Johnny Showtime: How to Save Yourselves Hundreds of Hours of Your Lives That You Will Never Otherwise Get Back!

by JB

This column was originally titled “Movies for Which I am Thankful,” but then it changed.

Like many of our loyal listeners and readers here at F This Movie, there are certain movies that I cannot ignore. When channel surfing basic cable, I am powerless to ignore the siren song of certain favorites, but therein lies the rub. For some reason, there are very few commercial-free channels on my over-priced Spectrum cable TV package. (Actually, I know the reason; I do not subscribe to them. I do not pay for them.) So, when I come upon these favorites, I am a slave to preference and sloth. I like when people I cannot see program my choices. These basic cable movies are insanely packed with commercials. In some extreme cases, a 90- minute winner takes up a 180-minute time slot. That’s an hour and a half of commercials. Not only am I powerless to resist watching these movies, I am far too lazy to get up, go to my office, and grab the Blu-ray disc of these movies that I already own.

I am very lazy, especially at night.

Enter Movies Anywhere. Or Fandango at Home. Or Apple TV. Or all three. (Better get all three.) I have many movies saved digitally on these services. I do not know how it happened. I do not know how it works. Perhaps it’s witchcraft. Most of these movies came as a “Free Digital Copy” when I purchased the physical disc. I don’t know how anything works anymore. I do know that some movies on one streaming service don’t automatically “float over” to the other streaming services. Having Shattered Glass on Fandango at Home does not guarantee Shattered Glass on Movies Anywhere.

Curious.

My new plan of attack is to be seduced willy-nilly by one of these classic favorites, begin watching them on the cable machine, but then JUST TO SPITE THEM, I switch to Movies Anywhere on the TV machine, WHILE STILL SITTING COMFORTABLY IN MY EASY CHAIR, and ENJOY THE %$#@^&! THING WITH NO COMMERCIALS.

I win. When my movie is over, I switch back to the basic cable version and laugh at how much is left to go. I note the “time saved” in a special notebook I keep next to my easy chair for just this purpose. I am saving sweet, sweet hours of my life -- hours I will later cash in when I am close to death. Sometimes I am amazed by how much of said movie remains on basic cable. I jeer at the basic cable channel and curse them under my breath.

TANGENT: This whole set-up reminds me of a recent phenomenon involving conventional gas stations. Since purchasing a new vehicle recently, I reflexively check my gas gauge whenever I pass a gas station; driving internal combustion engine cars for more than forty years made this practice automatic. I forget that my new vehicle is all electric. Then I have a good laugh at the petroleum industry’s expense. No, I am no longer “part of the problem.” This recent change reminds me of a Robert Benchley short story involving cold baths. Benchley takes them, believing they are good for his health. When his doctor tells him he should stop taking cold baths immediately, he continues for a time, filling his bathtub with cold water, but then, mocking, he casts rose petals into the water and lets it go down the drain, jeering at it all the way. I feel this way about basic cable providers when I break their monopoly on my eyeballs.

The movies that most often scream for my undivided attention are 12 Angry Men, A Few Good Men, My Cousin Vinny, and Shattered Glass. I cannot NOT watch these movies when they turn up, and trust me, A Few Good Men and My Cousin Vinny show up a lot. I am convinced there are secret “A Few Good Men channels” and “My Cousin Vinny channels” that go by other fake names on your onscreen cable guide.

QUESTION: Is it significant that three of these four movies are courtroom narratives? Discuss.

TANGENT: Last New Year’s Eve, we invited some neighbors over for a movie night (We are old.) and the movie du jour was My Cousin Vinny. This was a great choice because it went over like gangbusters with our condo crowd, but my wife and witnessed a strange phenomenon that I will now name “Basic Cable Ubiquity Phenomenon.” Most people originally saw My Cousin Vinny in a theater, but that was a long time ago. Since then, they have caught bits and pieces of it on basic cable while channel surfing. They haven’t seen the whole thing in a dog’s age. Throughout the first half of the movie, our New Year’s Eve crowd kept greeting scenes with “What is this?” and “I don’t remember this.” Well, of course you don’t. You have spent the last 32 years watching only the second half.

“Basic Cable Ubiquity Phenomenon.” Remember the name.

Adding these four films to my Movies Anywhere Fandango at Home Apple TV machine cost the princely sum of forty bucks. (My Cousin Vinny and Shattered Glass were only five bucks apiece!) This is a small price to pay for the literal hundreds of hours this returns to the “me pile.” To paraphrase Cecillia Stark’s Aunt Lotte in Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, “I am the weiner.”