Saturday, January 8, 2022

And a bag of popcorn for the ride home

I got to West Side Story on Thursday night for my second straight night at the movies, as I cross off titles from the remaining list of movies I need to see in theaters before my ranking deadline. (Literally, I am now working from a final list of about 20 movies I realistically expect to see before my deadline, jotted down in a spiral-bound notebook. I've already whittled it down a bit from the original 20.)

And for the second straight night, I enjoyed a bag of popcorn on the way home.

You can add that to the list of reasons I love the Sun Theatre in Yarraville.

I reckon every theater out there ends the night with a bunch of popped popcorn that nobody is going to buy. Most theaters would either throw that out, or if they were feeling generous, they would send it home with their staff -- if their staff is not already sick of everything having to do with popcorn.

The Sun is feeling more generous than that. In fact, they bag the remaining popcorn in the same bags in which they sell it, twist over the top of the bag, and leave it lined up along the counter for patrons to grab on their way home. 

Very nice.

I knew about this because one time, one of the staff personally offered me a bag on my departure. The last two nights, though, the popcorn was just lined up on the counter where anyone who wants to can grab it. I wasn't formally notified that this was for our consumption, but it was consistent with the theater's previous approach to the subject. 

And because this theater feels like a ghost town after the last showing lets out -- sometimes you can't even find any staff -- there was no one to witness me making off with the popcorn on my way out, if I had misinterpreted their intentions.

Did I really need a bag of popcorn at nearly midnight on my 20-minute drive back to my new house? No I did not. I had already consumed the remaining licorice wheel I didn't eat during Licorice Pizza, a small bag of gummy snakes purchased at the theater, and the remainder of a bag of fudge I had gotten for Christmas. Plus two Pepsi Maxes. Hey, it's a long movie.

But neither am I going to turn down free popcorn, because it's pretty rare that I actually order it at the movies anymore, though I still love the taste. 

I could have taken two, because there were about six, and I imagine most people don't want a bag of popcorn at the end of the night. But that would have been pushing it.

Besides, my new commute home from the theater is about twice the length of what it was before. I've got time to snack on it on the journey.

In fact, my love for the Sun is such that on both of those nights, I have also taken a precaution that was necessary only out of excess politeness.

One of my masks -- I've got four these days -- is a mask my wife got when she attended an event at Cinema Lido in Hawthorn, and either didn't have a mask or lost hers. The mask is branded with the theater's logo, and because it's a movie-themed mask, it's one of my favorites to wear.

Wearing the mask to the Sun, though, would have felt like rubbing the Sun's nose in my patronage of the competition. On previous instances, I have proactively chosen a different mask, but on both Wednesday and Thursday nights, I did not remember in time to do anything about it. 

So instead, I just turned the mask inside out.

As I said, this is an excessive level of politeness. The Sun and Cinema Lido are actually quite far away from each other, so they would not even reasonably be serving the same audience. In fact, I myself only ever go there on a really special occasion, or if I'm already in the area for some other reason. (It's a nice theater, though, so I do enjoy my opportunities to frequent it.)

Plus presumably the people who work for the Sun are also avowed cinephiles, and would respect other cool cinemas around Melbourne. I might even get additional points for it.

But this is a situation where I like to err on the side of politeness. The Sun Theatre has earned it.

For reasons that go well beyond giving me free popcorn. 

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