24 hour movie people.

Going into the Sidewalk Bad Movie Marathon, I was a little nervous. I mean, I wasn’t going in with any delusions of “winning.” But I was worried about falling asleep like two hours in and getting booted super early.

Turns out my worries were unfounded. James and I made it a full 24 hours. I think we probably could have made it a few hours longer. But he and I had agreed we’d try to stay in at least 24 hours, and after we made it that far, we decided to go ahead and go home for more comfortable seating and less bad viewing options.

It also turns out that watching bad movies with friends and acquaintances is fun. As you might guess, it does turn into something of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 situation. I think my best quip of the event was when Kelsey Grammer showed up in a terrible Transformers movie and I said, “This new season of Frasier sucks.”

How bad were the movies? Pretty bad! A few that stood out as particularly terrible: The Emoji Movie, Son of the Mask, and Transformers Age of Extinction. You can see a complete list on my Letterboxd page. James and I left right after the infamous Master of Disguise started up, so we dodged at least one bullet. Also, I raised enough money to get a “veto,” so I used that to show Escape From New York, and it was nice to see that on the big screen.

The real winner of the Marathon was Sidewalk. The original fundraising goal was $25,000, but we’d hit that before the actual Marathon had even started. By the time the final six marathoners agreed to call it a tie on the afternoon of February 2 (that would be about 46 hours into the marathon) and end the event as co-winners, we’d raised $40,000 for Sidewalk. Sidewalk is one of my favorite things about Birmingham, Alabama, and I’m happy I got to do a small part to raise a bunch of money for them.

If you like bad movies and good causes and can make it to Birmingham, Alabama in late January, you should consider signing up for next year’s Marathon. Now that I have mostly recovered from the sleep deprivation, I’m thinking about doing it again next year.