Living The Good Life

This past Monday I had quite an interesting experience. I went to a private screening of the movie "The Producers". My friend Or's dad owns a business that advertises in the Yellow Pages (actually Dapei Zahav means golden pages). To show their gratitude (and advertise a bit) the Yellow Pages people gave their best customers two tickets to come see a private screening of the movie, completely free.

The evening started at 8pm, so naturally we got there at 8:15. Thinking we were late we ran quickly into Cinema City wanting to miss as little of the movie as possible. Almost the entire cinema was closed off to the public. There were ushers directing you to the reception area, set up with tables, benches, flowers and candles. There were several buffets set up with hors d'oeuvres and pastries. I particularly liked the croissants. There was also a coffee bar with espresso and several tables with tea, coffee and juices.

We seemed to be the only people there under 30. Most people there seemed to be CEOs of companies talking business, networking and showing of their wives. We pretended to own a startup company. Nobody bought it.

At nine we were all directed to the theatre, where we could sit anywhere we wanted. A couple of important executives from my new buddies, the Yellow Pages, talked about some of their new services and showed some commercials. Their new SMS phone book is quite useful. Then we watched the movie.

There were a lot of really funny scenes. The first half an hour of the movie was the funniest. The scene where the two producers meet had me crying, as did the scene when they meet the Nazi playwright. The second half of the movie wasn't as funny and had too much singing, but overall a pretty funny movie. I enjoyed it more than I remember enjoying the original, but in all fairness I saw the original many years ago.