Put the gun down, go watch a movie
You’ve heard everyone say it, from your mom’s priest to those CNN insta-experts that pop up after a big tragedy: Watching violent movies makes people go do violent things! Of course, we all know that’s crap, but now comes confirmation. According to a study by a bunch of economists, violent films—contrary to popular belief—actually keep people from being violent. Someone who is just itching to go postal but decides to see “Saw III” first, will change his mind, go home and make himself some waffles instead of ramming his truck into a packed McDonald’s. Makes sense to me—I totally believe in movies as a powerful deterrent of social ills. In fact, here are my movie suggestions for those times when you need a little something to hold you back from unleashing hell:
Problem: After flirting shamelessly with you for a month, the hot new guy at work just asked you to go away for the weekend. The glitch: you just found out he’s married. You need to cool down fast.
Movie solution: Pop “El Cantante” into your DVD and watch your skin crawl as a wax-doll faced Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, who looks like a beaten-up lizard JLo could crush, slip into a tub together. Never have the words “doing the nasty” been more appropriate. Guaranteed to put you off sex for a month.
Problem: In your constant search for reassurance from your boyfriend, you keep asking him if he loves you, if you look fat in a dress, etc.
Movie solution: Fast foward through chick-flick “Lovely and Amazing” till you see actress Emily Mortimer naked. That will be your cue that the most painful-to-watch scene in Hollywood history is about to begin. Elizabeth (Mortimer), an insecure actress who just slept with a big, self-obsessed star (Dermot Mulrooney), stands naked in front of him, and asks him for an honest appraisal of her body. He gives her the brutally honest version, savaging everything from her Brazilian-waxed challenged nether regions to her flabby arms. Lesson here, girls? Never, ever, ever ask a man what he’s really thinking. He might just tell you.
Problem: You’re eating like it’s still Christmas.
Movie solution: The David Fincher version of the Hollywood Diet: “Se7en.” In Fincher’s classic thriller about a serial killer who kills people who commit the bible’s seven deadly sins, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman discover the body of a morbidly obese man who was force-fed until he started bleeding internally. If the sight of this blubbery dude facedown in his spaghetti doesn’t gross you out all the way to the treadmill, I don’t know what miracle diet will. By the way, need more incentive to walk the straight and narrow? Keep watching!
