The most dumbfounding example came when my wife and I were watching a TV show set in a hospital. It wasn't ER but I don't remember at this point what it was. In fact, I think it's more likely that most of the show was not set in the hospital, but there was a single scene taking place there because one of the characters had had a medical emergency.
I do remember that they were trying to save this character's life, but in the style familiar to all of us from seeing hundreds of life-saving scenes in hospitals in movies and TV shows, it was about time to "call it."
So I spoke aloud these words:
"Time of death, 2:36 p.m."
About two seconds later, the doctor on screen spoke these exact same words.
All the explanations like "I saw a clock over their shoulder" or "I had already seen the episode before" or "I'm lying right now as I tell you this" were ruled out. It was a gosh darn miracle, of sorts.
I'm not going to say that what happened last night as I was watching the Road House remake was in the same category as that, but it was at least enough to write about.
During a nicely staged scene where Ellie (Daniela Melchior) takes Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) out on her boat to a shallow sand barge in the middle of the water, where they can drink beers and sit in lawn chairs without drowning. Ellie asks Dalton where he's from, originally, because she knows it's not the Florida Keys.
Immediately this popped into my head: Montana.
After the sort of thoughtful pause that is common to Dalton, he says "Montana."
I suppose getting a character's place of origin right when I had a 1 in 50 shot is not as impressive as naming a character's exact time of death, which required not only a correct 1 in 1440 guess, but also the knowledge that they were about to say this line of dialogue in the exact correct phrasing. But I still thought it was pretty impressive, and in some way indicative of powers we don't fully understand.
I did do my due diligence to make sure I had no reason to have Elwood Dalton's correct birthplace implanted in my head.
I went back to the start of the movie to make sure there was no Montana license plate visible in any of the shots. You do actually get a side glance at Dalton's license plate, but you can't make out the state and I certainly don't know what a Montana license plate looks like off the top of my head. Besides, there is no indication that's even where the opening scene is set, and considering that Dalton has become a drifter of sorts, there's no reason to expect he'd be likely to have returned from whence he came.
Then I thought about whether the original Road House, which I only saw for the first time recently but it's still been more than six years, was set in Montana. Nope, Missouri.
Then I thought about whether Jake Gyllenhaal hails from Montana and this is some sort of nod to the actor's own personal history, which I might have known about subconsciously. No, he's an LA baby as his parents were in the industry before he and his sister were. (Just to be sure there was no distant Montana connection, I also searched his Wikipedia page for mentions of the state, but there were none.)
Finally I checked to make sure Brokeback Mountain wasn't set in Montana, not that this would especially give me more reason to guess that as the birthplace of a character from a different movie that is not in any way related to Brokeback Mountain. No, that's set in Wyoming.
So I guess it's just a miracle then.
As for the movie itself, what a fun time. I'll have a review out in a couple days if you want to check back on the links to the right.
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