The lost late show

When I was younger, the way I remember knowing that a movie was on the last legs of its theatrical run was that it was only playing once per day at 9:55 p.m.

Would that this were still the system.

I don’t know if cinema-going habits have changed or it’s just a matter of the different mindsets between different countries, but nowadays, the movie that’s only still playing once per day plays a lot closer to 9:55 a.m. than 9:55 p.m. The “about to go bye bye” time slot is the 11:20 a.m. time slot, its last gasp before landing on video.

The Greatest Showman is not there yet, but it’s heading there. And when I had to skip the Sunday at 6:55 p.m. showing because I had not yet finished cleaning the house to my satisfaction before my family returned home, I may have lost the movie entirely.

That 6:55 p.m. showing is now the last showing at a couple of the theaters I’m looking at. There is one remaining 9 p.m. time slot at one theater, but it’s a bit of a drive and would mean I’d still have to leave before my kids have finished terrorizing my wife for the night.

Oh, I could go to a 6:55 showing if my life depended on it. But when you’ve just had nearly five full days without children, the last thing you feel like doing is calling in any favors from your wife – who spent those five days with them – to see another movie. (I watched 12 while they were gone.)

The thing is, I was basically ready to give The Greatest Showman a miss … until a friend on Facebook posted this. For those not following the link, it’s a rehearsal for the song “From Now On” when they were trying to get the movie greenlit. Hugh Jackman had just had a benign tumor removed from his nose the day before, so he was on strict orders from his doctor not to do any singing. Bad timing indeed. He went to the staging and moved around while someone else sang, just to give the prospective financiers a bit of a visual of what they could expect from the completed movie. However, when it came time to do this song, he threw caution to the wind and began belting it out, transported by the grandiosity and emotion of the song.

The woman who posted it told me that if this didn’t move me, nothing would. And I’m glad to say we don’t have to test that theory, because it sure did.

With just a week left until I finalize my list, and with Darkest Hour still on my theatrical hit list and The Shape of Water releasing on Thursday, it remains to be seen whether I’ll find a way to carve out a Greatest Showman viewing from my limited remaining options.

“From now on” I guess I’ll remember to do that cleaning early.