It started as a simple ticket swap for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, which hit theaters July 15 as one of the summer's biggest releases. Eric Nathan traded seats with producer Gooch (Bob Goochman) and thought nothing of it — until he actually looked up what he'd been handed.
Nate realized seats L7 and L8 weren't just regular seats — they were the companion seats next to a wheelchair section.
From there it only got worse. Nate showed up to the theater already spiraling, and once the movie started, the seat next to him filled in exactly the way he feared.
Guy in a wheelchair arrived. He asked if I was his companion. I apologized more than I’ve ever apologized. I asked if this makes me an asshole and he said no but his mom wanted to come but the seats were taken. I want to die. I want to kill @bobgoochman
Nate spent the next 2 hours of a 3-hour-plus Nolan epic marinating in guilt, at one point getting sent to fetch water for a man who should've had his own companion seated next to him. He torched Gooch publicly for buying the tickets in the first place, capping the night with an all-caps PSA to anyone listening: don't mess with handicapped seating.
DONT BUY THE TICKETS FOR THE HANDICAPPED PEOPLE YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES
Then the other shoe dropped. Tommy Smokes teased that one of the great pranks in Barstool history had just wrapped, crediting Chris Klemmer and promising a full explainer video. Turns out the wheelchair guy was a plant — an intern or coworker pulling off, in Smokes' words, the acting job of a lifetime.
Nate's reaction once he pieced together that Chris Klemmer had orchestrated the entire ordeal.
The reveal came with a cherry on top: Klemmer apparently had a photographer stationed inside the theater the whole time, capturing a candid shot of the crowd's standing ovation just to sell the bit further. Nate posted it himself once he found out, equal parts furious and impressed that someone went to those lengths to make him sweat through a Nolan movie.
Whether or not Nate ever fully forgives Klemmer, the movie itself apparently delivered — he called The Odyssey one of the best of all time once the dust settled. But the real story isn't the film. It's that Barstool's internal prank war just produced a multi-day, multi-person operation complete with a planted actor and a hired photographer, all to convince one guy he'd stolen a disabled man's seat at the movies.