127 Minutes of Hilarity

Last weekend I went out with my friend since forever, Heather. We had decided to see 127 Hours together like a month ago, and finally both our schedules left us with simultaneous free time, so off we went.

Side note: Since the first reports of people fainting and being sick during screenings of 127 Hours, I took on the self-inflicted challenge of watching the whole movie without covering my eyes or looking away. I told Heather about this and she was all, "Me too. Let's do this thing."

So Heather and I are driving to the theater and she turns to me and says, "I'm kind of bummed, someone ruined the movie and told me he cuts his arm off!"

 This is the doll of a girl I babysit. When I found it I made a joke about how since the release of 127 Hours there have been a lot of copycats. She had no idea what I was talking about, but I thought it was hilarious.

I thought she was joking at first, but then I remembered one of the defining characteristics of my dear Heather is that when she says things that seem like jokes, she's dead serious.

"Heath," I say, "that's not a spoiler. That's kind of the basis for the whole movie being made."
"Well, they didn't say anything about cutting arms off in the commercials."
"Yeah, because everyone already knew."
"Nuh uh, I didn't know."

We get to the theater and sit down, and I'm still reeling at the fact that she thinks the arm chop is a "spoiler," and Heather says, "AND this is a true story! So there's a guy who really cut is arm off!"

I'd like to add that Heather is in no way an idiot. In fact, she's incredibly smart. She's actually the perfect person to see a movie like 127 Hours with because she knows all about outdoorsiness and survival and all that. She reads books about that stuff for fun. Basically, if you were on a plane that crashed, she'd be the John Locke.

I'm processing the fact that Heather knows practically nothing about the movie that we're about to see, and I realize that what I thought was me and my friend facing a battle of gag reflexes was actually me dragging this friend to see a movie that's suspense had already been ruined for her. I bring this up to Heather, saying we had a deal to see if we were badass enough to watch what made others vomit (Although I knew we both could. We used to watch surgery videos at our sleepovers). But as it so happens I never actually said, "I want to see if watching a guy cut his arm off is actually going to make me faint." It was more along the lines of, "I want to see if I can watch the whole movie with my eyes open."

So I guess if you didn't know what I was talking about you might just think I was skeeved out by the outdoors, which, compared to Heather, I totally am.

 Because this is the kind of shit that happens to outdoorsy people

Can you believe all of that happened before the movie even started?

The movie itself was really great. We saw it in a packed theater, and I loved feeling everyone tense up every time his foot slipped; our shared, nervous consciousness thinking, "This is it!"

I knew I'd be able to watch the arm cutting, based on my very high tolerance for grossness. Maybe it's because of my fascination with bodies and yuckiness that I feel this way, but I really can't imagine what kind of weenus would faint or vomit after watching that. Seriously. Like, Sadie is the most squeamish person I know (she can barely have her blood drawn) and I doubt she'd do more than cover her eyes and peek through her fingers.

My personal favorite part of the movie was after our hero separates himself from his arm, he looks back at his appendage and prison, and then whips out his camera and takes a picture. This got a nervous laugh from the audience, but I was all (and I said this fairly loudly), "What?! I would!"

Wouldn't you?

Actually, I usually do document my injuries, although none so severe as self-arm-amputation.

The other weird thing was at the end, when he's found by a bunch of hikers, there's a montage of them giving him water and calling in a helicopter to take him to safety, and then all the people who helped him appear to just keep on hiking. Heather and I both were like, "How the fuck are you going to run into a man who just cut off his own arm, put him in a helicopter, and then just continue your family vacation?!"

Now THAT is a story of the power of the human spirit.