Sunday, March 2, 2014

This Is What Happens When You Watch All Of The Oscar Best Picture Films In One Sitting

I spent 21 hours straight in a movie theater watching all nine nominated films and lived to tell the tale. The popcorn butter, it courses through my veins.

I am not usually a masochist. I say this in order to preface the following story, in which I tackle the Best Picture Showcase, a marathon of every Academy Award-nominated Best Picture film in one sitting. It's a nearly-24-hour slog through this most prestigious of Oscar categories, held in an AMC movie theater in Orange, California, about an hour south of Los Angeles, and it costs $60. I arrived a little before 10 a.m. on March 1.

At 9:50 a.m. I was already crying at a commercial for ALS. There were still 21 hours and 49 minutes until the AMC Best Picture Showcase was over.

Ariane Lange / BuzzFeed

The staff gave everyone in the surprisingly crowded theater a badge shaped like a little bow tie. Three women who had been to the showcase before would tell me that it isn't usually this full. I was dressed in layers — I noticed that at least five people had brought blankets. For some reason I tried not to know what order the movies were shown in, and so I was surprised that the first was Philomena.