Finding PeeTimes – EXACTLY how I find those movie breaks

A few people have asked how I find those movie break Peetimes. Well, let me tell you: it isn’t easy, or fun.

Finding Peetimes Process

• I don’t want to disturb anyone while I “work” during the movie, so I always get a seat in the far back-right corner of the theater.
• We do our very best to attend the first showing of a movie. That’s usually on Thursday afternoon or evening.
• I have my phone – ringer off – that I can check the time. I use a basic timer application on my Android phone to keep track of the time.
• Of course I can’t RunPee during a movie so I make sure that I don’t drink much beforehand and I use the men’s room right before the show starts.
• The first thing I watch for is the beginning of the movie. We can’t time Peetimes from when the movie is listed to start because commercials and previews can run anywhere from 5-25 minutes. The RunPee app will vibrate 30 seconds before the upcoming Peetime. We time the start of the Peetime down to about 5 seconds accuracy.
• We usually look for the ending of the first movie production credit. This will be something like, when the MCU theme/montage ends, or when the Disney logo fades out.
• Then I start taking notes for about the first 3-4 minutes of the movie so that we can provide the “Running Late” feature. After that, I can relax and enjoy the movie. For about 12 minutes.
• Starting at about the 15 minute mark I start looking for Peetimes. I watch the movie for scenes that I can easily sum up without missing in critical details to the movie. Many people think that peetimes are just the boring scenes in movies, but that isn’t necessarily true. Some Peetimes might take part during a car chase or some other action scene. It just has to be something you can miss and still follow the plot when you return. Take the first Peetime for Star Trek 2009. That’s during the scene where they skydive down to the drilling platform. You’ll be missing some nice action, but most of that scene was shown during the previews that everyone saw. The rest of the scene is easy to sum up so that when you do get back in the theater you can slip back into the story.
• When I see something happening in the movie that might make a good Peetime, I write down the current time on my notepad and the cue.
• The Peetime cue is hugely important. It’s nice to have very distinct scenes or lines of dialog to start a peetime with. Users can read all of the cues—usually very short—before the movie starts so that they know what to look for during the movie. For instance, in the movie Thor one of the cues for a Peetime cues reads: Thor carries Erik—the scientist—back to Jane’s trailer after drinking at the bar. That should be very easy for someone to remember—oh, now’s a good time to run and pee.
• Then I start jotting down notes like who’s talking and the gist of the conversation. If the scene keeps going for about 3 minutes—preferably 4 minutes—and nothing has happened that makes me say, “Crap, you can’t miss this scene,” then I have a good Peetime candidate. Then, as soon as this scene ends, I write down the time again so that I know how long this Peetime stretches.
• Rinse-and-repeat.

One Viewing is Enough, Usually

After doing this long enough we’ve learned to recognize good Peetimes in movies just watching it once. But, there are exceptions. Mystery movies are notoriously hard to find good Peetimes for because often early in the movie there’s a scene that seems inconsequential, but it turns out that some minor detail in that scene becomes pivotal later on. Now, we could tell you that minor detail in the synopsis, but that would be too much of spoiler for what’s to come later. It’s not uncommon that we have to watch mysteries twice in order to get good Peetimes.

We try to make the Peetimes for every movie as good as possible. No matter how bad or unpopular a movie might be, someone out there is going to love it, and we’re doing the Peetimes for them so we take our job seriously no matter what we personally think about the movie. So, while all movies are equal, some movies deserve special attention. A good example is the recent release of Wicked—grade: C+) That movie will be hugely popular, so we want to take extra care to make the Peetimes as perfect as we can. To do that my sister and I both watched the movie together an worked together to chose the best Peetimes.

Bad Peetimes

Here are a few tips I would offer that would make a bad Peetime:

• Did something happen that a few people in the theater laughed at?
• Was there some character interaction that was purely visual and would be difficult/impossible to describe accurately?
• Say you’re watching an action movie with lots of fighting: was there some amazing scene that might be the best move, or special effect, in the movie? People probably don’t want to miss that.
• If shortly after your Peetime something hugely important happens then really consider not using this peetime unless the person has at least 4 minutes to get back. For example, if the movie goes for 3 minutes of watching a clothes dryer spin and then right after that Darth Vader walks up to Luke and says, “Luke, I am your father.” then you don’t want to use this peetime. Someone might not make it back in time.

Good Peetimes

• Music montages. This is usually very easy to sum up like, “Rocky goes out jogging around the city and eventually fans start following. He ends by running up the steps in front of a big building and then jumping around like a champion.” Now I won’t argue with you that that scene is iconic. But suppose you’re in the theater and you really have to pee and you know you can’t wait until the movie is over. Guess what? Missing that music montage would be a whole lot better than missing the fight with Apollo Creed. Right?
• Suppose you’re watching an action movie that has lots of gunfights. A few of the gunfights might be really good but there’s usually one of them that’s just average. That sounds like a good Peetime to me. I would even mention in the description that this gunfight isn’t as good as the other gunfights—or whatever the action is.
• Something really gross in an otherwise not-so-gross movie. For instance, in the movie King Kong—the movie that started the whole idea for RunPee—there’s a scene with huge bugs that eat people. The rest of the movie isn’t that gross and disgusting. There are a lot of people who don’t like scenes like that and so they would gladly miss that part. Speaking of which, we also have Alert Peetimes. Those are Peetimes that usually contain scenes that show animal cruelty, torture, or violent sex.

Sometimes, it happens that I have a good Peetime candidate, but a few minutes later, a much better one comes up. I try to keep at least 15 minutes between Peetimes, so I’ll pick the best one. Or if the are different types of scenes, say one is an action scene and the other is a love scene, then I’ll leave them both so that the user can pick what to miss.

Our goal is to have about one Peetime during each thirty-minute span of a movie. Of course, a lot of that depends on the movie. If I find a good Peetime and there’s only about 30-40 minutes remaining in the movie I’ll stop taking notes and enjoy the ending.

Of course, I have to sit in the theater until the credits end to check for those post-credit scenes. Then, I can RunPee myself before adding the Peetimes to the database.