Riding the Concrete: Project X
I did not make it a month without going to the movies. I almost did. I was one day short. It was February: the shortest month.
I was roped into Project X because all my friends were going. And as much as I love Raymond Carver, the idea of sitting on my concrete couch, reading “Blackbird Pie,” thinking about my friends laughing and cavorting with this supposedly hilarious party movie seemed fruitless.
An hour later, I walked out of the movie in a rage. I punched a wall. I cursed myself for my stupidity, my insanity – meaning doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results.
Many days have passed since I saw the first half of Project X and my anger has worn off. But I want to show you what I wrote in the theater and then outside on the street when the feelings were still fresh:
See now I’m starting to get angry. What don’t people understand about this? You’ve got to create characters that you care about. Otherwise it’s really boring. Why is Wayne’s World a great movie instead of just a funny one? Because you care about the characters.
Okay. I fucked up. I broke down. And I hate that feeling of “I’m bored now but maybe I won’t be bored in ten minutes.” That’s how I felt all throughout The Social Network. Then I walked out.
You know I love movies. It’s not that I don’t. I’m just tired of hollow characters. (Look up hollow.) Should I have been amused? A fat, wimpy kid talking about different ways to finger women: is that supposed to amuse me?
Project X is a movie about a high school party that goes crazy, not the type of party I would stick around for longer than forty-five minutes. I would be depressed that the girl I had a crush on was topless in the pool. If I saw my friend vomiting, I might feel bad, too. But fuck. Maybe I am hollow. I don’t know. The bottom line is, in the movie, it didn’t seem like a very fun party. So I left, and missed the crazy parts, like when the neighborhood was set on fire. I have nothing good to say about leaving either. It’s not like I found ten bucks or had a conversation with a police officer about action movies. It was a shitty night. I should have stuck with Raymond Carver and my concrete couch. I’m not going to say I’m going to go on strike again (see below article “On Strike”), even though at the time, I said it would be another year before I saw another movie in the theater. But I am going to exercise my right to say, “You are very kind. But thank you, no.”
