distracted by the shining light of a man on his Blackberry throughout the entire film. I sneered at him, but unfortunately my facial expression couldn’t pierce through his skull hard enough to make him stop. I searched through my pockets and found my bus ticket for the ride in, and settled on throwing that at him instead. So engrossed was he that he totally ignored the small scrap of paper bouncing off his head.
“Hey,” I whispered at my companion, who was currently enjoying views of San Juan with a small smile on his face, “do you still have your bus ticket?”
He did, but not for long. This one went sailing directly into the Blackberry screen itself; the man holding it looked round, confused and angry, but the lights were low and he didn’t see my smug smile.
The film began to talk about the American Dream, and I groaned and covered my eyes. Thompson didn’t talk about the American Dream in “The Rum Diary”, that came later. Somehow this film had become a celebration of Thomspon’s life in the context of his first book, not a discussion of growing old, becoming who you want to be and the pitfalls involved with doing so, as the source material did so well. I remembered that the screenwriter had writer’s block while writing the script; it made me dream of “Adaptation” and wish that I could be watching that instead.
By the time the true narrative was forced onto the screen, I was ready to leave. Thankfully the story was a short one, with a bittersweet ending and a final, meaningless salute to Thompson before the credits rolled.
“I don’t get it.” exclaimed a girl a few rows down.
I rolled my eyes. “What is there to get?” I replied, “It was a film where a bunch of people get drunk and do stupid things, with a vague storyline tacked on the end that altered Depp’s character so far from the source material it was embarrasing.”
The girl stared back blankly. I pressed on. “Hell, the only thing that distinguishes this film from most modern teen comedies is that Depp’s pretending to be a thirty-year old than a twenty year-old and that it’s set in the sixties. Replace San Juan with an American high-school and Depp with an unknown actor and you’d have a summer blockbuster!”
I felt a tug on my arm as my companion tried to drag me away. I gave slightly, but maintained my argument. “You want real cinema? 50/50 opens next week! The Descendants looks excellent! They too have what appears to be non-linear storylines! Bet you wouldn’t understand those!”
I left, bitter and seething. My comrade found this highly amusing. I told him to fuck off.
Mint
The cold air outside slapped me in the face and wrapped itself around me. I instantly regretted not bringing a coat as I shivered. My companion looked glum. He’d recieved a text during the film that bore bad tidings, and wouldn’t tell me what the message had said, merely smiled darkly and said “we’re doing heavy drinking tonight”.
Our destination was just across the street from the cinema, a small cocktail bar named Mint. To tie in with the name, the lighting was a soft green that bathed the room with a garish glaze and made the already inebriated customers look somehow even worse for wear. I noticed canvasses on the walls with the name of the bar planted on top of cheap pop art, and I realised I’d seen that very same ridiculous pop art shtick elsewhere: the fliers for the place that got shoved into my hands by bored students on my main path to lectures.
I heard my companion order two drinks, but didn’t catch the name.
“I don’t like being ordered a drink when I don’t even know what I’m getting.” I protested.
“Trust me,” he replied, “you’ll like it.”
“I especially don’t like it when people tell me I’ll like something.”
He smiled back and repeated that I would like it. I waited nervously; what godforsaken concoction could be made in a dire establishment such as this? The walls were plain white and the music was too quiet, so I could hear the drunken shoutings of every other patron as they planned their next move on their epic night out. There seating was too communal for my liking, promoting meeting new people and engaging in benal conversations with them, a skill I’ve never been particularly good at when sober.
The drink was mixed before my eyes, and I give it a whirl. It tasted of M&Ms. My tastebuds jumped for joy and my eyes widened with excitement; M&Ms in a cocktail? A cocktail I didn’t have to pay for? The night was looking up.
We moved to some high seats with a higher piece of wood for drink resting and discussed the movie. My companion explained that he enjoyed it, and I argued my case for it not being a great film, but eventually I had to ask again.
“I need to know why we’re doing heavy drinking tonight. I can’t just throw myself into it without a good reason.”
He finished his drink in a few quick schlucks on the straw, and then said seven words that made me stand still for a few minutes, staring straight at him, muttering “shit” every now and then, before quickly finishing my drink and suggesting we move to our next location.
In total I think we spent around ten minutes in Mint. If it weren’t for the cocktail, it would’ve been around five minutes too long.
Nuthin' Else To Do 