Geoff Carter 2 November 2009 One Million Watts 871 views 2 Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

The Lazydork.com website is one of those sites that reminds you how infinite the world wide web is, how full of variety it is. As near as I can tell, the sole mission of this site is to create a drinking game for every single movie ever made.

The Lazydorks have written up drinking games for just over 1,500 movies — more than enough to keep you occupied through five to eight years of college. Most of these drinking games call for viewers to take a shot of booze whenever a character in a movie says or does something – to take a shot whenever Mr. Miyagi says ‘Daniel-san’, to take a shot whenever anyone mentions the Dude’s rug and so on.

These are games conceived in semi-sadistic cruelty, games that are expressly designed to get you dangerously intoxicated — and even the authors of the Lazydork site advise against actually trying them.

Having said that, here’s one of my favorites. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’re curious about movie drinking games, but you don’t drink alcohol — or perhaps you’ve got writer’s block and a 600-word Monkey Goggles piece due early on a Sunday morning. In that very specific set of circumstances, I recommend a movie-drinking game of my own invention — a coffee-shot drinking game based on John Frankenheimer’s 1997 thriller “Ronin.”

If you haven’t seen “Ronin,” you ought to. It’s a first-class spy movie by John Frankenheimer, the director of such greats as “The Manchurian Candidate” and “Birdman of Alcatraz.” Shot in various locations around France, “Ronin” is a first-cabin thriller all the way — its cast includes Robert DeNiro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgard, Sean Bean and Jonathan Pryce; its car chases are flat-out amazing; its dialogue is razor-sharp; and its ice skating sequences are lovely. (Katarina Witt, y’know.) Though Frankenheimer owes a chunk of the credit for “Ronin’s” success to David Mamet — the famed playright did an uncredited, top-to-bottom rewrite of the dialogue — the film is one of the director’s best, worthy of standing toe-to-toe with “Candidate.”

But there’s one curious thing about “Ronin”: I can’t watch the movie without wanting a coffee. The beverage shows up in nearly every dialog scene. Even in the scenes where there isn’t any coffee — which are few, and they usually involve moving cars — you can see the characters thinking, “Man, a coffee would be nice right about now.” Coffee is practically the film’s seventh-billed star. It’s amazing to me that they got through all those car chases without a rest stop, considering how much java the principal parties consumed.

It’s rare that a movie tells you how to enjoy it (see also “Chocolat,” “Bottle Shock” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”). Whether or not it was Frankenheimer’s intent, “Ronin” wants you to be amped up on caffeine, and that’s how I do it. I make a pot of good Seattle-roasted java, dig out some shot glasses (or better still, espresso cups), press “play” and:

I take a shot whenever I see a cup or pot of coffee.

I take a shot whenever I see a character drinking coffee.

I take a shot whenever I see an actor who played a villain in a James Bond movie. Warning: There’s three of them.

I take two shots whenever coffee is spilled.

I take two shots whenever the word “coffee” is actually spoken.

I take a shot whenever someone gestures with a coffee cup.

I take a shot when DeNiro shows up in a coffee-colored suede jacket.

Whenever all these things happen — as they do in this amazing (NSFW dialogue) scene — I pour the coffee into my lap in disbelief.

Bonus rounds: I take a shot every time I hear a line that’s obviously written by Mamet: “We went to high school together.” “You think I’m reluctant because I’m happy?” “I hurt somebody’s feelings once,” etc.

Now’s the time when I direct you to what Wikipedia has to say about caffeine overuse. I don’t recommend that you play the “Ronin” coffee-shot drinking game yourself. I play this game on the weakest coffee you can imagine and it still keeps me up for hours and hours. If you play this game with the real stuff, you’ll be eating tiramasu in heaven.

Even if you go with the most watered-down pot of coffee you’re capable of drinking, there will be side effects. I adopt a bad Irish accent for days after playing the game, and I make four-wheel drift sounds whenever I turn corners (on foot). But the results stand plain. By the grace of the “Ronin” coffee-shot drinking game, my pieces get written and turned in, and this particular master-less samurai and lazy dork is vindicated.

- Geoff Carter