Popcorn

February 6, 2004 - Popcorn and a Movie

This is our final report from the 2004 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The dedicated staff of edhat.com is no authority on films or film festivals, but from our standpoint the festival was a big hit. We interacted with lots and lots of people, and everyone we met seemed to be having a great time.

For this last article we had planned to discuss the good and bad movies from the festival. In the course of the last week, we collected many opinions from volunteers, directors, and press people. But over the course of the week we began to realize that we were out of our league on this one, not worthy of reporting on such matters. Besides, edhat.com is about objectivity and facts, not opinions. We count things.

It was a little ironic that up until yesterday the dedicated staff had seen everything at the festival except for a film. Our press passes got us in free to the Metro 4 for the 1:00 pm showing of Cleopatra. It is an Argentinean film whose title character was played by an academy award nominee from a few years back. This particular film was picked pretty much randomly. It was the one that fit in best with our dedicated schedules.

Once inside the theater, we bought popcorn. The biggest size they had was “large”, no buckets for sale - just different sized bags. There were three people behind the counter pretty much standing on top of each other. We ordered from one, paid another, and the third scooped the popcorn. It cost $4.50. We gave the man a five and unceremoniously got back a fifty-cent piece. The dedicated staff member in charge of popcorn procurement commented on the novelty of getting a 50-cent piece. But the snack bar trio didn’t care; they were busy lining up for the next customer.

Discrete seats toward the front of the theater were selected, clickers were removed from pockets, and the eating began! By religion and training, the dedicated staff habitually is inclined to shove large handfuls of popcorn into our mouths. So it was not that easy (and a little tiring and less fun) to eat one small piece at a time. And to make the trick really hard, we had to use our non-eating hand to click our tally counter simultaneously with each undersized bite. It was kind of like patting your head and rubbing your stomach.

Roger Durling

By the time Roger Durling showed up to give us a pre-film spiel, the bag was half full (or half empty if your name is Louie). Roger, working without a script, told the audience all about the film. It is really cool that the person in charge of the festival is such a movie buff.

The movie started and we continued to eat and click. When it was down to the crumbs we stopped and added up all the counter readings to determine that there had been 755 pieces of popcorn in the bag – one for every home run Hank Aaron hit in his career! Quick math finds each piece costs 0.59 cents.

The movie itself was a “chick movie”, a mix between Thelma and Louise and that one where the middle age woman goes on vacation to Greece by herself, has a fling with a younger man, and then decides to stay … what’s the name of that move? I am sure Roger knows.

edhat.com subscriber sivasage with a guess of 699 came the closest to guessing the actual number of pieces of popcorn in our bag. Sivasage wins a Santa Barbara gift pack that includes a genuine first-edition edhat.com hat, a jar of Marshmallow Cocoa Body Butter (for your skin) from Jaqua, 2 coupons for Cold Stone ice cream, and a See’s Candy gift certificate.

Sivasage is also in the running for our week’s end grand prize drawing which includes lunch for 2 at Café Buenos Aires to be announced Monday.

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