Fin: No, there’s nothing wrong with going to the movies alone
Plus: Remembering David Brudnoy, 'A Real Pain' is Jewish enough, Israel and Palestine documentaries, and more in this week’s notes column.
There’s been a lot out there this season about what’s ethical at the movies and what isn’t. Can you have your phone out or take a phone call? No! Can you take pictures of the screen? No! (Unless it’s of The Brutalist’s intermission picture.) Can you sing along? Sure, whether it’s at Wicked or the Dylan movie.
There’s some other discourse now about another question related to going to the movies: Is it okay to go to the movies alone?
The occasion is an article from The Independent, which is actually from over a year ago — it references Barbie — but it made the rounds again this week, and attempted to shame people for going to movies by themselves.
For a long time, I was self-conscious about going to movies alone, but I’ve gotten over that over time. Mostly because, when I’m going to press screenings, I nearly always arrive alone, even though I sit with other critics once I arrive. If there’s a movie I want to see and need to buy a ticket, it doesn’t feel that different. I don’t understand why this needs to be a stigma.
Going to movies alone is only wrong if you’re this guy.
This also occasioned a note from my college film professor, Thomas Doherty, telling a story I remember him telling in class:
Speaking of which, this week, I showed up at a screening, at AMC Fashion District in Philadelphia, and there was a projector snafu that delayed the start of the film by about 20 minutes. Then, two days later, the Philadelphia City Council voted to put that theater out of business permanently.
Burns on Brudnoy
I only ever met David Brudnoy, the late Boston film critic and radio talk show host, once. When I went to movie screenings in Boston, when I wrote for my college newspaper in the late ‘90s, I was at one at the old Cheri theater, where the theater was packed, and I asked a gentleman if the seat next to him was taken.
“Yes, it is!,” he said, at which point my friend Joe, a superfan of Brudnoy’s show who talked about it often, exclaimed, “That’s David Brudnoy!”
At some point years later, I sought out and read “Life is Not a Rehearsal,” the fantastic memoir by a man who was a Minnesota Jew, got a Brandeis degree, and was a film critic (though I suspect that’s where our demographic similarities end.)
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Brudnoy’s passing, my friend Sean Burns, who is one of the best film critics in the country, has written a wonderful tribute to his good friend. Sean grew up listening to Brudnoy’s show, ended up befriending him, and was even a guest on his show.
Brudnoy sounds like he was a fantastic character, and Sean’s piece makes me wish I’d spent a bit more time listening to his radio show back in my Boston years, not to mention being a bit more social with people at those press screenings.
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