July 19th, 2010 
rberry 
I was so eager to see Inception this weekend but the magic ingredients of:
1) An exhausting day with an early start
2) Beer
3) A 9PM showing
4) I am old
Did not make for the best movie going experience. I was fighting off sleep during most of the film, trying to pinch myself and do things like chewing big amounts of gum to stay awake, like one of those poor teens in the Freddy Kreuger movies who shovels instant coffee into their mouth to avoid slumber. What I saw of the movie was fantastic, but I kept blinking out of the story and waking up to big “what the hell is happening?” moments. I should have just walked out and went home to sleep, but I toughed it out.
What’s funny is the dream invading theme of the film and the “science” behind it made it even weirder to watch while drowsy. They talked of the “kick” feeling you get that wakes you up from a dream, and it happened to me twice while watching it. I feel bad for the woman sitting next to me. I hope I wasn’t snoring.
I’m going to see it again, because there’s no way I can fairly review it. What sort of movies have you had similar experiences with?
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Batman Begins. I know it’s not the greatest in the world, but I enjoyed the hell out of it….the second time I went to see it. I worked from 4am to 8pm that day and ended up getting dragged to the midnight showing. I think I made it somewhere around 7 minutes into the movie before passing out from a combination of exhaustion and cheap vodka.
aw crap. I meant that I worked and passed out on opening day/night/midnight
I’ve been sleeping through films since I was a shaver: at the drive-in with my folks, and also trying to stay awake late to watch the movie-of-the-week on network TV, way back when they used to air things like that.
But two strange examples come to mind. The first one is the network premiere of Dino Di Laurentis’ Jaws knockoff ‘Orca’ (which is a fine film unto itself). On this occasion, however, I was suffering from a very bad cold – perhaps the flu – and had chugged about 1/2 a bottle of an Aunt’s unused prescription codeine cough syrup. Complicating matters (and I preface this by stating that I have been clean from drugs and alcohol for years now) was that I had also just eaten about two grams of potent red Lebanese hashish, being unable to smoke any due to the cold/flu symptoms.
Well, I made it through about the first act of Orca. If you’ve ever seen this film, it is shot to emphasize a hazy maritime Northern climate, and has an inexplicably dreamlike quality to it already. So basically, what happened is that I fell asleep for about 36 hours and had the longest dream about the movie, Orca, that you could imagine.
The second example occurred just before I began studies at UCLA film school. My off-campus housing had fallen through and I found myself in the least-expensive boarding facility in the area (which is to say, more expensive than I could afford, but I digress…) This place offered full cable acces to all the most popular channels available at the time, including IFC and The Sundance Channel. On one of those they had programmed the wonderful Last Year at Marienbad. Having heard about this film for ages, though never having had the opportunity to view it, I eagerly tuned in to enjoy. However, a tough work schedule and the stress of moving to the area had gotten the best of me as I struggled to stay awake during this rigorously hypnotic film. Let me tell you, the dreams I had drifting in and out of this film were very strange alternate versions of a very strange film.
In years since, I’ve had the opportunity to view both of these films again with a clear, alert mind, and they are both phenomenal films (in entirely different ways).
I fell asleep in the theater during True Lies. I worked the night shift at the time and I had better things to do than stay awake. Im pretty sure i slept through just about the whole movie. My girlfriend was not happy.
Fast forward a few months later, and True Lies is released on video. I really wanted to see this movie, because I heard it was really good. Another date night with the same girl found us at home ready to watch true lies. Oh man, I fell asleep again. And again and again all through the movie. Through all the insults and punches to the stomach and balls, i just kept falling asleep.
Even today as I think about …zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I have slept through a good portion of most of the Harry potter movies…and a good bit of Iron Man 2. In my defense, I wasn’t feeling well during IM2, and didn’t realize it until afterwards.
I’ve slept through plenty of shitty movies, too, thanks to my wife.
My super power in high school was the ability to fall asleep anywhere at anytime on anything (not anyone). I used this skill mostly for defense and self applied ignorance of uncomfortable things going on around me. However, I was not able to control this behavior in a dark movie theater.
My first cinema-snooze was National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. I woke up briefly during the sledding scene then it was back to bed. A few years later I snored through the Lion King. Recently I missed most of Kung Fu Panda and WALL-E.
On the home front, I have never finished a Harry Potter movie and unsuccessfully tried again last night (for the second time) to make it through Transformers 2.
The Horse Whisperer: the most expensive nap I ever took. Of course, it was just an escape into sweet bliss to escape that brown trout of a movie.
Ok, I know that the topic is “Great Movies You Slept Through”, but mine are more like “Overrated Movies You Slept Through”. A full 4 years after its release, I slept through Garden State. Of course, at the time I worked a 3am-9am job and my sleep schedule was ridiculous, but that didn’t stop me from seeing other movies around 2007 or so. To this day I still haven’t watched the whole thing, and I really don’t want to. The really odd thing is…I love the soundtrack! I was listening to it constantly from its release! Colin Hay has done a great job resurrecting himself.