Sunk costs and moives

While blogging on the topic of the Worst movie ever?, Megan McArdle shows why economists and non-economists should never go to a bad movie together. McArdle writes,

I saw the latter with my then boyfriend, who was the son of an economist. Ten minutes into the movie, he said "Let's go."

I demurred. "We paid three dollars for these tickets. I'm going to watch the movie."

Ten minutes later, he whispered more urgently "Come on, it's just getting worse. Let's go."

"No," I insisted, "I am not wasting three dollars on twenty minutes of movie."

The rest of the movie passed in a sort of a nightmare that has become associated in my mind with Mark Twain's description of opera:

The banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond belief. The racking and pitiliess pain of it remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of the time that I had my teeth fixed

By the time the lights went up, we were the only people in the theater. This on a Saturday night.

My boyfriend looked at me and said "I'm taking you to meet my father."

"Why?"

"Because someone needs to explain the concept of sunk costs to you."