Evidently, I'm a cult member

Last night, the Red Hook Brewery in suburban Seattle showed Office Space in their outdoor cinema yard. We got there about 90 minutes before sunset, and the place was packed. Not bad for a movie that critics said this and this about. The line to get in was about 200 yards long, the line to get beers took about 30 minutes, and at around an hour before showtime, they just had to start turning people away at the entrance. We were lucky just to have a place to sit and watch it.

I also found out as we were driving over there that the movie is now considered a cult classic. I used to think that cult classics were movies that appealed to people with alternative perspectives. Is that the case with Office Space? When I first saw it, I had rented it on a Friday after a particularly draining week in my cubicle. I was 24, and had been working in office environments since I was 17. I was even becoming a regular at the Applebee's next to my office. The movie just captured so many things about the frustration and emptiness of the mouse jockey routine that it instantly became one of my favorite movies. It just never gets old.

But watching it for the first time with a large group of people is what really makes you understand this movie's brilliance. I found myself cheering with everyone else when Peter hangs up on his girlfriend and walks past Lumbergh in the hallway. I think cult classics become that way not out of their alternative views, but out of their ability to strike a chord with a certain subset of people, even if those people are straight-shooters with middle management written all over them.