Obese Trailer Trash, Violent Ass-Raping, and The Keanu Reeves Honorary Wooden Acting Award.

So I got talked into seeing "Troy" tonight. What a truckload of steaming shite that was.

I should start by mentioning that I love movies, all kinds of movies - and generally I'm all up for the big Hollywood epic. Vast landscapes, sweeping orchestras, storybook heroes, impossibly poetic dialogue... the whole lot of it. It's the type of popcorn fun that movies were made for. But with the success of "Lord Of The Rings," everyone is trying to jump on the epic bandwagon. Every egocentric filmmaker wants a piece of the glory, and they're all digging through the history books, looking for an exotic new premise for their bloated, self-indulgent masterpieces. So now we've got an overload of epics, which is bad, because what helps make them epic in the start is that they're only around every so often. It's meant to be quite an event, like a movie you're looking forward to for months. Now there's one every few weeks, and most of them are shit.

So I went in to "Troy" with low expectations, and they were met. Maybe it wouldn't have been as bad if I wasn't in Hicksville USA, also known as the wretchedly miserable suburbs of New Orleans, Louisiana. Rarely have I been to a geographic area where so consistently my movie-going experiences have been ruined by the other theatre patrons. And this presents a tremendous problem for me. You see, I love seeing movies in a packed theatre. The atmosphere of an audience is what the cinema is all about. However, I also utterly despise, from the bottom of my heart, people who haven't figured out the very basic concept of SHUTTING THE FUCK UP. Which is more or less everyone down here in the dirty south.

So this time, in Louisiana's continuing efforts to ruin every movie I see, I enjoyed the company of a tremendous beast of a woman who was sitting directly behind me. She was a fucking cow, absolutely massive, and looked fresh out of the trailer park. She was apparently by herself, and sweaty rolls of lard were spilling off into the empty seats beside her. From the very first second of the film, she was launching a violent assault on her extra super size two gallon bag of heavily buttered popcorn. I almost felt bad for the little kernels of popped corn, they didn't stand a fucking chance. I was imaginging them, all huddled together in their bag, amongst them the bodies of those who had already drowned in the tidal wave of chemical butter topping she had poured on them. Terrified of what might happen next, they let out shrill cries of horror as the shadow of her sweaty sausage fingers draped over them, and what must have looked like some hideous blob monster from worlds beyond swooped down and snatched them up from their home and tossed them into a dark slimy pit where the giant yellowed mashers of some infernal machine crushed their frail, butter-greased bodies into tiny little pieces.

I am not a fan of loud chewing noises, and I am particularly not a fan of them when they're louder then the film I'm making my best efforts to enjoy. She was chomping away at it with her mouth wide open, and it was so loud that it felt like she was inches away from me, crunching her helpless popcorn directly into my inner ear. I could practically feel her humid stinkbreath painting the side of my face with condensation. But I dealt with it, and after the initial popcorn assault she slowed down a bit as she got into the film, and reduced her intake to a somehow more infuriating pace of one kernal at a time. What made this unbearable was that every time she'd reach into the bag to pull out her next victim, she would rustle it in a way that produced sound far louder than any paper bag should ever be able to make. I mean, you probably could have heard it from the back of the theatre, and I was right the fuck in front of her. And it was stadium seating, so guess where my head was? Practically in her fat fucking lap. Right at ear level with the noisest bag on earth. Literally she must have been attempting to eat the bag from the bottom up, because it sounded like she was burrowing her blubbery hand all the way to the bottom each time she dove in to retrieve a new kernel. And, after every few bites, she would - somehow very loudly - wipe the salt and grease off of her fat fucking mouth WITH HER SHIRT, and then grunt and wheeze a bit, as if she was having trouble breathing. It was absolutely grotesque.

I'm a bit of a nazi about movie-going. Part of it is that I genuinely enjoy going to see films, and it infuriates me when someone makes an effort to ruin it for me. But the other - perhaps more significant part - is that a bad movie-going experience tears away at my faith in humanity. It is absolutely beyond me, on every level, how anyone could be so ignorant, rude, selfish, and utterly lacking in any sense of self restraint, as to be noisy during a film. It's a basic concept, we learn it in preschool: Quiet time. This is quiet time. For two measly hours of your life, you have to shut up. It's that simple. 120 minutes of keeping your fucking mouth closed. 7,200 seconds of restraining from voicing your every inane reaction to what you're seeing on the screen. It's not your living room. You're not by yourself, watching a DVD. You're in a room full of other people, who are trying to enjoy the film.

Shut. The fuck. Up.

A great many people have not got this figured out. These are the people, I presume, who got sent to the corner a lot during quiet time, because they simply couldn't not talk. It wasn't something they could get their little pea-brained heads around. It was inconceivable that for any length of time, they were not allowed to try and draw attention to themselves. For one miniscule portion of their life they had to concede to the idea that there are other people in the world besides them. For once, they had to not be the center of the universe. And they couldn't do it. They failed. So when this mentality manifests itself during a movie - particularly during a movie I'm excited to see - I'm a complete asshole about it. I'll be the guy screaming "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" during a movie, when someone on the opposite end of the theatre is talking. I'm the guy who will complain to the theatre staff if a couple "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"s prove fruitless. I cannot stand having my experience ruined by some ignorant twat.

So as we approached thirty minutes into "Troy," and fatty was still rustling away without so much as a second's rest, I finally snapped. I turned around, and thrust my own bag of popcorn up into the air, about eye level with her, and rustled it around as violently as I possibly could, spilling popcorn onto the floor as I did so, and shooting her the meanest pair of evil eyes I could muster up. Amazingly, she stopped rustling. For about five minutes. When she resumed, I spun around and glared at her again, right in the eyes with a very genuine look which said, in no uncertain terms, "I am going to slit your fucking lard-padded throat and stuff the bleeding wound with the rest of your popcorn if you make one more Goddamn rustling noise, you bloated fucking whale of a woman." And she, looking back at me, lowered her popcorn bag slowly to the ground, the way a criminal would lower his weapon when surrounded by the cops. My message was clear, and she looked actually quite afraid of me.

I am not a threatening person. I am thin, and pale, and metrosexual enough that you might on occasion mistake me for being gay. I am far from a tough guy. However, intrude upon my movie-going experience and I will become possessed by some form of unholy demon. One of these days, it's going to get me stabbed or something.

Actually, one of these days I'm going to make a members-only movie theatre. You have to fill out a lengthy application to get in. There will be background checks. You will need to list references. If you're accepted, you will be treated to the biggest screen in the world, with digital projection, and the lights all the way out, and the sound fucking cranked. Fresh popcorn, served in tubs. Big comfy reclining seats with lots of leg room. The ultimate movie theatre. The best film experience you'll ever have. However, there are rules at my theatre, and when you sign up you'll have to agree to the consequences of breaking these rules. There will be a lot of paper work. The main rule - the really important one - is that there will be ushers in the theatre at all times, and they will be watching you. If you make even the slightest bit of unnecessary noise... If you talk, for any reason. If you rustle loudly. If your phone rings. If you're one of those obnoxious fuckers who like to crunch on their ice, one cube at a time, when you're done with your drink. If you make any noise at all, the film will stop. The lights will come up. The ushers - who are large, humorless, tattooed men, will drag you from your seat and up to the front of the theatre, where everyone in the audience can heckle you while you are stripped naked. Then your membership card will be torn up, and stuffed down your throat, and each of the massive ushers will have their way with you, one at a time, raping you violently in the arse, in front of everyone. And then when they're done, and you're laying there, naked and humiliated, your ass all kinds of torn up and dripping with man goo, the people in the front row spitting on your broken shell of a body... then the ushers will cut your fucking head off, and they'll hang it in the theatre lobby amongst all the other heads, the "hall of shame" to remind other patrons what will happen if they dare talk during the film. Harsh? Perhaps. But I'm convinced that ruling with an iron fist is the key to cinematic utopia.

But anyway, even if lardass hadn't been noisily gorging herself behind me, and even if the projection hadn't been inexcusably out of focus... the movie still would have sucked. It was a long, bloated, hollow shell of a film, so concerned with trying to be epic that it forgot to be a good movie. And Brad Pitt is a fucking abysmal actor. He's terrible. He wins the Keanu Reeves Honorary Wooden Acting Award for 2004. Don't get me wrong, Brad Pitt is a fine specimen of the male gender. I'm not even gay, and I would go fucking Roman on his chiseled ass something fierce, and probably enjoy it more than most of the sexual experiences I've had with females. But it takes more than perfect abs to carry a film, and good fucking Lord is he terrible in this. I've enjoyed him in other roles in the past, where he didn't have to stretch too far from what must be his real personality: A likable dumb guy. But heroic Greek warrior he is not, and talented actor he most definitely is not. Stick to looking pretty, Brad. It's a better gig for you.

Christ, it's late. Why am I still awake?