I Went to a Press Screening of The Social Network

On September 21 I walked into the Regal Meridian 16 movie theaters on the eastern edge of downtown Seattle, Washington. I was with my girlfriend. I was there for the Seattle press screening of ‘the Facebook movie’ The Social Network.

I had been told by the publicist of The Social Network over email to arrive at 6:15 p.m. The screening was at 7 p.m. It was 6:15 p.m. I was in the lobby of the theater where there were few people. I walked to the ticket counter.

“I’m here for the press screening of a movie,” I said to the woman behind the ticket counter.

“It’s on the third floor, all the way up.”

My girlfriend and I walked up stairs and went into separate bathrooms. We came out of the bathrooms and walked up more stairs. On the third floor my eyes got bigger when I saw that there was a giant line of people. It included what I felt was a larger amount of minorities than were statistically represented in downtown Seattle and its closely surrounding areas. We moved into the back of the line.

“Do we need to stand in this line?” my girlfriend said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“How could there be so many journalists in Seattle?” I said.

I went to the ticket person.

“I’m here for the press screening,” I said.

“Are you press?” he said.

I looked at him.

“Are you press?” he said.

“Yeah, I am,” I said.

“Okay, just wait right here then, she’s not even here yet. She said she’ll be here in five minutes.”

“Oh. So I don’t have to wait in that line?”

“No, just wait here.”

I turned around and walked a little toward my girlfriend who was maybe 30 feet away and looking at me. I gestured for her to come to me. We walked to where the ticket person told me to wait. There were five or six others standing there. Two seemed to be around the age of 65 and were women. Another person looked like and assumed the body language of a ‘young journalist.’

After maybe 10 minutes, a woman that had long red hair carrying a clipboard walked toward the ticket person. The clothes she wore and her body language made it clear to me that she represented The Social Network. She said something to the ticket person and handed him the clipboard which he handed to the two older women. They wrote on it. They passed it to the ‘young journalist’ that was in front of me. He wrote on it and passed it to me.

On the clipboard was a paper that asked for your name and the organization that you represented. At the top of the paper was a paragraph that said that by writing our names on this paper we agreed not to publish anything ‘review-like’ until the day The Social Network was officially released. I wrote my name and “Fanzine.” I saw that the ‘young journalist’ had written “The Examiner” and that the two old women had written something that I hadn’t heard of but from seeing the name thought “homemaking website” or some variation thereof. Someone else had written “MSN Money.”

I handed the clipboard to someone else. At this time a large woman appeared at my side with a flock of adolescents behind her.

“I’m with IMDb” she said loudly.

I walked toward the ticket person. My girlfriend stayed behind me because she was confused about signing the clipboard.

“Come on, it’s okay, I have plus one,” I said. My girlfriend stepped forward and we passed the ticket person.