Selling the Drama

OK, misery loves company, so please tell me I’m not alone on this…

So there’s The Hatter, on a sunny Sunday afternoon approaching the monument to commerce that is his downtown movie theatre. After a week to soak in the goodness that was THE DARK KNIGHT, he felt like seeing it again. This time though, he wanted to see it on IMAX to get the full experience. He approaches the handy-dandy instant ticket kiosk, debit card in hand, open to seeing the screening that begins in ninety minutes, or even the one that starts in three hours. It’s then that this humble Bat-thusiast is doused with a bucket of cold reality in the form of two mocking words:

SOLD OUT.

This, my fellow film lovers, does not happen to me. I arrive at a theatre obscenely early almost every time. And indeed I have attended the opening weekend of every major event movie you could think of for the last fifteen years or so, with nary a problem. For the big movie openings – your Potters, your Spiders – I buy my opening night tickets at least one week ahead (Yep – I’m that geek, nice to meet ya). Even at my worst, I arrive a tick late and am forced to sit in the neck-unfriendly four-row front tier seats. But never this. Never denied. Some other casual once-a-year multiplex tourist. Not me.

Indeed this little scenario could have been avoided, had I checked ticket availability that morning before leaving the house. I wish I could tell you why I didn’t check, but I can only plead the fact that such planning would have been far too easy. Likewise, I didn’t properly think through the reality of what I was after. Seeing this movie on IMAX is actually forbidden fruit in Toronto as there are only three screens showing it (and two of the three are out in the sticks). Had I realized that before, I might have put more planning into it…but still “SOLD OUT”…I’d almost forgotten what those words meant!

I came home to look up any possibility of driving out to suburbia to salvage my day of DARK KNIGHT seconds, but it wasn’t to be. Then I began reading about the insane amount of money the movie made in its second weekend. Suffice to say, it didn’t take much for me to believe it. Anybody else get caught with their movie-geek pants down and care to console me with their tale of woe?

Oh, and appropriately enough – the last film I didn’t get to see because it was sold out? BATMAN FOREVER.