A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

There is something intensely likeable about movie quizzes. If you know the answer, you feel really quite smug: Yes, I’ve seen the movie, and I know a whole lot about that film – it was even produced by someone you wouldn’t expect. You get that warm, fuzzy feeling in your stomach because you’ve scored a point, while a lot of the others didn’t, you can tell from their puzzled faces, and you are inching just a tiny bit closer to the top spot. And on the other hand, if you don’t know the answer, you go into instant detective mode: I should know the answer, now how can I deduce that from the other movie that very same director has made just before this one? Hmmm… You rack your brain about a name, and then, with your last ounce of with and memory, you may just come up with the right answer. Most of the time, anyway.

And when I say I… then I mean that I have two very savvy and smart collaborators in my team (you know who you are). We have made it to the top spot two times, three times? Or we made it to a very close second place. We might not be good at guessing how many cuts a scene has, but we prompt each other. Someone has an inkling about what the answer could be, and then someone else among us has another piece of the puzzle, and then here’s the answer. Kerching.

A couple of weeks ago, we were sitting there, it was going well, we had answers to all the questions (as it turned out later, most of them were spot-on), and I was racking my brain about the name of that Swiss actor who also was a famous football player, and the name just wouldn’t come, it was trapped in my frontal lobe and wouldn’t budge. And then L. gave me the first name, and I went through the alphabet until I found the first letter of his probable last name. I know I said this before, but: kerching.

We are pretty good at the arthouse stuff; especially M. can summon up his knowledge within a second. We get Kubrick’s masterpieces into the right chronological order. Our main weakness is probably dumb blockbuster entertainment, so we didn’t know what the tenth movie in the Fast and Furious franchise was called (it’s Fast X, we know that now). It looks like preparing for the quiz consists of two things: go to the movies a lot, particularly to the Rex in Bern, because that is where it’s at, and then wade through the nether regions of shallow entertainment with your brain in a glass and a bowl of popcorn in your lap. If this is what it takes for our next triumph, then so be it, I am willing to make that sacrifice.

And there is no other movie theater that I like as much as the Rex in Bern. A big shout-out to the staff there – I don’t come to your screenings nearly enough. That should change. How else would we be able to answer all your questions next January?