Snapshot of a 12:05 a.m., August 28, 2009, Halloween II show at the Pavilion Theater, Park Slope/Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn: More people going into the 3-D Final Destination movie, also screening a little after midnight. Whole families. Young kids. I guess there were no midnight 3-D Pixar movies tonight. There’s a little girl at Halloween II as well, maybe 8 years old. I saw a 4-year-old at Sin City, so nothing surprises me anymore. But I feel sick about what kids — who don’t need to know how deeply sick the world is — have to process nowadays. I know they’re no angels; I’ve read Lord of the Flies. I know babysitters are expensive. But sometimes I dream of a little less capitalist laissez-faire and a little more nanny-state finger-wagging. I look at those parents and think how fun it would be to see a scene in a hack-‘em-up in which a mom and dad take a little kid to an R-rated slasher movie and get sliced and diced while their tot laughs and eats another Milk Dud ...
Six guys in the row in front of me. Big, beefy, on the dufus-y side. The lights go down and, instantly, out come the BlackBerrys and iPhones. They can’t even hold their focus for ten seconds. I know, Sam Anderson makes a brilliant case for distraction. But this isn’t Hou-Hsiao-hsien, it’s Rob Zombie. Concentrate, people. Ommmmmm. Michael Myers is wasting three people with a big fucking butcher knife; you don’t need to check the Mets score. Or maybe you do. Maybe that’s how you stay pure at heart. Not me. I'm engaged.
2 a.m.: The movie is over. Men stand at urinals and pee in silence. I wonder if they were this ruminative after Final Destination. I sit in the lobby typing up my notes while the staff closes up. Why was I at the midnight show of Halloween II instead of home in the bosom of my family? More important: Why isn’t there a 2:15 a.m. show of Final Destination 3-D?