Sex and the City

Seeing as this column has been referred to as "Sex and the City for guys", I would be remiss if I didn't comment on the release of the movie that has had women the world over in estrogen-fueled tizzy all weekend long.

Now, I don't claim for a second to know anything about Sex and the City, the show. I have probably seen a total of two combined episodes from the six seasons it was on HBO, and can tell you only that it takes place in New York, and that Peter Gibbons from Office Space made a brief appearance at one point. The only thing I really know about the show is that women seem to be completely infatuated with it. And at no point in time has this infatuation manifested itself more blatantly than this weekend.

My girlfriend and a friend of hers decided that they wanted to have some kind of female-bonding night, and that the female-bonding would revolve exclusively around seeing Sex and the City on the first Friday night of the film's release (going for Cosmopolitans at some swanky lounge before the show, seeing the movie, and then talking about it over martinis afterwards - I'm pretty sure the two of them weren't alone in these plans). So Friday morning, they walked to the theatre down the street from where she works, only to learn from the box office that all of Friday night's screenings had been sold out for two days. When she got back to work, she began phoning around, theatre after theatre, only to discover that the movie was literally sold out everywhere in Toronto. She eventually found a theatre in the Beaches with a couple of tickets, and jumped all over them.

According to my girlfriend, the entire city was buzzing with Sex and the City anticipation, the theatre was about 98% women, and the movie was everything she'd hoped for, and more. Hell, the Barry interesting survey this weekend even asked the question: "What would your girlfriend have to do to get you to go see Sex and the City?"

So my question is this: Is there anything on this planet that would elicit the same kind of response from men? I mean, can you think of a movie that would have guys universally planning their Friday night around going to see it, and result in every single theatre being sold out across an entire city?

(And for the record, I'm talking about normal, meat-eating, football watching dudes; not the ones who dress up like the characters in the movie and live in their parents' basement until well beyond middle age.)

My brother says that if they ever made an Entourage movie, that the response would be comparable, but I just don't see it. I can't imagine guys ever going to the lengths necessary to sell out an entire city's worth of theatres. I don't think we're organized enough to look into buying tickets in advace, and I know we're damn sure not organized enough to go out looking for alternate theatres if the one closest to home was sold out. I mean, sure, we'll drive halfway across the continent to catch a sporting event in person, but that's different. That's a once-in-a-lifetime experience that you can't recreate by renting from Blockbuster three months later.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that girls are a little bit crazy when it comes to certain things. And apparently Sex and the City is close to the top of that list of things they're crazy for.