I was born in Hollywood. Well, Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, but my parents met while working in The Industry. I grew up enamored of movies with enough inside peeks into how movies got made to be entertained by the mere fact that anything decent got made into a movie. As a result, going to the movies is something I do a lot. I don’t particularly like seeing a movie on TV, i.e., videos, and so seeing films in theaters while they are in release is a constant struggle for me.
Part of that struggle is choosing a movie when going with someone with whom I often go whose taste differs from my own. This difference only applies to all the women I’ve dated in my life. I’ve had to come up with a way of deciding which movie to go to. Or which movies, as is the case when I’m dating someone who loves movies as much as I and we break into a marathon sweat to see as many as possible in a day. My personal best is two double features in one day, with my first wife.
For a long time we “took turns.” This seems democratic and fair. It beats the hell out of “You choose, Darling,” or “I don’t care as long as I like it” which is kinda BS. But taking turns really lacks zing. There is no tension about the choice. One person is in charge and the other is along for the ride, at worst suffering through a “red meat” movie for the sake of a “chick flick” next week, or vice versa. You pay for the movie of your choice by seeing the movie of her choice. Ad infinitum. Boring.
So with my second wife (yup) I invented “Choose ‘Til You Lose.” This started on New Years’ Day when we conducted a marathon of movie going in San Francisco some years back. The rules are simple: one person chooses the movies until the other person says they didn’t like it. There is no arguing about whether the “critic” is lying or faking. They just have to declare, in effect, “My turn.” Until then, the “chooser” keeps picking ‘em.
This is deceptively simple. If you really want to be the one to choose the movie you have to be thoughtful about it, listen to what your partner wants, create balance, think about quality, and so on. But you are never constrained to give a shit whether she wants to be dragged to “Terminator 3” or not. You always have a last pick available. Furthermore, if you want to be a real shit about it you can cry all the way through “Romeo and Juliet”, say you didn’t like it and go to “The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati” next week, if that’s how you want to play it.
What I like about it is that movie picking becomes a further extension of the relationship, for better or worse. Instead of each person being dragged to a movie they don’t want to see as the cost of dragging the other to their choice, there is a constant internal opportunity to consider the feelings, desires and wishes of your loved one before deciding whether or not you will do as you damn well please. There is a payoff either way but you get to choose which one you want.
I think that also reduces the compromise movie choice, which I really don’t like. I won’t take someone to a movie that she does not want to see, even if I love her dearly and think she’ll “get it” if she just goes. That almost never works and there’s hell to pay after. My range of taste in movies is pretty wide. I think I have only walked out of one movie in my life, “Lord Love a Duck”, and I regret it to this day because I’m pretty sure I didn’t get it. I was young and stupid.
Otherwise, I have seen pieces of trash like “Magnum 357” which was so bad the print was literally in backwards with cars driving on the wrong side of the road and signs printed in mirror writing. And I’ve seen and enjoyed many of the best films ever made. I can’t expect my woman to go to all of that. But surprisingly many have been willing to tag along to some dogs on the chance they might be gems. And some of them are, of course. It’s just another exercise in frog kissing. “Choose ‘Til You Lose” seems to me as perfect a solution to movie going as frog kissing because if you end up kissing a prince, you get to choose the next frog, you lucky dog.