Monday's Screen on the Green (Confused Much?)

The scene at Monday's Screen on the Green was fantastic with the picture-perfect sunset, purple skies, scattered lightening and the slightest amount of rain to cool down the night.  Everything for the making of a perfect night until utter confusion spread throughout the crowd.

Halfway through the 1977 film, "The Goodbye Girl," a woman got on the loudspeaker to announce that the film had been sequentially completely out of order....wait, come again?  Full disclosure: I wouldn't consider myself a classic film aficionado, but surely I would know if a movie I was watching was spliced totally wrong.  Or so I thought.  However it wasn't just me who was totally confused; as I looked around the crowd everyone was totally dumbfounded.  Then the powers that started to play a scene we had just previewed twenty minutes earlier.  Oh, duh.

But despite the mix up you can be sure I will be back at Screen on the Green next Monday for "12 Angry Men,"  because a free (yes please!) outdoor film series showing on the National Mall is still one of this city's treasures too good to pass up, chronological slip ups or not.

[photos by Paul Morigi via]