Jorge Ameer | Popcorn & Coke / 2004

choosing popcorn over coke

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jorge Ameer (screenwriter and director) Popcorn & Coke / 2004 [8 minutes]

 

A moviegoer (Matt Leitch) show up to a movie house to watch a film. Matt (as we’ll call him, in the credits his name is the Unsuspecting Moviegoer) picks up a coke and a small popcorn at the concession stand and enters the theater.

 

    The entire theater is basically empty. There is a girl (Torie Tyson) in one row, and another cute guy (Gabriel Romero, described as Popcorn Guy in the credits) one row down. About four seats to Gabriel’s left sits the so-called Coke Girl (Bene Simskin). Matt choses to sit in a seat between them, one seat away from both.

      Almost immediately Gabriel has a fantasy of Matt signaling him over. Gabriel moves over, standing in from of the “unsuspecting” Matt, who suddenly pulls the angel down for a deep kiss.  

    In reality, however, the Coke girl gets up for another coke, Matt soon following her out. What’s a gay already steamed up over Matt to do but also get up and return to the concession stand, while Torie looks on in total disbelief at what’s going on off the screen, surely more interesting than one might be on it.

     Back in the lobby, Coke girl flirts furiously with Matt, while Gabriel discovers he’s out of money and can’t pay the salesperson (Jorge Ameer)

for his popcorn. Seeing his dilemma, Matt steps up to buy Gabe a container of what he wants and suddenly sees, as if for the first time, the hunk who stands in front of him. It’s love at first sight, while Coke girl goes sulking back to her seat. Although he may like coke and popcorn both, Matt clearly has a hankering for the hotter stuff this time around.

     British filmmaker Jorge Ameer has more recently collected this film with several others in a DVD anthology titled Straight Men and the Men Who Love Them, although it doesn’t appear there are too many real straight boys in the selected short films.

 

Los Angeles, May 7, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).