Typical Day
Judge Celluloid opens his eyes at 8:00AM to the theme from the Hitchcock classic, Laura, blaring from his well-intentioned iPhone alarm. Every evening, Judge sets his alarm for 8:00AM and every morning he does exactly what he's doing now: he shuts it off and goes back to sleep.
He's a critic; he can't be bothered to keep a schedule with the rest of the world. He needs to have the stamina to sit through two screenings today and have the creative juice to write about them—in addition to the five freelance articles he needs to write so he can pay his cable bill.
He can't have the cable shut down. They're showing Vertigo on AMC tonight.
Judge falls back to sleep and dreams in black-and-white jump cut style about his relationship with his ex, Marney. In the dream, he looks like Orson Welles and Marney looks like Ruth Warrick, and they're both getting older over the breakfast table à la Citizen Kane—only, in his dream, Marney morphs into Grace Kelly and threatens to bring a dog in the house, even though Judge is allergic.
Typical Marney.
Judge finally wakes up to find out that it's ten past 11:00AM. Oh no—he's got a screening in Midtown in less than an hour.
He throws on a pair of jeans and his La Dolce Vita t-shirt on his way out, grabs a bagel and a cup of strong coffee from a nearby food cart, and bolts for the "A" train. While on the train, Judge sifts through last night's reviews on his phone. There are fifteen new IMDB films released and reviewed this morning.
Most of them got scores in the fives and sixes―except for the latest Disney animated flick, which got closer to a ten with over a thousand user reviews. No surprise there. He assumes 900 of those reviews were from nine-year-olds who had access to a tablet.
Looking through reviews for that film, Judge sees the Rotten Tomatoes score is a solid 62%, which surprises him, although quite a few critics have kids and that might have something to do with it. Even his "buddy" at Entertainment Weekly seems to have liked the film, which he calls "a triumph" and gave it an "A."
Flipping to his own review, Judge called it "a mawkish rehash of the last ten nursery rhyme plots, with the emotional punch of watered-down Tang."
He expects a stream of hate mail to be filling his inbox from the fallout and he is not disappointed. Checking his e-mail, he's received 988 new messages since just last night. Not bad, he thinks, and finishes the now-cold coffee before hopping off the train at his stop.
At 12:00PM, the mid-town screening room has the usual suspects picking their noses and playing games on their phones before the film starts.
Judge thinks he's the last person to enter before the film begins, but a young girl enters after him and takes a seat at the very front of the room. She has dark hair, black librarian glasses, and wears a vintage Reservoir Dogs t-shirt over ripped jeans. He wonders if maybe she's a film student at NYU who managed to sneak in, or maybe she heard about the screening from a friend.
As he's speculating, Gary Greylady of The New York Times taps him on the shoulder and snickers.
"See that girl? That's the future, Judge," snorts Gary.
"What do you mean?" Judge asks.
"I hear she started a film blog when she was seven and Scorsese put her through film school. Rumor has it she's actually getting paid now by some sporting goods corporation to put up her blog and Sundance bought the rights to her life story. I guess she hates everything. You two should get along really well. Maybe you could, like, get married and have curmudgeon babies that look like Joe Pesci together."
Judge is about to respond when the lights darken and the movie starts. He forgets what film he's here to see and is mildly surprised when it turns out to be the new Adam Sandler film. As usual there are some funny bits here and there mixed in with a bunch of junk, and he even manages a chuckle or two.
The new girl, however, is laughing her head off. The other critics in the room look aghast. Judge guesses she must hate everything except Adam Sandler.
When the film is (thankfully) over at 2:10PM, Judge grabs his laptop and hightails it to Starbucks around the corner where he whips up one of his famous caustic reviews. That's his shtick: he's bitter even if he likes something. It wasn't the worst thing he's seen, so for him it's a "meh" review. Before he posts it, he Googles the film to see if anyone else has beaten him to the punch.
There's one review posted: it's from the new girl. She gave it four stars and said she loved it. What's even worse is that she uses Judge's tagline. He's got to think of an entirely new one—all while there's another screening in five minutes.
Judge walks into the screening at 3:10PM, a shameful ten minutes late. All of the other critics stare disdainfully at him, including the new girl. This time, the film is a war film by an over-the-hill action hero. It's painfully boring to sit through. Judge has to pinch himself to stay awake.
Two hours later at 5:15PM, Judge wearily drags himself back to the subway back home, grabbing some Chinese take-out on the way.
He spends a couple of hours writing the review (the bad films always take longer than the good ones) and then starts writing for a blog about lawn trimmers. He writes enough to pay half the electric bill. Success.
It's 11:00PM and Judge is lulled by the flicker of black-and-white images coming from his TV. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is on. "We don't need no stinking bloggers," he thinks as he falls asleep sitting up, hands poised on the keys of his laptop as he fades out.