Not a boy, not yet a man, but definitely a person who'd seen Pulp Fiction. It is not an exaggeration to say that I emerged from that theater, hours later, a changed person. I'd done it! I was home free! And then, the movie began. ![]() An older couple entered, shuffled to their seats, seemingly taking no notice of me. Minutes before the movie started, the door open and I held my breath. And besides, what choice did I have? I'd put all my chips on Pulp Fiction, and lord knows I wasn't about to sit through Forrest fucking Gump again. Someone would need to do some real snooping to spot me back there. For safety, I positioned myself at the far end of the very back row, right in line with the door. This increased my visibility one hundred times over! If someone happened to poke their head in the door - perhaps someone who was all too aware that this particular screening hadn't sold any tickets - I'd be immediately busted. Upon entering the theater screening Pulp Fiction, I was horrified to find the room empty. I waited for the man with the clipboard to enter the ticket booth, and then I made my move. Despite having done this on countless occasions, this particular mission had me thrumming with adrenaline. I looked across the way from where I was positioned: a door on the left led to Gump the door directly to its right led to the forbidden pleasures of Pulp Fiction. Beyond this trio of oblivious souls, the theater lobby was dark and empty. Some guy in a suit loitering near the ticket booth, looking at a clipboard. Teens, neither of them paying much attention. I purchased my ticket for Forrest Gump, made my way inside, picked up a pack of Twizzlers and a giant Coke, and cased the joint: two people behind the register. Thinking fast and knowing that everything was on the line, I went into Fib Mode: "Yeah, but I'd like to give it another chance."Īnd so it was that my parents dropped me off at the theater. "You already saw Forrest Gump, though," my mother said. ![]() I returned to my folks and told them I'd be taking 'em up on their offer, and even had a movie in mind. Sensing an opportunity, I snapped up the morning paper to check out the day's showtimes (this was in 1994, people), and there it was: the theater near the mall had a screening of Forrest Gump starting at roughly the same time as an afternoon screening of Pulp Fiction. Shortly after choosing Forrest Gump as my patsy, a weekend rolled around where my parents announced they were going furniture shopping, and that they'd be willing to drop me off at a nearby theater if I wanted to see something. Eventually, I settled on a scapegoat: Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump, which ran roughly two and a half hours. This meant that I needed to say I was seeing something long, like over two hours long, and it had to be something my parents would believe I'd be interested in seeing (this was an important mission, and I didn't need them getting suspicious). If I asked to be dropped off at the theater to see something else - the latest Jim Carrey comedy, for instance - I'd have to account for needing that amount of time before being picked up. Whereas other films I'd snuck into were of a standard, 90-120 minute length, Pulp Fiction was a behemoth at nearly three hours. Once I'd been told "No" for the third time, I decided it was time to plan my crime. I don't recall what it was that made me so determined to see Pulp Fiction - at that age, I still hadn't seen Reservoir Dogs I didn't even know who Quentin Tarantino was - but the buzz surrounding the film (which I'd picked up reading Entertainment Weekly) was strong, and my parents' refusal to let me see it only made the whole thing more attractive. Apparently, my mother had seen someone on a talk show talking about how one of the film's characters "gets shot in the face, and then everyone's laughing about it!", and this cruel-sounding piece of misinformation shook her to the core. I recall Pulp Fiction as one of the few movies they ever drew a line in the sand over. Sure, my folks were fairly permissible when it came to what I was allowed to watch, but for movies that contained lots of sex and violence, I was on my own. ![]() ![]() Sometimes I'd bring a school friend with me, but on many, many occasions I flew solo (thus learning, at a preposterously early age, one of life's greatest lessons: going to the movies by yourself whips ass), and on many of those occasions I would sneak into movies I hadn't purchased tickets for. I also grew up in a household without any brothers and sisters, which meant that once I reached a certain age, my folks had no problem dropping me off at the movies by myself in lieu of hiring a babysitter. I grew up in a household that watched a lot of movies. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is almost here.
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