how it turned out

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

My Dinner with Andre (1981), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (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.