I saved Latin. What did you ever do?
Last night Dan and I, along with some friends attended the opening night of the Bill Murray festival at BAM. Four movies were shown and followed by a Q&A with the much loved actor. I nearly backed out as I was feeling rather uneasy, something compounded by the lousy weather. Well I'm glad I wound up staying. Jim and I saw Lost in Translation (introduced by Murray and Sofia Coppola), while Dan, Apes and The Wife saw Quick Change. This was my second time seeing LIT (and Jim's third!) and I never really loved it in the first place. The second time around, and maybe I was purposefully looking for it, I thought it was pretty racist. Japanese culture is mocked and used for laughs pretty unfairly. I was also pissed off at several audience members who would laugh out loud when a Japanese character spoke in Japanese. Are foreign languages really that funny? Anyway, lest I come off as a jerk, the movie was just as pretty as it was the first time around. I love the scene where Scarlett Johansen's character wanders through the arcade, as well as the shot of her and Bill Murray running through the pachinko parlor.

Anyway, the point of the evening was the Q&A with Bill Murray and boy was the man in fine form. I won't bore you with trying to recap the whole thing. Basically, you had to be there, you know? But i will tell you the story of my Q&A nemesis. He was seating right next to me and was the loudest breather I've ever encountered. It was like he was snoring, only he was awake and the sound was this high-pitched shrill that burned a hole in my right ear, which still burns today. It was so loud even Dan, two seats away could hear it. I was very tempted to turn to my right and politely asked him to breathe through his mouth, but really, how can you do that? What made it worse was that his body was shifted to the left so get a better angle at the stage so he was practically breathing in my ear. As an allergy sufferer, I can understand his pain, but I really wonder if this guy knows how irritating he must be to the person next to him at the movies or plays.

Oh I will repeat one thing Bill said last night. He called Julia Stiles irritating. He said he joking (yeah, right!). Ok, one more thing. Jim, that cheeky bastard, noticed one of the buttons on Bill's shirt had become unbuttoned, giving us a clear shot of his belly button. This made me very uneasy and I was wishing and hoping that someone would gesture to him the universal sign for "button your button" very soon, before I was forced to scream it out. Luckily, he noticed only after a few minutes and buttoned himself. Whew. Things like that keep me up at night.