Overheard at a screening of Bruno

I WENT to see Sacha Baron Cohen’s hilarious new movie Bruno on Friday night and overheard some interesting snippets of conversations while I was waiting for the movie to start.

My usual companions for watching movies, my childhood friend Camille and her family, were not there because her son Nick was sick with a throat infection. I was anxious to see Bruno because of the preview I had seen so I decided to go alone. Thankfully I didn’t cringe at all while watching it, and chuckled several times during it. I did find it strange that I was watching a gay movie with so many straight couples in the audience, but hey in this day and age, and with Cohen’s popularity from his previous hit Borat, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear straight people laughing at his very queer jokes.

In any event, I was also pleasantly surprised to notice how many interesting snippets of conversations around me I was able to hear since I was alone and not in a group.

A black American couple sat in the row behind me with Cokes and buttered popcorn. I know because they were in line next to me as I bought myself a Coke Zero.

“Do you want extra butter,” the American man had asked his female companion.

“Yeah,” she replied.

“Ask them to put more on,” he said.

I wanted to butt in and say that would be a mistake since the butter they use in that theater has an artificial taste and smell that I find quite yucky. But I kept quiet.

When we were seated in the theater I heard the woman say:

“What do you think Barak Obama would say about that?”

She was talking fast, but I understood her the first time.

“Come again, can you repeat that?” her slow companion asked.

“What do you think Barack Obama would say about ….,” she repeated, her voice tapering off so I couldn’t hear the end of her sentence.

A few minutes later I heard the guy telling her:

“Don’t you think this popcorn is greasy from the butter?

“Yeah I agree. It is greasy!” she replied.

Finally they had realized their folly of asking for extra butter on their popcorn, I thought to myself.

Two young good looking guys and a young woman made their way up the aisle looking for seats. One of the guys fake sneezed and then laughed.

“I sneezed on this old woman the other day and she was so upset that she started crying!” he told his companions.

The old woman was so upset because of the swine flu epidemic that is sweeping Brazil and the rest of the world. There have been many deaths here, of both young and old, so joking around and fake sneezing on strangers is not a very nice thing to do right now. But hey, they’re teenagers and they thought they were very clever and funny.

Hahaha, NOT, I thought to myself.

Just before the house lights went down for the previews and then the movie, I heard the voice of a young Brazilian guy saying:

“Oh don’t worry she’s going to be thin soon. I used to be a whale and then I lost a ton of weight,” the voice said.

And with that I sat back and enjoyed the antics of Sacha Baron Cohen as the gay fashion journalist Bruno, who desperately tries to become famous in America.