So...You Want To Do a 24-Hour Marathon?

(Originally written on October 15th, 2009)

Hi, I'm Jason Soto. You may remember me from such helpful articles like "Virignity: Glad to Get Rid of it" and "Why The Sun Is Your Enemy". Today I'm here to talk to you about something many amatuer movie watchers have tried and failed at: the 24-hour movie marathon.

I've done my fair share of these, starting in 1996 and the latest one being 2008. I've also attended B-Fest, a 24-hour film fest, twice. I'm what you may call an expert.

There you are, sitting at home saying "I wanna do a 24 hour movie marathon. I'll rent 12 movies and watch them in a row! WEEE!!!" Sure, Susie or Johnny, that may sound like fun, but if you do that be prepared for something unexpected: DEATH!!!! Ok, no. But you'll wish you were dead because your bladder will be full and your seat will more or less implode upon itself. I will now instruct you on how to host a successful 24-hour movie marathon.

(BLOOP)

The first step is planning. You have to set a date. Then you have to plan what movies you will be watching. This is important because you need to set a limit on how many you'll watch. Me and my friend Bill made the mistake of thinking we could do at least 20 films within 24 hours. We were young and dumb. On the 24th hour, we weren't the same. Bill was taken the hospital and I now have waking nightmares. Don't let this happen to you.

(BLOOP)

Generally, most movies are around two hours, unless you get some huge ass epic movie that needs 2 VHS tapes or 3 DVD's. Avoid those at all costs.

1. Pick movies that have regular normal running times. So avoid "The Godfather", "Titanic" or "Lawrence of Arabia" and stick to stuff like "Night of the Creeps", "Friday the 13th," or even "Child's Play." Pay attention to the run times.
2. Do no more than 10 movies, although that'll be pushing it. I find you can normally squeeze in 8 or 9. Why? Because you have to do the following:

A-Go to the bathroom
B-Eat
C-Rest your eyes.

I can't stress enough the importance of those three things. You have to give yourself time to rest.

Here's what I do during a 24-hour movie marathon. After, say, the third movie I take a 15 minute break. Go outside. Rest your eyes. Give your ass a rest. You'll probably save the bathroom breaks for in between movies, which depending on your bladder you could do. But my friend Bill's bladder is the size of a chickpea and we do find ourselves pausing the movie.

When it comes to food, you should stick to the basics. Order a pizza. Get a lot cause you'll be munching on that during the entire time. I recommend this cause it's easy, can be eaten with one hand, and come it, it's fucking pizza. When it comes to drinks, caffine, caffine, caffine. You can do Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Jolt, or if you want Coffee. Whatever. You are staying up for 24 hours, you need something to keep the blood flowing. DO NOT TAKE ANY PILLS. I can't stress this enough. We've all seen the Saved By The Bell episode where Jessie gets addicted to caffine pills. I'm so exicted indeed.


If you must, go ahead and have 12 movies, but make two or three of them "backups", meaning if time goes by fast and you watched all 8 or 10 movies and you got at least 4 hours left, you got some backups. Make these backups movies you do kinda wanna see but you're not in a hurry to see them so if you don't get to them today, no big deal.

(BOOP)

3. You got your food, you got your movies, and you gave yourself time to rest. This part is optional but might I suggest you have a friend or two along for this ride. Only because what you're basically doing is shutting yourself in for one full day and one full day with no human contact can do strange things to a human being. At least if one of the movies is bad you and your friend can make fun of it. Plus it'll be much like "Nightmare on Elm Street" where you'll be keeping each other up. Thankfully, I'm unable to sleep when there's any kind of noise on so I'm good for this.

In fact, just invite me over. I'll be like Jamie Kennedy in "Scream", shouting out rules and stuff. I'll be right BACK!!!

(BOOOP)

That's all I got. I hope you learned something. If you have any input or questions leave a comment. Class dismissed.

(BOOP)
-Jason