Scenes from a midnight premiere: Catching Fire Edition.

            As I mentioned in my last post about my conversation partner meeting, I attended the midnight premiere of “Catching Fire” last night. What a phenomenal movie. A fan of the Hunger Games trilogy for a while, I have been anxiously awaiting the film adaptations.

            However, if there’s one thing I love more than the Hunger Games, it’s people. People are so interesting. People are so funny. As strange as it sounds, I just love to observe people, and you can’t observe people without laughing at them. They’re weird, they’re quirky, and they each have strange things that are unique to them. What better place to observe people than at a midnight premiere of a movie with a cult following?

            The thing about midnight premieres is that you can’t just show up at midnight and expect to get a good seat. You have to show up early, sit in line, and hope that you get into the theatre before the other die hard fans so that you and all of your friends can sit together. My group and I got there at about 9:30 and it was clear to us that the people in front of us in line had been there for quite some time.

            So I sit down with my group and just start to look around. Who else shares my affinity for apocalyptic culture, Team Gale, and fashionable clothes from the Capitol? Judging by the amount of people there, many people.

            We have the couple at the front of the line, holding hands since they got to the theatre (probably around 7:00). It looks as if they’ve eaten a couple of meals since they arrived, taking turns holding down the pole position. The next group is a group of twenty something girls passing around an iPad, sharing The Game of Life (hey, you have to pass the time somehow!)

            Next is my group, which includes myself, two of my roommates, and our sorority littles. I would say we’re fairly normal, by my standards. Other people in line include a very large group of college freshmen, who have all taken off their shoes and camped out, playing loud games with their entire group. Madi even showed up with her dance team and they were all dressed up as different characters from the movie. Madi made a stunning President Snow, of course.

            As I looked around, I laughed. I didn’t laugh out of spite or out of hatred, but just because humans are so fascinating. I can’t sit here and say that I don’t have weird habits. I’m sure people laugh at me when I can’t sit still, my foot constantly tapping a rhythmic patter, or when I compulsively check my Twitter feed every two minutes, even though I know nothing has changed. I laugh because I wonder: how can all of these different people be here, in the same place, brought together by a love of a movie? Even now, as I type this, I’m laughing because I think about how cool the concept is.

            So next time you’re in a public place, whether it’s the airport on your way home for the holidays or the lobby of Reed before class, look around and see how funny people can be. And then think about it this way: all of these people are doing the same thing as you. They are flying home to cuddle with their puppies and eat turkey for Thanksgiving and they are studying for finals and cramming eight page papers into one night. Just like you. And then, I encourage you to laugh, because it really is cool. We are so vastly different, but we are also all the same.