Recently, I came across a whacky website which attempts to address an issue which probably many people have experienced while watching movies at the cinema, especially those long movies – the urge to empty the bladder (pee)! Well, a Flash developer, Dan Florio had just that experience while watching King Kong and developed a website Runpee.com to assist cinema goers in identifying when to run to pee so as not to miss the best parts of a movie!
Here’s a screenshot of the Flash application that powers Runpee.com.
The screenshot above provides the pee times for the movie “The Time Traveler’s Wife” indicating that you may pee for around 4 mins at around 46 mins into the movie and obviously, at the end of the movie (for as long as you like). You will also have the option of getting to know what happens in the movie during those precious 4 minutes (you can unscramble the encrypted spoiler).
Well, Runpee.com was launched in August 2008 and is apparently gaining popularity very quickly. It seems that a collaborative effort is underway to analyze pee times for various movies, not just Hollywood, but even regional movies across the world.
I’m sure that Indians could benefit enormously from Runpee.com stats given the very long duration of Indian movies. Also, identifying pee times for Indian movies will be easy (most often during songs) and some entire movies may be just pee time. 😉
Perhaps movie producers and directors will have to take note of a new metric for their movies – the RunPeeCount. i.e. the number of times you can pee during a movie without missing anything interesting. Obviously, movies with the lowest RunPeeCount rule! And imagine what this website will do for cinema owners. They’ll need to upgrade their WC facilities to accommodate huge queues at specific times of a movie’s running time. Imagine watching “The Time Traveler’s Wife” and @ 46 mins, almost everybody says “It’s pee time” and rushes towards the nearest exit!
Whoa! I’ve never typed/uttered the word “pee” so many times in such a short period. 🙂 Visit the website and have fun!
