2 seats, one for my pizza

Permission to speak freely: I like to take outside food into movie theaters. Sandwiches, burritos, pizzas. I took a falafel with me to see “The Hours.” The movie, I thought, was a tad overwrought, like a Lifetime movie with brains. The film’s theme of emotional repression, while compelling and artfully woven through three separate storylines, in general left me cold.

But the falafel was delicious.

I did not take food to see “The Pianist.” And yet, the array of soups and stews that an increasingly emaciated Adrien Brody consumed during the picture looked -- how do I say this? -- good.

Last week, I called my sister. “You wanna take a pizza into the 5:10 showing of ‘Chicago’ at the ArcLight this Saturday?” She agreed, although I could tell on the phone how she felt -- cautious, maybe a little bit afraid. Outside food in a movie theater? Is that legal?

I assured her that, whatever ended up happening to us, ours would be the side of the righteous.

I have spent much of my adult life on this little crusade, trying to get people interested in bringing outside food into movie theaters, but my coalition of the willing remains pathetically small -- the military equivalent of Catalina and Leisure World.

“The chains don’t allow it,” friends will say or, “but it’s messy and noisy.”

What gives? I don’t get you people (and by “you people” I mean “you people” in the non-denominational, pan-ethnic sense of “you people,” not the more specific, potentially inflammatory, racial and/or spiritual sense of “you people”). Anyway, listen up, you people, because this just in from the Food and Drug Administration: Huge tubs of popcorn and bottomless cups of soda aren’t really good for you. And this just in from my local cash machine: Huge tubs of popcorn and sodas costs too much money.

But again I can hear the rebuttal: Bring outside food into a movie theater? It’s noisy/messy/cumbersome/against the rules. Yeah, and you forgot slash delicious!

I should say that I’m a big fan of people who travel well with food, and I aspire to travel well with food myself. I recently flew back from London and watched with increasing jealousy and hunger pangs as a man seated nearby enjoyed a cellophane bag filled with nuts.

This bag of nuts was quite impressive. This bag, in fact, appeared to have been carefully assembled as a kind of “nuts of the world” bag of nuts, the almonds and filberts and cashews and peanuts co-mingling in the way we envisioned the U.N. working out the problems of the world.

But the “nuts of the world” guy could’ve taken lessons from this other guy. He sat in my row each year at the Rose Bowl for UCLA football games. I don’t know how he did it, but somehow he got into the stadium with all this food, and the next thing you knew there was a whole restaurant happening in his lap. Soon, the game would become secondary to conversations in my row about his menu. “Oh, what’s he got now. Is that bruschetta brushed with sage? Is he going to actually toss that salad? And is that -- no, it couldn’t be -- is that a pepper mill?”

Last season, the guy with the restaurant in his lap evidently had to scale back, due to post-Sept. 11 security reasons, I’m pretty sure.

I had no such fears Saturday as I ordered a pizza -- a 14-inch, half black olive, half garlic from Jacopo’s in West Hollywood. My sister and I picked up the pizza at around 4:30 p.m. I had no intention of trying to sneak the thing into the theater. I wasn’t going to head into a bathroom and begin strapping individual slices of pizza to my body, breaking into a tense, flop sweat as the madness of our escapade began to sink in, the theme from “Midnight Express” playing in my head.

No, I was going to walk into the Arc- Light proudly, carrying that box up to the ticket counter and paying $14 a pop to see the best picture in the whole wide world, “Chicago.” If anyone asked, I was prepared to say, “My name is Paul Brownfield, and I am here to see ‘Chicago,’ the best picture in the whole wide world. And yes, this is a pizza.”

I’m here to report that, after purchasing our seats, we passed two subsequent checkpoints that involved direct contact with ArcLight employees and there was nary a word or glance. In a gesture of goodwill, we bought two drinks at the concession stand.

The movie started, my sister and I eating away. “Chicago” for best picture in the whole wide world? It wouldn’t have been my choice. I suppose it was enjoyable enough, if you go in for musicals. The pizza, of course, was fabulous. The box rested on an empty seat next to us. It felt good to be an American.

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Paul Brownfield can be contacted at paul.brownfield@latimes.com.