When she said “Farmboy, fetch me the finest seats in the house,” you know what he said?
“As you wish…”
“Hana hou!” In Hawaiian, that means “one more time!” or “encore!”1https://www.hawaiianairlines.com/our-services/in-flight-services/hana-hou And for the Boss Lady and myself, it meant getting a second chance at a missed opportunity from our childhoods: seeing Rob Reiner’s 1987 block-buster movie, The Princess Bride.
“What?!?” you say? “How can this be true? Inconceivable!“
Yea, verily I say unto you, ’tis but true! You see, back in 2012 when we were living in Honolulu, one of the local theaters decided to start up their Hana Hou movie series, in which, on one special Wednesday each month, they would play a classic movie from Hollywood’s movie vault. I believe this is actually common now, but back then it wasn’t really a thing yet, so it was super exciting.
When we first saw the poster for The Princess Bride we ’bout crapped our britches in shear excitement! But although it was being shown on the largest screen in all of Hawai’i,2https://www.consolidatedtheatres.com/ward/cinema-info we were lucky to reserve ourselves 2 of the 225 seats available for this twice-in-a-lifetime event. In fact, I think we scored the last two tickets next to each other, so it was nearly an opportunity missed.
Well, it indeed lived up to the hype, and was perhaps one of the most incredible movie-going experiences of my life. It’s a pretty incredible energy when you get 224 hardcore fans of such a classic movie in an enclosed space–the place was literally buzzing with excitement!
Now, you may have noticed that I said “224 fans,” when there were 225 seats. Let me explain…
The Princess Bride is perhaps one of the most quotable movies ever. From “As you wish.” to “Inconceivable!” to “Stop rhyming, and I mean it!” *pause* “Anybody want a peanut?”, there are a plethora of opportunities to jump in and say your favorite line along with the character on screen. And believe you me, there was a lot of that going on that night, with at least a handful of audience members reciting dialogue during any given scene.
However, there was one quote, occurring several times throughout the movie, that seemed to unite the entire audience in what I can only describe as a religious experience: Iñigo Montoya’s “Hello. My name is Iñigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
The only way I know how to explain the phenomenon we experienced that night is this: if you’ve ever gone to just about any church in America, there is a good chance that you’ve been in the congregation when they’ve recited the Lord’s Prayer. Well, it was exactly like that: everybody knew every word, but nobody ever figured out how to say it in unison, so you endup with this eerie asynchronous chorus of whispers, which would be freaky as ----- if you didn’t know what was going on. It literally gave me the chills. Or was it the creeps…?
Anyways, I was at first astounded that everybody in that packed-out movie house was still obsessed with this film 25 years later…but then I realized that there was one auspicious exception: the guy sitting on the other side of me was strangely silent the whole time.
It seemed that it was this virgin’s maiden voyage into our collective world of fantasy, and this grown-ass man was just now seeing The Princess Bride the first time in his whole life. How was that even possible?
I mean, are you kidding me??? The lone heretic in that entire place just happened to be sitting next to me? Super. When the gods of Hollywood would inevitably smite this infidel with a bolt of lightening, I just knew that my ass was going to get zapped too…
Shortly thereafter, and based on our experience the previous month with The Princess Bride, we made sure to be ahead of the game and bought our tickets early to Quentin Tarentino’s 1994 cult-classic Pulp Fiction–a movie that I, as a grown-ass man, actually had never seen.
Now, I was particularly proud of my purchase this time, as I had scored seats right in the middle, 3 rows up from the open aisle that divided the front seats from the back. I’m talking primo, grade-A location, man. This experience was going to be even better than The Princess Bride, I just knew it.
It turned out, though, that around that same time, the Boss Lady was kicking around the idea of getting a Master’s degree from the University of Hawai’i, and her on-campus interview inadvertently got scheduled for the same night as the showing of Pulp Fiction. It ended up causing us to rush across town to the theater, only to show up about 5 minutes late.
I really had to use the restroom, so I told the Boss Lady which seats were ours, and told her to go on in before someone tried laying claim to them. When I came out of the john, I knew that our seats–25 & 26, to be precise–was slightly closer to the right side, so I took the hallway that went to the right going into the auditorium.
To my surprise, the place wasn’t nearly as packed as it had been for The Princess Bride, but the first 5 or 6 rows where our seats were were plum full. Assuming my life partner was already in her seat, I “excuse me, pardon me’d” my way past 20+ fellow patrons trying to enjoy the movie…only to find that the Boss Lady was not in her seat, and further, somebody else’s fat ass had set up camp in one of ours.
So what did I do? Well, I worked hard to reserve those highly-sought after seats for my Buttercup, and this Farmboy wanted what was rightfully his. So I went down the row, trying to figure out who didn’t legally belong, and who had just scooched over one seat out of courtesy to the mother- ----- squatter. It wasn’t until about Seat 7 or 6 that I found the culprit and kicked him out of our row. And then, after that, I had to “excuse me, pardon me” back over approximately 20 people who I had just forced to move one seat over…
Meanwhile…in the back row of the front section–on the far left side–the Boss Lady had set up camp in the handicap seats and was vigilantly watching for me to come in, so she could tell me that it wasn’t worth trying to get to our single seat and that it would be much simpler to find some open seats closer to the front.
Patiently watching for me in the dark, she heard a commotion behind her. Turning around the other way to see what the hub-bub was about, she quickly had her worst fears confirmed: there I was, “excuse me, pardon me, you need to move over to the seat that’s on your ticket”ing to the whole ----- row, single-handedly disrupting everyone’s movie-going experience.
Wondering where the hell she was, I started scanning the place as I viciously guarded my hard-fought prize–that primo, grade-A empty seat with my wife’s name on it–before I eventually locked eyes with her…sitting on the left side, of all places!
We had a bit of a stand-off, impertinently waving at the other to get their ass over to our respective locations: “Come over here!” “No, you come over here!” and what-not, until finally she very reluctantly caved. Of course, getting to her seat at this point was no easy task in the least, and she ended up having to climb over the bars in front the first row, “excuse me, pardon me” a couple seats over in Row 2 so she could climb over the lone empty seat there, and then “excuse me, pardon me” over a few more very perturbed patrons to finally get to me.
Needless to say, that was perhaps the least romantic date we’ve ever been on. Now in all fairness, from my perspective, I was fighting for the honor and comfort of my fair maiden. But in reality…
Well, if chivalry wasn’t dead already at that point in time, I had just murdered it in cold blood and then skull- ----- its rotting corpse, in front of roughly 125 onlookers…
The point of the story is: don’t be like me–be adaptable! In the end we decided the best way to deal with that utter fustercluck was to laugh at our incredibly embarrassing shenanigans–so embarassing that I had totally forgot that there had been a power surge that night and the theater had totally blacked out about 10 minutes from the end of the movie.3I found this out when searching old emails for the exact seats we had that night. Apparently, due to the black out, the theater was offering us free tickets to the next month’s showing of SpaceBalls. But you wouldn’t believe how many times I have had that used as Exhibit A against me since then, as irrefutable evidence of my inflexibility, single-mindedness, and inability to compromise.
These days, the Boss Lady only has to utter a mere 2 words to win any argument of that nature: “Pulp Fiction.“
To which, my only real reply is a solemn, demoralized whisper, also 2 words in length: “#NeverForget.”
…
Oh! And speaking of “adaptable,” the whole reason why I brought any of this up was so I could have an excuse to share with you the “Home Movie” version of The Princess Bride that I recently came across. If you ever wondered how your favorite celebrity spent their time during the Great Quarantine of 2020, may I present to you: Exhibit A.
“A” as in “f***ing AWESOME,” that is:
Content created on: 6/7 March 2021 (Sat/Sun)
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