I'm disappointed I missed the performance of Sunset Blvd. at the Hollywood Bowl over the weekend. I bet if I hadn't spent all that money drinking on Friday night, I could have afforded tickets. Yeah, I'm never going to let that one go.
After work on Monday night, I went with KoreanGirl to eat at California Chicken Café. It was pretty tasty and I saw a couple styling Asian girls who gave me the evil eye. Better than the food or the hater vibes was getting player parking directly in front of the restaurant. After food, we drove over to Hollywood to catch a showing of An Inconvenient Truth at the Arclight Cinemas.
I’ve never been to the Arclight before, a mainstay of the seasoned LA moviewatcher. It’s in Hollywood, right next to Amoeba Music, on Sunset and Vine. In front of the entrance, we saw a big line for the premiere of some new teen movie. A bunch of excited young kids ran about. Inside the lobby, we saw one of the hobbits from Lord of the Rings, the dude that is on Lost, and he was nice enough to pose for pictures for everyone who asked. We moseyed about the gift store and went downstairs to the theatre.
Then I witnessed why the Arclight is so cool. There were four ushers waiting for us, one of whom took our tickets and told us where our seats were. The seats were huge, padded, and extremely comfortable, with tons of arm and leg room. KoreanGirl mentioned how we got good seats, and how it seemed like every seat in the theatre would be a good seat. Before the movie started, the lead usher guy gave a little speech about how they had exacting standards and would make sure that we were all happy during the movie. Then lights darkened and I watched my first movie at the Arclight.
An Inconvenient Truth. A very powerful, persuasive movie. I wonder how they ever greenlit a movie that is essentially a stiff Al Gore droning on during a slideshow about the environment. Let’s take the three most boring things ever and stuff them together in a movie. Somehow they pulled one over on the movie bosses, but I’m glad they did. The movie works really well. Al Gore is now a different person. He’s self-effacing but his presence is powerful, he’s both highly passionate and personable. The movie's most saddening sequence was of a CGI polar bear swimming in the vast expanse of the open ocean, finding a tiny piece of ice and trying to climb on top but then the thin ice breaks. The polar bear makes a plaintive MRRMRR noise and continues to swim on. Al Gore said that due to the disappearance of many ice shelves, some polar bears have drowned after swimming around in the ocean with nowhere to rest. The filmmakers intercut scenes of Al Gore’s personal life while he narrated the slideshow, and with those personal scenes I started to really respect him as a person of importance, integrity, and character. The near death of his son made him decide to dedicate his life to making the world a better place for his son to live in. Then it cut back to him giving the slideshow about how the earth is going to hell, and then it cut to Bush winning the election. And then I thought, damn, it could have been so much different. Really effective filmmaking.
Afterwards, KoreanGirl and I talked about what we wanted to do with our lives. I have had countless conversations with my friends about the same topic, but it never gets old and always results in depression. Jobs, bills, family obligations will limit our life choices. So while we are supposedly free to create our own lives, we’re not as free as college or parents would lead us to believe. I would love to run around the world and make travel documentaries, but if I’m going to maintain my 401(k) and car payments and insurance and rent, then it’s not going to happen anytime soon. I could drop all of those things, but it’s easier said than done. KoreanGirl is looking for a new job and feels the difficulty of committing to jobs that she would like to do when they might not pay enough to cover the bills. And then it’s like we have to help save the world from global warming on top of everything? Quite overwhelming.
I did end up taking the message of the movie to heart. Although I had already decided last week I was going to bike to work once this week, watching the movie made me consider biking to work regularly. So Wednesday will be the first time I've ever biked to work, after wanting to for about a year.