Posted by My dad and I used to go to the movies all the time—some of my favorite formative memories are going with him to see Beauty and the Beast, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan , then spending the entire car ride home talking about the music, the best lines, the DINOSAURS—I was an obsessive child who was bad at sports and good at memorizing things, and my dad was more than happy to encourage that. Even in high school, even in college, we would drop everything to go to the movies together.
And then I got older, and he got older, and the movies got more homogenous and less interesting. Then the pandemic started, and my dad stopped going places altogether. He didn’t even want to go to the classic theater showing of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein last Halloween, and we’ve done that almost every year. Because Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, if you haven’t seen it, requires an audience to fully enjoy. And I should know—between the ages of four and nine, my dad and I watched that movie together at least two times a week, usually three. It’s great. Made in 1948, still holds up.
But my dad doesn’t want to be around people anymore, and his hearing is . . . not great. So no more movies. No more nudging each other at the best jokes, the best songs, the jaw-dropping moments where the dinosaur emerges or the hero saves the day or someone does or says or sings something that makes my dad say, “Well, that’s an Oscar.”
Or so I thought.
Who would have thought that the father of the atomic bomb and a doll that my mom hates would save the movies?
Stella and I were so on board for Barbenheimer that we made a plan a month in advance. We had matching Barbenheimer T-shirts, we had popcorn, we even showed up to our 7 pm Thursday showing of Oppenheimer 45 minutes early . . . only to hear Mission: Impossible music?
“OH MY GOD, DID WE FUCK THIS UP?” cried Stella, through a mouthful of popcorn. Thankfully, it was just the end credits to the last IMAX showing of Mission: Impossible before Barbenheimer took over.
Fortunately, only a few people turned to look at us. Soon, we had the theater to ourselves . . . until people in fedoras started rolling in. And bright pink cowboy outfits. This is when I started to get really excited. Because I haven’t been to a movie that felt like an “event” since I saw The Dark Knight with the same person, who always says potentially awkward things at the loudest possible volume, even at the movie theater.
A college-age couple in fedoras sat next to us wearing trench coats over Hawaiian shirts. “You guys saw Barbie first? That was brave,” said Stella. “We heard you have to do Barbie as the chaser!”
The college-age couple in fedoras seemed very confident in their decisions as they shrugged, “We wanted to do Oppenheimer as the chaser.”
I heard them whisper to each other around the time of the Trinity Test, “We should not have done Oppenheimer as the chaser.”
I wanted to talk to my dad the entire 3 hours. My dad remembers when World War II ended—he was four years old and wandering around a deserted Jersey Shore boardwalk with his sister and suddenly the world broke open and bells rang and the boardwalk swelled with people cheering and crying and hugging and my dad and my aunt had no idea what was happening and had to find their way home by following a neon Mr. Peanut sign.
I knew I had to get him to the theater to see it. It took a lot of convincing, but I pulled it off. My mom and A joined us. My dad was grouchy and irritable at first. He never used to be like that. Going to the movies has always calmed us down. He scowled through the Dune trailer and during the Nicole Kidman AMC ad, loudly asked, “Is she someone famous?” I had to explain—quickly—how fillers work and then it was up to my dad to figure out two timelines, 79 characters and a brief history of quantum mechanics.
I was worried he wouldn’t understand any of the dialogue, because Christopher Nolan, but to my surprise, he got everything. I was afraid he’d fall asleep because he’s almost 83, but he was riveted.
About ten minutes in, he said—again, loudly—”This guy is really good.”
And then, a little later, “Is that Matt Damon?”
During the Trinity Test, he nudged me. Then covered his ears.
And when Emily Blunt glared at Benny Safdie like she was trying to burn his very soul out of his body, he nudged me AGAIN and said, “Give her the Oscar!”
Oppenheimer leaves you with a hefty sense of existential dread, but I floated out of the theater ten times happier than I was going in. Mutually assured destruction? More like a mutually assured good time!
On the way home, I asked my dad what he thought. “You know, I’ve seen a lot of countdowns in movies,” he said. “That one was the tensest I’ve EVER seen. Genius in the way it was constructed . . . one of the best movies ever made. That stare is one of the greatest moments ever on film.”
“I would love it if her Oscar clip was just that stare,” I said.
My dad was quiet for a moment and then said, “You know, my whole life I’ve remembered being on the boardwalk when the war ended. The next day, everything was “atomic”—even ice cream was “atomic ice cream!” It was marketed to us as this wonderful thing . . . I thought I knew the whole story of the bombs and Oppenheimer and Los Alamos. But I had no idea. . . .”
The next day, he texted this:
My dad loved Oppenheimer so much, and going to the theater to see it so much, he decided he wanted to see Barbie. As the chaser, of course.
And both he AND my Barbie-hating mom LOVED it: my dad actually CACKLED when the little girl called Barbie a fascist and when President Barbie drops the word “motherfucker.”
After the movie, he said, “You know, my movie buff self had kind of waned . . . but Barbie, of all things, made me feel like the people who saw Snow White when it opened in 1937 and had no idea that they could be moved to tears by a cartoon. And opening is flat ass brilliant. I’m a connoisseur of movie openings, you know. Greta deserves every award there is!”
I might get him a Barbenheimer shirt of his own.
And on Halloween? We’re going to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
So thanks, Robert.
Elizabeth Barron 