Free Hollywood Scream Play by Josie Brown Page B

heading toward the latest Quentin Tarantino movie. I grab Jeff by the collar. “No, no, no, no! You and your friends are staying with us.”
    Jeff looks horrified. “Mom, we’re not seeing some baby movie!”
    Morton shakes his head adamantly. “What if someone sees us go in there?”
    I can’t tell him this, but that’s the whole point—that no one finds us.
    “To hell with that,” Cheever chimes in. “We’ll be the laughingstock of the whole middle school!”
    “Pixar films are witty, and appropriate for any age,” I argue. “The animation is always cutting edge.”
    My argument is falling on deaf ears. From Mary’s wince, I can tell she agrees with the Two Stooges.
    I’m adamant about one thing. “We’re sticking together. There are seventeen films here, so let’s take a vote.”
    The children scan the marquees that run down the long corridor in front of us.
    “I vote for  She’s So Hot ,” Cheever says.
    Trisha stares at the movie’s poster, which features a big-breasted blonde being ogled by three men. Tiny horns on her head and the smoke billowing around her barely-there red negligee are supposed to give viewers the impression that the actress is a she-devil. “Mommy, why are her clothes too small?” she asks.
    Jeff can’t peel his eyes away from the poster, either. “Heck yeah, I second that motion.”
    “I third it,” Morton chimes in.
    Cheever shoves him. “You can’t ‘third’ something, you moron.”
    I stand in front of the poster, but no amount of arm-waving will break the spell it has on my son. “Nope! Not an option. Any movie we choose together must be PG-rated, and no higher.”
    Jack sprints over to us. “This is the one we’re seeing? Great! Super! Let’s get in there before we miss all those great coming attractions.”
    The boys hi-five each other as they scurry in.
    I’m just about to tell Jack that I think he’s lost his mind when he whispers into my ear, “They’re here!”
    He then puts his arm around my waist, and practically shoves me into the theater with him.
    As Trisha and Mary follow us into the dark theater, I hear Trisha whisper, “The devil woman looks scary.”
    “What’s even more frightening is the way these kinds of movies objectify women,” Mary hisses back. “They’re either virgins, or she-devils.”
    “What’s a virgin?” Trisha asks.
    I’m relieved the music score blares so loudly that it’s futile for Mary to answer her. I look back and catch Mary’s eye. She knows what I’m thinking: that this is a question I’d prefer to field myself.
    Certainly not this year.
    Hopefully, I can stay out of jail long enough to be there when the time is right.

    Smack dab in the middle of the theater, Trisha sits in Mary’s lap. She clasps both hands over her eyes when she thinks the action on the screen is too silly to watch—in other words, every other scene.
    Smart girl. Wish I could do the same, but I’ve got my eye on the men in black, walking up and down the aisle as they search for America’s Most Wanted couple.
    Willow Higginbotham is a staple in numerous movies with a similar tone: light, frothy comedies filled with tongue-in-cheek double-entendres and plenty of opportunities to show off her scantily-clothed, well-toned physique. And yet, in the entertainment magazines that fill the racks next to the grocery store check-out land, the actress openly bemoans the fact that she’s being typecast as a sex symbol. “I am  sooooo  ready for meatier roles—you know, something that will show my full range.”
    From what I can see on these magazine covers, her range goes from A to B—that is to say, ass to breasts.
    Apparently, Jeff and his buddies feel the same way. The boys sit front and center, their eyes glued to the screen in order to catch every slapstick antic—and there are plenty of those. The plot is just empty-headed mush about a group of men who are trying to warn their buddy that he’s falling for a woman who is, quite