I’ve come up with a new reason to leave movies before they’ve ended. Over the last two days I’ve left two as they got into their third acts because — I’m being serious — I liked them so much I didn’t want their endings to spoil them.
I did this with a showing of Clint Eastwood‘s Breezy at the Aero on Sunday night. This wasn’t the main reason I bailed last night on the last 15 minutes of You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, but it was an underlying one.
You’re liking the film, it’s going well, everything’s working…so why mess with the possibility of the ending screwing everything up? Leave 15 minutes before it ends, ask your friends what happens, and then catch the whole thing on DVD three or four months hence. Especially if the film in question is a drama that’s subtly telegraphing that some kind of heavy or unpleasant turnaround is just around the corner. Or if some guy is sitting next to you and ruining everything by saying “wow!” when hot girls in hot underwear make a brief appearance. Get out while the going is good.
Obviously this is an incredibly lowbrow attitude for someone such as myself. I’m not confessing to it with any pride or suggesting in any way that I’m going to watch films with this attitude henceforth. I’m just saying that over the last 48 hours I’ve left two films that I liked, and that my reason or doing so made sense to me, and that it left me in peace.