Cinematus Interruptus

The movie Jerry Maguire has been on television lately.  As I watched it the other night, I was struck by the fact that I had never seen the ending.  When I saw it at Movieland in Colorado, my date and I had walked out halfway through.  (More about why in a minute.)

And that got me thinking about other movies that I had seen that had been prematurely interrupted.  Let’s start with the first one.

In 1968 I was sitting in Westwood, California waiting for an afternoon matinee of Rosemary’s Baby to start.  But before the main event, my attention was captured by the X-rated performance in the row in front of me.

Some blonde chick and a guy were really going at it.  You know that heinous expression “Get a room?”  Well, it was invented for these two stoats.  It was getting practically pornographic and I couldn’t wait for the house lights to dim and bring on Mia Farrow’s controversial haircut, Ruth Gordon’s shameless over-the-top mugging, John Cassavetes’ embodiment of the word “creepy,” and pre-tragedy and pre-controversy Roman Polanski’s deft touch guiding them all through their cinematic paces.

I wasn’t disappointed.  I was heartily enjoying my thrill romp when, out of the blue, the film broke.  The twenty people in the audience waited patiently for a fix.  But soon it became apparent that even though this was Hollywood, no studio flunkie would be riding to the rescue with an answer print.

Finally a disembodied voice came wafting over the P.A. system.  “We regret to inform you that the film has broken, we can not fix it and we have no replacement.  Please see the manager.”  We straggled out blinking into the lobby.  There was the manager waiting for us.

“You can have a refund or a rain check,” he said.  “Which do you prefer?”

And then the blonde makeout artist piped up.  “Money, money, money!” she chirped in an unmistakable voice.  I took a good look in the daylight.  It was Goldie Hawn.  Who still had an Academy Award in her future and was clearly watching her pennies.  (Hence no hotel room.)

I never cared how the movie turned out.  Wasn’t that a better ending than anything Ira Levin could have dreamed up?

The next time I didn’t see the ending was in 1996.  The place: the Esquire Theater, Oak Street, Chicago.  My then husband and I had ambled up the street from our tony co-op on East Lake Shore Drive to see a movie with Cher and Chazz Palminteri called Faithful.

About a quarter of the way through, he got uncomfortable and restless.  The movie wasn’t that bad but still he kept pressuring me to leave.  (A first in the twenty years of our married movie-going.)  He kept whining and I couldn’t say no to his hectoring.  We left.  I never saw the end.

I had no recollection of the movie’s plot.  So, as I was writing this post, I went to IMBD and here, verbatim, is what it says:  “A depressed housewife, whose husband is having an affair, contemplates suicide, but changes her mind when she faces death by a killer hired to do her in.”

OMG!  I couldn’t make that up!  No wonder he was squirming.  (And let’s just say that he did finish me off in divorce court August 28, 1996.  And I didn’t see that ending, either.)

Which leads us nicely to Jerry Maguire that very same year.  I was there on a date with the stunningly-good looking guy who had stopped to pet my dog- the adorable scottie, Andy- but stayed on to ask me out.

He was very handsome and very persistent.  And very young.  And I was old, lonely, and if you saw that blonde hair and those blue eyes rimmed with black eyelashes, you wouldn’t have said no either.  The hell with the age difference.

We started dating.  He was on sabbatical from school (University of Washington.  I may be a cougar but I’m not Mary Kay Le Tourneau, guys.) and was scheduled to take the whole year off on a work-study program he had submitted to the powers-that-be back in Seattle.  And believe it or not, he was falling hard.  I swear.

We were both looking forward to a year of unbridled romance.  (Well, no, not exactly “un.”  More like bridled- by the presence of Nick.  My young swain was absolutely terrified of my son.  And hid from him all the time.  It was cute.)

But as we sat in Jerry Maguire he suddenly burst into tears.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” he sobbed.  “I just found out that my work-study program has been rejected and I have to go back to school by the first week in January.  I can’t watch this any more.  We have to leave.”

We did.  I sent him back to school with a good-bye kiss and a promise to help with his English homework.  And I turned my sights on more realistic romantic prospects.  But even today, I can never see the ending of that movie.  In his honor.

I didn’t have to wait long for my next experience with cinematus interruptus.  1997.  Titanic.

Mike and I went to see this blockbuster.  And we both hated it.  (I’m an old Titanic history buff, and as such, I did enjoy James Cameron’s wonderous CGI rebuilding of the ship.  But the creaky, hoary love story gratuitously grafted on to this tragic confluence of greed, hubris, class warfare and monumental stupidity was tedious for me.  And why gild the lily with the story of two fictional people?  There was more than enough real heroism and cowardice to go around.)

But Mike and I gritted our collective teeth and stuck it out.  We had paid hard cash and we’re bitter-enders.  And just as Jack was turning blue and clinging to an ice floe and begging Rose not to give up and she was pitching him the same claptrap, the screen suddenly exploded into a bright orange fire ball. We watched enrapt, as before our very exhausted, water-logged eyes, the film burned up.

The R.M.S. Titanic and Titanic had spontaneously combusted at the same time.

The management gave us rain checks but we simply did not have the wherewithall to go through all of that all over again. I do hope Rose and Jack live happily ever after on the proceeds of that necklace she was wearing.

In 2004 I walked out of Troy and into the night for a breath of air.  The movie was awful and besides, I had read the Iliad and knew how it all turned out.

My latest husband was blissfully watching it.  (Another young one.  When will I ever learn?)  But when I finally decided to return to my seat, the exit door wouldn’t re-open.  I couldn’t get back in.

Finally, after twenty minutes, a mall cop saw my plight and drove me around to the one unlocked entrance.  But the movie had ended by that time.  And the husband?  He had been so enthralled that he hadn’t even noticed that I had gone anywhere.

So what have I learned from all this?

As I watch the movie of my own improbable life unfold, I now know two things.  First, I will always stick around to watch the ending- no matter what.  Endings are important.

And second, I like happy ones.