Catching up with the moviegoer who recited the whole Nicole Kidman AMC ad before ‘Barbie,’ and went viral
“Everyone was in on the joke and having so much fun with it. That is what is so typically Philadelphia about this.”
“Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place likе this. Our heroes feel like thе best part of us, and stories feel perfect and powerful.”
Most of us who watch our movies at AMC have heard Nicole Kidman say these lines over and over again. We have laughed, cringed, and shook our heads. But some of us have gone beyond that and honored the AMC commercial for the high art they think it is.
Fae Ehsan, a fundraising professional from West Philadelphia was at the Fashion District AMC last Wednesday, seated for an advance screening of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, when she met a hero.
“Barbie was so good that I forgot to tweet about the guy in the pink fedora who stood up during the Nicole Kidman movies monologue and recited it aloud with his hat over his heart. And then everyone applauded him,” Ehsan tweeted (xeeted? xat?) that night. “I love you Philadelphia,” she added.
When the guy in the pink fedora finished reciting the “cheesy, corny, goofy, iconic” Kidman AMC advertisement, Ehsan said to The Inquirer, “he took a bow and everyone applauded. The vibes were off the charts.”
“A hero of the people,” a Twitter user commented when Ehsan’s tweet went viral. At the time of reporting, more than 88,000 users had liked it and more than 5,000 retweeted it. “I was there and he is my idol!!!” someone else tweeted.
For Ehsan, it was a “beautiful Philadelphia experience.”
“It reminded me of the time when the Eagles won the Super Bowl,” she said. “No one was told to but everyone went out to the streets and joined in. Here, everyone was in on the joke and having so much fun with it. That is what is so typically Philadelphia about this whole thing.”
On Thursday, the hatted crusader unveiled himself on Twitter. Zach Marsh is a video editor from South Jersey who also works at his local AMC. When Ehsan reached out to see if Marsh was comfortable with the newfound virality, Marsh was rightfully lapping it all up.
The Inquirer caught up with him. The conversation has been edited for clarity.
What do you do when you are not performing Nicole Kidman homages?
I live at home with my folks. I am a video editor and I’ve worked with the Hollywood Critics Association. I’ve done promo work for the 2022 movie Tankhouse.
How did you get around to memorizing this monologue?
Well, I mean, first off, how could you not! But the reason I have it memorized is because I work at an AMC theater, so I hear it all the time. And when I saw all the memes around it, it became funny to me. So I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna memorize this thing.’
And do you recite it before every film? Or was this one special?
Not every film. It usually just depends on the audience and the kind of movie. There was a showing of the horror movie Smile last year where I went into theater while I was on the job, and I just did it. And luckily, they found it funny. Some people were filming it, some people were applauding.
Do people ever ask you to stop?
One time recently, I tried going into the theater for another horror movie to do it. And as I was doing it, a lady in the back just says, ‘Hey, could you be quiet?’ I don’t think she realized what I was doing. But to me that makes it funnier.
What made you decide to do it before ‘Barbie’?
Oh, well, first off, it’s Barbie. I knew it from the moment that movie was announced, ‘Oh, this is gonna be big. This is gonna be a huge movie.’ So when the tickets went on sale for that early access show at the Fashion District theater, I was like ‘Yep, yanking four of those up.’ When I saw that it was sold out, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, no, I’m doing this. I’m going full hog deep into the meme.’
Apart from the fact that it’s an ad for your workplace, what draws you to the monologue?
There’s just something funny and interesting about it. It’s AMC making an ad for themselves. Which is fine, because everyone makes advertisements to advertise themselves. But what makes it funny to me, and I think some people on the internet would agree, is the fact that they play that ad right before a movie starts. They’re playing an advertisement for something that we have already bought into. Like, there’s no point to this, because I am already here.
I love how the internet, Twitter in particular, has just taken it and morphed it into like, ‘Oh, she’s an icon, a slay queen.’ It’s something a lot of people feel very connected to. Whether it’s ironic or unironic, there is something authentic about it.
Were you working at the ‘Barbie’ screening?
I took off work that day, just so I could go to that. This movie is going to be an event, it’s going to be a cultural thing and I have to be one of the first to see it in the area. When I saw people were really embracing the Barbenheimer thing, I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna dress up in pink.’ So I went to a Party City earlier in the day, picked up a couple pink fedoras and put on a pink shirt.
How did you know you had gone viral?
Honestly, I was not expecting it to go viral, because I had done it at movies before. The next day, one of the people I went to the movie with … she texted me and she said, ‘Holy cr-, dude, you’re, you’re going viral.’ My whole thing with this is — I’m gonna sound a little odd here, so bear with me — I don’t like it when people will try to generate their own virality by tweeting something themselves.
Someone else [tweeting] it really helped with the mystique of like, ‘Wait, did this really happen?’ And then I’d just be like, ‘Yep, that was me.’
The last line of that tweet is ‘I love you, Philadelphia.’ Would you do this in any other city?
Oh, hell yeah. When I went to New York on Friday to see Oppenheimer on 70 mm at the IMAX. I did a shortened-down version of the Nicole Kidman thing. I was like, ‘OK, people are dressed up in their Barbenheimer shirts and pink clothes. This is going to be a good audience.’ And it was completely sold out. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing this in New York, taking it cross-country.’
How did that go?
It was fine, but there’s a funny story about that. I went with my buddy Jared to see Oppenheimer. But many months ago, I went to the same IMAX theater with him to see Avatar, where I performed the short version of the ad. My buddy was embarrassed. He’s like, ‘Don’t do that. It’s gonna be cringe, don’t do it.’ And then this tweet went viral. And he’s like, ‘Oh, I was completely wrong. Just go for it at Oppenheimer.’
Would you ever perform it differently?
Probably not. Just keep it within really packed shows, and try not to do it too much, to the point where people get annoyed by it because I know some people are probably already annoyed by the Nicole Kidman ad running before their film for two to three years now. It’s all about reading the room. It’s just all depends on the movie, I guess.
So are you Team Barbie or Team Oppenheimer?
You know, it’s hard to say those movies are very different. I think overall, I enjoyed Barbie more. But Oppenheimer is such a dense and heavy film. I want to see both again. I can’t say which one I like more or less. I guess if I had to choose one, I would say Barbie mainly because of how personal and emotional that movie is. But, if anyone reading this has to choose between the two, I would say just go see both.