However, the universe seemed to be very much fighting me on my other attempts to see a movie in the theater.
The one I really wanted to see was the new Donald Trump movie, The Apprentice, so I could write a vitriolic review -- not of the movie, but of the man -- in time to influence, I don't know, any Australians planning to illegally vote in the U.S. elections. But nary had the title escaped my lips before my wife claimed it for a future watch with me, which will be so far off in the future that I probably will end up watching it in January after it's available for VOD and just before my ranking deadline. And if Trump gets elected in a couple weeks, I may just not want to watch it at all.
I then focused on the documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, as it's been ages since I've seen a documentary in the theater. Reeve was my Superman, so this was a natural for me.
I left in what should have been plenty of time, even on a Saturday afternoon, for the 4:15 start time. But randomly, even though I never do this, I decided to take the highway to the Sun in Yarraville, just to see if it would get me there faster. That's the route they send you via Google Maps, but I always take a backroads way, one I've determined is a good compromise between the highway and the slower backroads route I used to take.
Then I remembered why I don't take the highway. They're doing construction, and sometimes the ramp is closed. Which it was today.
I was prepared to write off the possibility of getting to the movie on time, but then plugged the new ETA into my navigation system, now that I was being sent over the bridge and into the city, and definitely needed an optimum route back. It showed me still arriving on time, even though the Sun only plays about five minutes of trailers before starting the movie.
A few unlucky lights later, I was pulling up to the ticket counter by about 4:18. I secured my ticket and went up to the theater shown on the ticket.
Only that theater was halfway through The Substance. Much as I would have liked to watch The Substance again, I'd probably rather watch it from the start. So I scurried back downstairs to find that they had printed me a ticket for the 6:15 show, not the 4:15 show, which is pretty dumb but what are you going to do.
I never made it back to the counter, because the ticket taker circumvented the trouble of printing me a new ticket since he could tell how close my movie was to starting. So he just quickly looked up the correct auditorium and pointed me toward it, where I had about 30 seconds remaining of the final piece of pre-show content.
So I did finally get to see my movie, but that's not what the subject of this post is about.
At the very end, moments after the credits rolled, two female staff entered the auditorium and asked me if I had my ticket on me, since they thought I might be in the wrong session.
This, I thought, was strange. The credits were already rolling. So I must be pretty dumb if I didn't realize I'd sat through an entire movie that wasn't the movie I was supposed to be seeing.
Here's what I figure happened. I was the only one watching Super/Man, which I thought was strange and a bit sad, considering the size theater they'd allocated for it, and what I thought should be a significant amount of love for our dearly departed Christopher Reeve. But since I shouldn't have been in there either -- my ticket was for 6:15 in the theater that had been playing The Substance two hours earlier -- that means they knew they sold no tickets for the 4:15 show, yet here was someone sitting and watching it.
I got a little uppity there for a second, repeating back their question: "Do I have my ticket on me?" It seemed like an absurd question for a film that was already over. What, were they going to frog march me back to the ticket booth so I could retroactively pay for the ticket?
But instead of going all Karen on them, I realized it would make sense to just explain what had actually happened: "Oh they gave me a ticket for the 6:15 show but it was supposed to be the 4:15."
They immediately sighed in relief as clearly they had not actually wanted to have a confrontation over this.
I did feel a little annoyed, though, as it was only their poor apprehension of what session I was more likely to want to see -- the one that started three minutes ago or the one starting two hours from now -- that resulted in there being any confusion in the first place.
Of course, the whole thing was moot because I got the ticket for free with my critics card anyway -- another thing they might have remembered.
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