‘Gone Girl’ Reviewed By A Guy Who Took Molly For The First Time And Saw ‘Gone Girl’

Gone Girl

On vacation, two weeks ago, I absolutely plowed through Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. I was visiting my sister, who had to work the first few days of my trip. Since there were literally no sights to see (you suck as a tourist destination, Skopje, Macedonia), I barely put the engaging read down, finishing it in under two days.

Before I left for my trip, a friend picked up some of that MDMA stuff the young millennials are all hopped up on at concerts and festivals and job interviews and ERs across the country. I didn’t really have an overarching urge to try it—I wasn’t about to buy a ticket to Bassnectar this weekend to get the full effect of doing the drug in its proper environment—but it’s my ethos to buy drugs whenever they become available. I like to stockpile stashes like a survivalist who would need the appetite-suppressing effects of cocaine if the apocalypse did hit, because my pantry is perpetually empty. The wilted bundle of celery, two cans of Hunt’s diced tomatoes and a box of instant stuffing I own wouldn’t sustain me for very long.

After finishing the book Gone Girl, I remembered that a movie starring Ben Affleck was coming out. That movie is called Gone Girl. When I landed at Newark, I texted the friend who lent me the novel.

“Gone Girl comes out this weekend!” the implication of my words being that we should see the movie at some indeterminate date, or even not at all, because I really don’t watch a lot of movies. But her, being not me, bought tickets for opening night. Friday, 10/3/2014, 10:45 p.m.

My friend gave me my molly on Monday, and I noodled over possible times to take it. Unlike movie premieres, I don’t have much patience when it comes to trying to drugs I’ve procured, especially ones I’ve never tried before. This has led to some less than perfect experiences, like the first time I tried mushrooms. I took them ten minutes after my friend had given them to me, even though it was 11:00 p.m. on a Monday night. No one wanted to chill with the dude who had just taken a bunch of mushrooms by himself on a school night, so I wound up sitting in my room and listening to Dave Matthews’ third studio album, Before These Crowded Streets, for over four hours. Mushrooms! Kinda okay, I thought. Could be better.

The reviews of Gone Girl I read in the preceding week were all stellar. “David Fincher at his finest! A tight, tautological thriller!” “The date movie of the year,” one review called it, which I didn’t really understand. What makes a movie a date movie? Is it because this one has the potential to spur some conversation afterward, so you and your potential life partner can see where you both stand on the whole framing each other for murder thing? That is what happened. Fast forward to exiting this movie with a couple I went to see the film with, each made valid arguments about why they’d be much more capable of successfully killing the other without getting caught. They enlisted my help to break the tie as to who would be better at premeditated murder.

“I’m really fucked up, guys,” was my response, which was true, because in addition to the molly, I smuggled in a pocket-sized bottle of Wild Turkey. The other guy in our movie threesome always brings a bottle of Jameson into a movie, so when he went to the store, I figured I should get some whiskey as well.

I don’t usually drink during movies, because drinking makes me pee. A lot more than the average person. So I don’t like to do it. What I’d much rather do is smoke pot. Being high for movies is super dope. I once actually, when I was a huge pothead junior year of college, took three weeks off of smoking—the longest I’d gone in almost four years—so I could be baked as fuck for The Return of The King. We smoked a whole blunt in the parking lot and like, the opening scene where Smeagol strangles the other hobbit, that was intense. Zero Dark Thirty was also really good stoned.

But I didn’t have any pot. Yet, I wanted this movie to be cool, cooler than a sober viewing. I have this molly, I thought. People take molly for cool things. Like concerts, which are really just sounds and sights. What is a movie if not sounds and sights?

David Fincher, as well, is all about the psychological mind fucks. So why not take a drug that fucks with your mind, while going to see a movie that fucks with your mind? (It should be pointed out here that, at the time, I had no idea the actual effects of MDMA.)

We’re running late, of course, on Friday night. The girl who bought the tickets had gotten the time wrong. Movie was at 10:30, not 10:45. We’re at dinner and ask for the check and I leave to use the bathroom. One, because we split a bottle of wine, but also because I wanted to take the molly just before the movie began so I’d be “on molly” when it started.

So, I’m in the bathroom of the Martha Washington hotel, unfurling this bag of what looks like cane sugar. The person who sold it to me said to lick my finger, stick it in the bag, and rub my coated finger against my gums. I did that four times. That seemed like enough molly.

This shit molly tastes gross. There should be a better way to do it, or barring that, don’t take it after dinner at a really nice restaurant because it ruins the whole savoring of the meal when it’s done. Instead of Italian pizza, my mouth tasted like I mistook Pledge for Binaca.

By the time we sat down for the movie, I guess I would say I “felt good,” but I’m not sure what that means. The discomfort in my stomach from eating too much too fast had subsided. I attributed that to the molly. A digestif! Nasty at first, but good.

Then I realized, during the trailers, I had to pee again.

“Hold it for a bit,” I told myself, knowing full well I wouldn’t be able to. I never can. Except, amazingly, I did. All two hours and thirty minutes. The urge went away and stayed away, even though I was drinking whiskey. That’s easily the coolest part of molly. In fact, maybe that’s why everyone does it at festivals. Less need to use the port-a-potty.

At one point, I realized I was holding my hands in balled up fists up against my mouth. Not because the movie was scary or intense. I knew what was going to happen, after all, but just because it felt nice.

This is weird, I thought. I would never normally hold my hands there. And so I thought I should move them down to the arm rest. But why? This feels good, so I’m going to keep doing it. And it did. I had my hands there for the whole movie. I liked it. I’m usually such a fidgeter, but I didn’t fidget once during Gone Girl.

I had a lot of trouble hearing, though. I couldn’t make out what any of the characters were saying. Maybe it was a Fincher thing, I thought, a way to make the movie intentionally harder to follow.

But then, the next day, I was telling my friend who sold me it how I took it for Gone Girl. She was flabbergasted.

“Why would you do that? Sounds are just like blerrrgh on molly. You can’t tell where they are coming from or anything.”

She asked me what I thought, and honestly, I didn’t know. I didn’t think the molly did much to enhance or detract the experience, save for not needing to pee.

Ben Affleck made a good Nick, but he could have been a little more douchey. “He wasn’t as douchey as book Nick,” I told her.

Afterward, I got home and was wide-awake, so I had some whiskey and watched How I Met Your Mother reruns until four. Neil Patrick Harris was a great Desi, but a better Barney, I thought.

So, all in all, I liked it. The movie. Not the molly. I wish I’d gotten stoned, instead. But as Gillian Flynn has taught us, life is not perfect.

Not at all.

Oh, and Rosamund Pike! Excellent as Amy. Very appropriately eerie.