me’s blog

My friend John had a bunch of people over to his place on Saturday night to watch my all-time favorite movie, "Clue". I think there were about 10 people there, two-thirds of whom were "Clue" virgins. HOW EXCITING! [Yes, I realize that this means 6.666 people in the room had never seen "Clue" before. Shut up.]

I’m one of those freaks who would typically rather rewatch a movie I’ve seen before than watch something new. When it’s my favorite movie ever and the room is full of several people who’ve never seen it before, well, the stakes are high. And you never know if the people you’re watching a movie with will be those kind of people for whom a special circle of hell is reserved. By that I mean those who talk or text or get up and walk around or generally distract in some way during the movie-watching experience. You people know who you are.

So you can imagine my sheer delight as the gang took in the movie in the way I’d hoped, laughing at all the appropriate spots and paying rapt attention to the rest. It was a perfect movie night experience. Until the end…

Those of you who know "Clue" are aware that a significant part of its brilliance stems from the fact that, in spite of all the detailed farce of the setup, the writing and blocking somehow manage to allow for three possible endings to exist. When the movie was in theaters back in 1985, viewers did not know which of the three endings they would be seeing. On the DVD, there is the option of picking one of the three endings, or viewing all three in succession. Unfortunately, since I was not the person who hit "Play" on John’s remoteless DVD player, I did not realize until the movie’s abrupt end that we were actually watching the version featuring only the first ending, which is arguably the least hilarious of the three.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that the BEST PART of the movie, and perhaps for me the best part of any movie ever, doesn’t happen until the third ending. Had the overall movie night experience been a drag from the start, full of texting talkers who’d seen the movie before or just weren’t that into it, I wouldn’t care. But these newbies were genuinely into the movie, and at the end they all said they really liked it. I was crushed that they hadn’t even seen the very best part.

Hopefully those 6.666 newly deflowered people from the other night are reading this, and hopefully they (and the rest of you) will take less than a minute to enjoy the classic clip below from the third ending of "Clue", featuring the late great Madeline Kahn.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.