The other day here, I was talking about sitting through a great many movies in one sitting and I said, "Today, I don't think I could make it through a double feature of anything." Here to challenge me on that is Ben Sternbach…
I'm going to challenge you on that. I've been reading your blog for a long time and I've seen how you race to see It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World every time any theater in L.A. shows it. That movie is 192 minutes. I've been to plenty of double features that ran that long or less. Do you still think you couldn't sit through a double feature of that length?
Good question, Ben. My reply starts by noting that 192 minutes was the length It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was when it was first released in 1963. The prints they run these days are more like 161.
But that's a minor point because if a 192-minute print did surface, I could easily sit through it and then ask if there's a second screening of it. And the thing is that I love that movie so much that the normal rules do not apply. You're not going to find a double feature of two movies that I enjoy as much as I enjoy that movie, nor could they have been such an important part of the first 67 years of my childhood — i.e., my entire life.
Also, two complete stories with beginnings, middles and ends are more work for the brain than one movie of the same length with one beginning, one middle and one end.
And finally, if I go to see two current movies on the same bill today, that's me at age 67, watching the picture but unable to hush the part of my brain that knows the seventeen different things I have to do when I get home. So when a film lags and loses my undivided attention even for a minute, my attention divides. My "must do" tasks diminish my patience more than it should. When I go see Mad World, that part of my brain goes on Silent and I'm just an eleven-year-old kid with nothing more pressing to do at home than sort out my comic books.
That's my reply to your challenge, Ben. But thanks. It was a good, logical challenge.