{"id":576,"date":"2006-10-29T21:40:02","date_gmt":"2006-10-30T02:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/wordpress\/?p=576"},"modified":"2006-10-29T21:47:35","modified_gmt":"2006-10-30T02:47:35","slug":"public-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/2006\/10\/29\/public-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"Public opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

As my faithful readers already know, last night Leah and I went to a 9 p.m. showing of Marty Scorcese<\/a>‘s The Departed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I didn’t know before the end of the movie how long it was going to be (USA:152 min \/ UK:151 min). But I knew, knowing Scorcese, that at some point along the way there was going to be, in no particular order: gunplay, blood, and lots and lots of foul language. There was a lifetime’s worth of each in the first 15 minutes of the film.<\/p>\n

But I digress, slightly. Leah and I had just come back from raiding the snack counter when a mother and father walked up the aisle toting their two kids, one of whom was about Ava’s age, and the other just older. Both younger than five, for sure.<\/p>\n

I’m generally a live-and-let-live kinda guy. My dad took me to see The Jerk<\/a> when I was far too young to have gone by myself. And I’d be lying if I said that film didn’t change the way I look at the world when I left the theater (for the worse, as anyone who’s ever been subjected to my sense of humor will tell you). But holy moly, when I saw those two little kids coming up the aisle, I immediately thought, “no.” “Can’t be.” Does “Martin Scorcese” sound anything<\/em> like “Walt Disney?” HelLO<\/strong>?!<\/em> Mean Streets<\/a>? Gangs of New York<\/a>? Taxi Driver<\/a>? Goodfellas<\/a>? Raging Bull<\/em><\/a>?! I mean, please<\/em>!<\/p>\n

To be (a little) fair, in a 12-theater cineplex, there was only a single PG-rated film, and its last showing was 4:45. Everything else was PG-13 and R. Not many good options.<\/p>\n

But after the first time you see Jack Nicholson kill a man and his girlfriend by blowing their brains all over the Boston shore, wouldn’t you look at your wife (or husband?) and say, “Damn, baby, this ain’t no Lilo & Stitch<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Leah was positively squirming in her seat to go back and say something to them, but I didn’t think it was our place; those parents are free to take their kids wherever they like. I just wonder what that kind of violence — big and loud and visceral on the widescreen like that — does to a child that age. I only hope I don’t have to find out firsthand someday.<\/p>\n

PS — The movie is quite good. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As my faithful readers already know, last night Leah and I went to a 9 p.m. showing of Marty Scorcese‘s The Departed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-movies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9oLlO-9i","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}