The Big Picture?

Here's a moviegoing story that I've been thinking about recently:

A couple of years ago, I went with some friends to see Blow Out at the Museum of the Moving Image here in Astoria. I think the Museum was showing it as part of a big De Palma retrospective.

We took out seats and I recognized the guy sitting in front of us as Museum of the Moving Image regular. I have to say, appearance-wise and behavior-wise, he completely fit the stereotype of the "Comics Geek" - a little overweight, near-sighted, awkward in conversations, etc. I had chatted with him a couple of times, although our conversations usually went along the lines of him complaining about the Museum's programming choices - like, why they refused to do a Peter Hyams retrospective - and me nodding in agreement, not wanting to get too deeply into that kind of debate.

Anyway, I said "hi" to him and the movie started up and my friends and I watched it (we were all fans and none of us were seeing it for the first time) and, as usual, were devastated by it. So, we're sitting there, still reeling from the emotional impact of the final scene, and this guy turns to me and says: "You know, when he [John Travolta] goes into the train station, he leaves the door to his Jeep open. But when he comes back, it's closed."

I was just like, "Um, thanks for pointing that out."