how it turned out
films: My Dinner with Andre, dir. Louis Malle, 1981 & Looking for Mr. Goodbar, dir. Richard Brooks, 1977


No spoilers.
Unbearable I cannot walk out of a movie. It’s the way I am. I’m here for the story, the unfolding, the sweet and bitter end. I had a friend, though, who was different. My Dinner with Andre, for instance. My friend, he bailed early, just stood up and left. Unbearable, he said. Looking for Mr. Goodbar was another instance. Unbearable, he said, again. With Andre, it was pretty straightforward. Wally Shawn as Wally Shawn is able to sit for nearly two hours while he listens to Andre ramble on about life as an avant-garde theatre director. My friend was not the only one who walked out before the end. Mr. Goodbar, though, wasn't as simple. Special needs teacher, Theresa Dunn, played by Diane Keaton, falls into a vortex of smoke-filled bars, cocaine and sordid sex, where she cannot sit for very long, cannot sit still for anything that is not Mr. Goodbar. And neither, it seems, could my friend.



Seal of approval. Lasting movies, spilled popcorn coughed up kernels to salt the students who preserve the memory endured.
Both powerful movies in their way. I walked out of Pulp Fiction. Tarantino is just too heavy handed for me.