Depending on which of us you ask, Mike and I either started dating on New Year’s Eve 2007 or New Year’s Day 2008. But that is a story for another day.
The first movie we ever saw together was on New Year’s Day, and it was No Country for Old Men. Because I said to my future husband, “I like Coen Brothers movies.” And he said, “I do, too!” And that is how we wound up watching a movie about a guy who murders people with a bolt pistol.
A week or so later I invited him over to my place for the first dinner I would prepare for him. I made some forgettable dessert, a delicious rack of lamb, and we drank wine. I was intensely nervous, trying to make the best meal possible, and it would have been great and romantic and flawless…except I served Jerusalem artichokes, completely unaware of their alternate name: the fartichoke. As our intestines made it clear that I’d made a huge mistake, we sat on the couch and tried to snuggle but mostly failed because we were farting and laughing too hard about how much we were farting.
And that is how I ended up watching Blade Runner amidst a methane cloud that had the potential to blow up my home if either of us had bothered to light a match.
The next time we went to a movie, it was to see what I thought was going to be a noir comedy. The problem is I didn’t realize just how noir the comedy was going to be, though the fact that I could only find it playing at an artsy St. Louis theater should have been my first clue. In Bruges was quirky and dark and violent, and to my total surprise Mike loved it. It was the sort of movie he probably wouldn’t have seen without me, and the sort of movie I probably wouldn’t have gone and seen without him along for the ride.
Five years later, I have still never again served him sunchokes, and we have seen Coen Brothers movies since, but last night we watched In Bruges together again for the first time, and I’m still somewhat surprised that this is his kind of movie. I mean, it’s definitely my kind of movie…but a Mike movie?
Then again, he did refer to Ralph Fiennes’s character as “Voldemort”.
And he did marry me.
So I guess it is his kind of movie, after all.