Film Fridays: You haven't seen the Dark Knight?

During a conversation with a co-worker, I came to a stunning revelation:  he had never seen The Dark Knight. 

"You've never seen it!?" I asked, completely shocked.  It was as if he had said he had never had ice cream, or was never let outside of his mother's basement until the day he turned eighteen.

"Never got around to it, I guess," he shrugged.

This might not seem weird to you folks out there on the internets, but I should explain.  He's seen every other batman movie.  He was in the line for Iron Man 2's debut.  He owns over three thousand comics.  In short, this is a guy who should be able to quote the movie from start to end.  He's about two degrees of nerddom away from wearing a batman T-shirt to work, and just yesterday he told me in all seriousness that he's debating using the universal greeting from the transformers movie when meeting new people, just to see their reactions.

So, yeah, he should have seen The Dark Knight.  As should everyone, because it's an amazing film.

Instead, he was perplexed when I asked him "why so serious?" in my creepiest Heath Ledger voice, and he had no idea what the Hell I was talking about when I mentioned making "this pencil disappear".

Trust me, my pop cultural references were comedy gold.   

Something inside of me snapped, which is to be expected when you're a movie and music geek of epic proportions.  People not sharing the same cultural experiences as myself must be educated - this is what we in the western world call "progress", and what every other culture in the world calls "why we can't speak our own language anymore". 

On my break - instead of, you know, eating - I ran home, grabbed my DVD of  The Dark Knight, and dropped it on his desk, beaming like a proud father. 

"Trust me, you're going to love this."

And that was when I realized that I approach movies much like jehovah's witnesses approach religion - I have to spread them around, and convert the masses.  I think I'm only about two weeks away from going door to door, and saying "greetings, do you have Charlie Kaufman in your life?" to random strangers.

I'm about two weeks away from declaring a holy war on the Wayan brothers.  It'll be a Jihad for the ages.

I was thinking about this, feeling a little guilty for having dropped my DVD on my co-worker's desk, when I made a new revelation:  I'm not the only person who thinks this way.  Apparently, my co-workers agree with me.    Because they were all equally surprised when they found out he hadn't seen the movie.

And they were just as surprised that he hadn't seen Fight Club, either.  Or Pulp Fiction.  Or Avatar. 

By the end of the day, he had about five films stacked on his desk, because some of the freaks I work with actually drove home on their lunch breaks to give him these films for the weekend.

I work with some strange people.