Tales from The Movie Industry: Premiere

by Justin Anderson

One day I'm at work and my boss asks if she can talk to me. We sit in the boardroom of the office and she says to me, "Stop being late for work. Seriously."

"Okay," I say.

"So hey," she says as I'm walking out of the boardroom (I thought we were done), "you wanna go see the most anticipated, biggest movie of the year tonight, a week before anyone else sees it?"

"Okay," I say.

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I should explain here that the music magazine I work for recently expanded - at the time this story takes place, was about to expand - with a spin-off magazine focusing on the DVD industry. I'm the editor of the new magazine. So I've moved from the music industry to the film and video industry.

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So tonight I get to go to the Fantasy Epic of the year, the second part in a trilogy. It's a week before it officially opens - complete with midnight-on-Tuesday-because-now-it's-officially-the-release-date screenings - and now I get to be the envy of all my friends because I will see it in a theatre full of executives who, unlike me, did not grow up playing fantasy role playing games in junior high. So they can't appreciate the subtleties of the Fantasy Epic. They also probably had sex before they turned 21.

At the theatre we get ticket-coupon things for free popcorn, drinks and hotdogs. Never having been a big fan of movie-theatre hotdogs, I take a pass and content myself with the popcorn and soda.

(Why doesn't anyone in my generation call it "soda?" It's so much cooler and more fun to say than "pop" or the dreaded brand-association referring to cola as "Coke," as much as that fact surely hardens the dicks of Coca Cola execs all over the world.)

The concession stand is a zoo. It's Monday night - a slow night at most theatres - and the concession stand is sorely understaffed, resulting in a comical logjam of suits with hotdogs and small bags of popcorn.

I sit with my boss after graciously - and sincerely - thanking the studio exec types that got us passes. As we're making small talk before the movie starts, it occurs to me that I have a pretty large drink in my hand, and I'm about to watch a movie that's three-plus hours long. And I really hate missing parts of movies because I have to duck out to the washroom. Suddenly I'm gripped with the fear that I'll have to go to the bathroom and miss the climactic killing of things.

(Somehow my body knows to make the need to urinate become absolutely overpowering right before the best part of any movie I'm watching.)

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If I can drop my hipster cynicism for a second: the movie's really great. Seriously great. All the stupid shit that critics spew about "the magic of the movies" and the like usually gets my teeth grinding, but this shit seriously is fantastic. I'm fully aware that my opinion's far from objective, as I spent much of my adolescence pretending with my friends that I was a sword-wielding elfin fop, so I still have a soft spot for movies with wizards and orcs, especially if said orcs get their heads cut off by sword-wielding elfin fops.

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Hey. Movie's over. And I didn't have to pee. Huzzah!

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After the movie is a party. My name is on the guest list at the classy restaurant/bar where the party is held. Being a fucking loser, I am still impressed with saying, "Justin Anderson" and having someone with a clipboard say, "Okay, go right ahead." It's weird, because I'm not a person who particularly cares about what other people think, yet I crave the weird, not-necessarily-deserved validation that having my name on a guest list, some guest list, brings.

We get gift bags at the entrance. By now I'm savvy enough to have received gift bags before. A postcard, maybe an unwearable t-shirt or a CD single or sampler or something. But this gift bag is heavy. Further inspection reveals that the gift bag - which was given to each of the 150 or so people here - contains two very expensive DVD box sets - one of which is the superdeluxe five-disc version of the first instalment of Fantasy Epic that I was actually going to buy within a week or so - worth about $80-$100 (Canadian) each. So that's almost $200 a bag. And they gave out a lot of those bags. I know the DVD business is rolling in cash right now - that's why my publisher expanded into the DVD industry and was foolish enough to put me in charge of that expansion - but if these acts of hubris keep up, the DVD biz will be hemorrhaging money like the music industry in a couple of years.

So now that I'm all jazzed up about my free movies, I head off to the bar for some free booze. This is maybe not the smartest decision I make all night, as all I've eaten in the past six and a half hours is a small bag of popcorn. I end up feeling buzzed after half a beer as a result. (I think it's been covered before that I have the alcohol tolerance of a pre-teen girl.)

Normally this isn't really a problem, but tonight I'm meeting all sorts of people that I should really be making a good impression on because it's important to my new job that they have at least a modicum of respect for me. Within a half hour I'm shaking hands with people, making awkward introductions to people and telling jokes that nobody but me thinks are funny.

One of these jokes involves my at-the-time fascination with the word "jacked" to refer to getting ripped off or something. I tell some high-ranking exec from a retail chain some joke with "jacked" in the punchline. You know the look you give to children who are trying to tell a joke or story that's terrible but you want to be nice and make them feel like they're actually funny? I'm getting that look right now.

(I'd like to point out that I'm pretty sure my jokes were actually funny, but that it was just that nobody got them. Then again, I was drunk, so I don't know how much stock you should put in that assessment.)

While everyone here is pretty nice in a superficial, I'll-forget-your-name-as-soon-as-you-stop-talking kind of way, there's only so much of hanging out with people who are far, far richer than me that I can take without lots of booze. And sadly, I was only given two drink tickets, so I excuse myself after about an hour at the party.

Waiting for the streetcar in the unseasonably cold night, having left a party with VPs of multi-million-dollar conglomerates, I glance down at my $200 gift bag. I'm freezing my ass off, and I consider hailing a cab before I remember I have -$10 in my bank account.