What Ushers Find on the Theatre Floor: Or,

How to Explain Our Love Affair with Cinema by Questioning the Things That Bring Us There in the First Place.


Why do we remember the first settling of the light to the very last flicker of the projectionist?

Every answer differs so greatly - as though you've gathered your feelings together like sand in one palm and let it drift away in the breeze with another so they scatter and no one can claim them. We're creatures of the same breed with different hungers.

Some of us hum the "Mission: Impossible" theme while we urinate. Some of us bring extra quarters to the toll booth after watching The Godfather. Some of us want to go to France to experience the Royale with cheese. And, some of us leap on our desktops and shout, "O, captain! My captain!" breathlessly into the air. Some of us dare to dream of rescuing the damsel in the tallest tower of the castle. Some of us walk into Babylon and feel as naked and awed as the Greeks did.

However, finding your favorite film is near sacred. It's like seeing the prettiest girl at the party and having the courage to ask what she's drinking and tell her you enjoy the taste - it's a bold move succeeded by the rapturously unexplainable, and thus is the very nature of the questions at hand. Within that film, we pick up moments of our lives, fragments of things once precious and beautiful, and cobble them together and imagine what could of been, or what could be.

The next time you sit down, sneakers squeaking from buttered kernels, spilled cola, snowcaps and sour patch kids, remember that now that you've bought the ticket - you have to take the ride. Maybe that comedy will stretch your laugh and echo across the room. Maybe that horror will make proper use of the space between your middle and ring finger. Maybe that romance will restore your heartbeat.

And, just maybe, you'll fall in love.

Over and over again.