The Broken Hearts' Club: My Movie Experience

The Broken Hearts' Club,
My Movie Experience

"Hey, look at this." My husband tossed the movie section of the L.A. Times at me last fall. "You might be interested."

The Broken Hearts' Club, a new gay romantic comedy, took up a full page ad. One reviewer called it "a gay The Big Chill."

I tossed the paper back and returned to my reading. I had just heard of two other productions where someone had tried to make "The Big Chill for gays." Wasn't this getting a little old? Besides, I rarely go to see romantic comedies in the theater since it hardly seems worth paying seven bucks for THX unless I'm guaranteed special effects or an awesome soundtrack.

A few days later I came across another review. The Broken Hearts' Club was considered groundbreaking for having "crossover appeal" to a straight audience. That sounded ambitious. Now I was curious to see how well they pulled off this crossover appeal.

If I went, I imagined I would be in a minority crowd of straights in the theater. But then, I had just gone with a friend to a "spoken word" poetry reading in Hollywood attended mostly by black rappers, and managed to enjoy myself in spite of not fitting in with the majority.

Then out of the blue my husband offered to watch the kids that Saturday, which meant I could catch an afternoon showing if I wanted. The Broken Hearts' Club was playing only in select theaters, but the West Hollywood location was fairly close by. That's when I decided I was going.

The theater was located in an outdoor West Hollywood mall on Sunset Boulevard at one of the busiest intersections in town. I arrived about half an hour before the show, stood in line and requested a ticket from the guy behind the window.

"Broken Hearts' Club."

"What?"

"Broken Hearts' Club," I repeated.

"One?" he repeated.

Oh, I thought he said, What?

"Uh, yeah, one." I glanced at my reflection in the window, but there was no one in line behind me. Why did he think I might be with someone?

Maybe he thought it was a little strange for a woman to be seeing a movie by herself, I came away thinking. As I killed time sitting outside a gourmet coffee shop watching people stroll by, the second thing I started to feel self-conscious about was how I was dressed. Everyone else looked so casual. By contrast, my lavender sweater and gray slacks made me look like I had just walked out of a Nordstrom department store--which, actually, I had. (I exchanged some clothes there that morning and was wearing the pants I had selected.) I don't remember exactly what everyone else had on, but I know that unlike me they weren't dressed like they were on their way to a ladies' home Bible study.

I didn't have a watch, so I ended up killing too much time. The guy who took my ticket at the door told me it was three minutes past starting time. I hurried to the theater and found they were already running the trailers. It was so dark I couldn't see a thing. Then light from a bright scene in the trailer flashed over the audience, and I caught a glimpse of how absolutely packed the place was. I had forgotten that this was opening weekend and didn't expect to encounter a crowd like this. Standing at the entrance and seeing the rows of heads, all of them male, filling the theater from the back all the way to the front, I suddenly felt very intimidated.

I wandered down one aisle and back up again, discerning no open seats or female faces in the darkness, and almost ran into a couple of guys headed the opposite direction carrying a tray of soft drinks and popcorn. I crossed over at the back of the theater and made my way down the other aisle. At last I spotted an empty seat at the end of a row. But what if that guy was saving it? He looked in his mid-forties, with a grizzled beard and a black leather vest. I leaned toward him and asked if it was taken. The trailer was so loud he couldn't hear me. I had to repeat myself.

"Is it okay if I sit here?" So nice and polite. For once in my life could I not sound like a church girl? Hey, bud, this taken?

He indicated it was free, so I settled in. Finally. Now about this movie . . . (that was the reason I came out here, wasn't it?)

At first the dialogue was too fast. The audience was already tittering and I wasn't getting the jokes. But I tried not to panic because I had experienced the same initial confusion at the black rapper poetry reading. I just needed to get comfortable and not be distracted by my inability to catch all the lingo and references.

It didn't take long. In one scene, Howie, the most insecure character in the story, complained to his friend that he was giving him away to everyone in the store by acting so gay. So one by one the friend kept summoning straight people from around the store ("Excuse me, ma'am? Could you come over here for a sec?") to see if they could tell that Howie was gay. The movie was playing off the way straights stereotyped gays and how sometimes it was true. At one point I really laughed. That helped me settle in.

Then about a third of the way through, the forty-something guy next to me got up and left, and didn't come back. I got worried. Did I offend him by laughing too hard during the Howie scene? Hey, this movie was supposed to have crossover appeal, remember? The reviewers said it was okay for me to be here . . .

There were some references in the movie that left me completely in the dust. Once they flashed a scene from what looked like an old horror movie of a psychotic woman wielding a knife. Immediately the entire theater burst out laughing while I was simply trying to figure out who in the world that actress was. Joan Crawford maybe? How is it that everyone in the theater knows about this movie? I thought all that Hollywood diva worship was supposed to be a thing of the past. Or are they laughing because it is a thing of the past?

Still, I enjoyed the themes of friendship and love, of hope and disappointment, of playing it safe and taking risks in life. Usually toward the end of a romantic comedy something moving or sad happens, and if I can't hold back the tears I'll let one or two slide out and be pretty certain that by the time the credits roll, it will have dried up so that no one can tell. Well, by the end of this movie I was gushing tears and had to search around in my purse for a tissue to help stem the flood, trying to be discrete in case the people behind me started wondering what the deal was with the weepy straight woman sitting in front of them.

When the lights came on, I got up and moved toward the exit with the crowd. If there were any straights in the theater, they would have been women like me, or straight men who came with women because they probably wouldn't come by themselves. But I didn't see any women at all. How could I be the only straight person here? Don't people read the reviews in this town? I thought I might see others if I just looked around more carefully, except I didn't want to do anything that would make me more conspicuous than I already felt.

I'm okay with this, I told myself as I shuffled slowly out the door amidst the crowd of men, trying to focus on listening to people discuss their reactions to the movie. Then I got in line near the concession stand to punch my ticket for a parking validation. But when it was my turn to use the machine, my ticket wouldn't punch. I reinserted the ticket several times with no success, and the self-consciousness I thought I had submerged began to resurface. Aware that I was holding up the line, I stepped aside and watched the next guy punch his ticket just fine. I tried again, wondering how many people were noticing this show of ineptitude. I finally got the machine to work for me, except by that time I was no longer okay with this.

As I pulled out of the parking garage the attendant at the exit booth requested my parking ticket, and that's when I realized what I had done wrong in the theater. I was supposed to punch my parking ticket at the validation machine, but I guess because I was anxious to leave and wasn't thinking straight I inserted my movie ticket instead, which was too small to trigger the punching mechanism. Duh. Well, next time I'll have to remember that.

Next time? Well, why not. I enjoyed the movie and learned a lot from it. I wouldn't mind seeing another one like it. But next time I'll try to make things easier on myself. I won't take the reviews so seriously, and just assume that if I'm going to see a gay movie in a West Hollywood theater, I need to do my part to be less conspicuous. I'll dress like a slob, avoid opening weekend, bring a watch, and get in early. That way I can claim a seat far off to the side, so that no one will be forced to sit next to me and hear me laugh inappropriately.

Back to Home