Crossing the Line

Yesterday my boyfriend and I walked out in the middle of a movie - possibly the first time I've ever done that.

It was Ben Stiller's latest, "Tropic Thunder" - playing at the second run neighborhood theater.

I think Ben Stiller is superbly talented. His parents, Jerry Stiller and Ann Meara were favorites of mine in the 60s. They did stand up. Lots of comedy bits about she being Irish Catholic and he being Jewish. And later they went on to do separate work. Jerry's being, most notably, Seinfield and King of Queens.

When Ben came along his work was different. Edgier from the get go. While many of my friends thought "There's Something About Mary" was in bad taste and crossed a line, I thought it was very, very funny. And, as the movie ended, it became clear that every character was good. I liked that.

I did not like "Meet the Parents." Spending two hours seeing somebody being humiliated isn't my idea of fun. Still I didn't think it crossed a line.

In considering the movie "Tropic Thunder" we knew it was a comedy and that the plot was about a group of self-absorbed actors who set out to make an expensive war film in Viet Nam - where they end up encountering real bad guys. Clever.

We also knew that there were fake trailers prior to the movie. Clever. We didn't know they would be so disturbing. They were offensive to me but still didn't cross a line.

The movie started with lots of fake bloodletting but it's a movie within a movie. I got it.

What crossed the line for both of us was when the director, a character that the audience had gotten to know a bit, was blown up. Ben Stiller held his head up on the end of his rifle and drank blood that was oozing from his severed neck.

Ben and the other spoiled, clueless actors were not supposed to know that this was their real friend and director - but we, the audience, knew. And several of the mostly male audience sitting around us were laughing.

This is where, to me, a line was crossed - big time!

Thank goodness it was Tuesday so we'd paid only 75 cents to get in.


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