About

I Saw High Life In The Theater refers to a statement by film critic and TV writer Dana Schwartz she wrote while defending Cruella from the criticism that "Hollywood is out of ideas." The way she brought up the indie Robert Pattinson film High Life as a means of establishing her credibility led to parodies from film fans on the site over the following days.

Origin

On June 8th, 2021, Dana Schwartz published a piece in Bustle^[1] defending Cruella from the criticism that "Hollywood is out of ideas," arguing that film snobbery could deny people a pleasant film-watching experience. When tweeting her piece, she wrote, "I genuinely love small and weird art—I saw High Life in the theater. But I can't help but cringe at the knee-jerk dismissal of big projects as inherently lazy." The tweet was later deleted but reposted by user @justbrizigs,^[2] who commented, "won’t someone defend the money-guzzling IP slop," gaining over 260 retweets and 4,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

After @justbrizig's tweet, the phrase "I saw High Life in the theater" began getting mocked around Twitter. User @funkyassdg^[3] tweeted, "beginning your defense of huge budget crap with “before i begin, i saw High Life in the theater” is when a heel wrestler says “it’s great to be in [city]” before shitting on the local sports teams" (shown below, left). User @leslieleeiii^[4] pointed out that Schwartz also works for Disney, while others pointed out she's currently working on She-Hulk, which added some context to her take (shown below, right).

Others began using the take to make memes. User @erspamer_matt^[6] tweeted the quote using Jughead's I'm Weird Speech as a reaction image (shown below, left). User @BKWelles^[7] joked the statement was similar to something Brian Griffin would say (shown below, right).

A24,^[5] High Life's studio, capitalized on the joke by producing a shirt that reads "I saw High Life in the theater."

Various Examples

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External References