They were decked out in sweatpants and fuzzy bunny slippers, and equipped with coolers of Mountain Dew, beef jerky, and Little Debbie snack cakes. One morning a few weeks ago, 34 committed souls bivouacked at the Heights Theater in Columbia Heights. They came prepared to spend an entire weekend watching films they’d already seen while forsaking sleep, showers, and unscheduled bathroom breaks. Their motivation? A new Guinness world record for non-stop movie watching.
ACT II, a Twin Cities company that is the world’s largest manufacturer of microwave popcorn, sponsored the marathon as a fund-raiser for local Boys and Girls Clubs. Some participants claimed to be drawn by the bargain appeal: 27 movies for a one-time $5 admission. But most were clearly motivated by the event’s “extreme” nature. Sure, the schedule mixed revered classics such as Ben Hur and Casablanca with guilty pleasures such as Animal House and Top Gun. But in truth, the bill could just as well have been filled with the likes of Waterworld and Freddy Got Fingered. After all, no one seemed concerned when a poorly assembled print subjected the audience to a version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid that briefly ran scenes out of sequence, and played “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” at least three times. Attendee Nick Gipe was lucid enough to dub this “the Quentin Tarantino version.”
Running continuously from Friday morning through the following Sunday evening, the movie marathon generated its own drama. To accommodate contestants during designated bathroom breaks, portable johns were set up in the theater parking lot. But a blast of unexpected winter weather obviated the convenience considerably. “If you sit down on the seat at 10 degrees, it pretty much locks everything up,” confirmed William Pike, whose shaved head wasn’t helping him retain body heat. “It’s tough to make it all work in five minutes.” Pike, a relatively mature marathoner at 38, brought foam seat cushions to the Heights to help ease anticipated pain. St. Olaf College student Pip Gengenbach drew hourly hash marks on his arm as if logging prison time. Brent Swanson had conducted Internet research on sleep deprivation and came equipped with smelling salts. Others asked official witnesses to smack them periodically with Nerf implements. Army reservist Jason Dreyer drew upon military training for battle fatigue, contracting facial muscles to keep his blood pumping. Food stashes were strategic too. Swanson’s included 18 hard-boiled eggs. “It’s just a matter of eating good and not eating junk food,” explained Nicole O’Donnell, with a Burger King cup in hand, and a cookie dough/Oreo Dairy Queen Blizzard on order.
By 4 a.m. Saturday—after nine films —few record-chasers had dropped out, but there were hints of a hard road ahead. “There’s a really bad stretch coming up, with Annie and then a silent film and then another movie from 1931,” noted Nathan Wickman. “That’s going to be tough.” At 8:30 Sunday morning, nearly 48 hours after the first reel of Dr. Strangelove, half the original 34 contestants remained. When Greta Guck quietly picked up her cooler in the middle of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, her exit garnered the kind of slow, respectful applause usually reserved for athletes who walk away from on-the-field injuries. “I’m out,” Guck managed to mumble on her way through the theater door, speaking in a low growl that made her sound as though she’d been stuck in a refrigerator. “I’m really lightheaded. I can’t take it anymore.” She wasn’t alone. Although 12 participants (including Gengenbach, Swanson, Dreyer, and O’Donnell—the sole woman among them) saw their way into the record books and landed their faces on future packages of microwave popcorn, others were happy to go home early, even if the decision wasn’t their own. Soon after Guck’s departure, event staff spotted a row of young girls and their adult chaperone, all with their eyes shut. Sally Matthews, 15, insisted she had been awake when the disqualification came down, but she stopped short of registering a formal protest. “We are not going back in there,” she declared, relieved to avoid “that Russian film” (Dr. Zhivago). “I skipped 40 Days and 40 Nights for this,” she said in disgust. “At least we got a T-shirt.”
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