I can't really say that any great drama I saw in theaters left a mark on me BECAUSE I saw it in theaters which is probably blasphemy to a lot of people here, but I've always felt like comedies are the only things TOTALLY changed by a live experience (usually for the better, sometimes for the worse).


Scary Movie 3 I was starting freshman year in high school and me and my friends from middle school had all kind of solidified what our group humor was and the first time we went and saw that movie it BLEW US AWAY. I'd already been schooled on its predecessors by my dad (Airplane!, Naked Gun, etc.) but I wasn't immune to the knockoffs yet. We really liked the first two but had only seen then at home because they were Rated R, but seeing Scary Movie 3 in theaters made it seem amazing.

In or defense, we went back the next week to see it again all psyched to roll over laughing from front to back all over again but we walked out within 20 minutes. It's both my favorite movie experience and one of the very few movies I've ever walked out of.

Undercover Brother I saw with my best friend at the time, who was black, and we just kept punching each other and laughing hysterically and kept cracking the racial jokes at each other during games of Madden constantly afterward. It's also peppered by memories of him having a brain aneurysm shortly after and losing most of his personality/physicality for several years, so it's a fond last memory of the best friendship I've ever had.


Superbad came out the summer after graduation so by this point the team I'd seen Scary Movie 3 with had gotten heavy into weed and knew some people we could smuggle booze from, and it happened to release the weekend before the first of our friends moved away to college (almost all of us were staying in Nebraska or going to Colorado/Kansas but he was going to CANADA) so we got LOADED on dope and smuggled shooters in and had a fucking blast. I can't say it was directly comparable to the Scary Movie 3 experience because it was partially fueled by substances instead of raw adolescent hormones but, man, what a way to send off a good friend, especially since a lot of us started high school out the same way (and some of us were leaving high school with the same hangups).

Thanks Superbad.


OH, I could throw in The Ring because (other than its sequel) its the only scary movie I ever saw in theaters. Same typical crew, and dude I was sitting next to was the only other guy that all week long had been saying "no man, I don't do scary movies, that's not the movie we're seeing this week" and from the opening scene onward we caught each other, like, totally grabbing for each others' hands and shit at least 10 times. We didn't care how many homophobic jokes we got afterward we were legitimately terrified and shrieking like women throughout. It's hilarious in retrospect but I'll never forget how afraid of powered down TVs in unlit rooms I was for, like, two years after that movie.


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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
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