Movie Theater Experiences

[RossyG]

I'm fairly certain the guy's joking and didn't really do that.

[wattsup32]

Old people: Ruining movies for the rest of us since 1895.

There is an art house theater in the town where I live that is staffed by kids from the local high school and attended almost exclusively by people over 65. Two experiences spring to mind.

I don't recall what I was seeing, but it wasn't in English. It was what would pass for a kid movie, so maybe a Miyazaki or something similar. For a solid half hour an old woman behind me read the subtitles out loud to the young man with her--but not in a whisper. She used a full story-time-for-toddlers-at-the-library voice. I was annoyed, but tried to be patient since I figured they went there thinking the English dub was going to be shown and were surprised by the subs. I figured the poor kid was to young to read or at least to young to read as quickly as the subs were passing. After a while, though, my patience wore thin. I turned to ask them to read quietly and I'l be damned if the kid wasn't at least 16.

The second experience was maybe my favorite movie going experience. I was watching Broken Flowers with a pretty packed house. The second the end credits rolled, an old gentleman stood and loudly proclaimed in what I image the voices of Statler and Waldorf would sound like if they didn't take such pleasure in their curmudgeonly ways, "I didn't like beginning. I didn't like the middle. And I didn't like the end!"

[dustybooks]

I saw Philomena on Christmas Eve, in a nearly empty theater, and I swear the image was flickering the entire time like the projector bulb was on its way out. I assumed the other six or seven people in attendance were finding this as distracting as I did so I scampered out to the lobby (I almost never leave the theater during a film, even for a moment) and said something to the first employee I saw but also told them I wasn't sure there was anything they could do about it in the middle of a screening (is there?). It continued happening for the full duration but I did my best to ignore it. After the film was over, my girlfriend told me she hadn't noticed the problem at all. Are my eyes just letting me down or are some people just more attuned to this than others?

[Kirkinson]

I haven't read much scientific study on this, but I would not be surprised to learn that some people can process visual information faster than others, fast enough to lead to very different experiences with this sort of thing. My ex used to say she could see a 35mm film flickering if she looked at the edges of the screen (i.e., stopped paying attention to the content of the image) which I have never been able to do. She also talked of brief, red-and-blue "afterimages" that were visible when she moved her eyes around a large HD screen the first time she watched a Blu-ray, and she was never able to watch 3D movies without great difficulty because it always looked to her like she was watching two 2D images superimposed on top of each other (even in films like Pina, where the effect seems flawless to me) and trying to concentrate on both layers simultaneously gave her migraines. I always figured that somehow her brain was wired in such a way that it cut straight through the illusions upon which these visual media rely.

Of course, it's also true that some people are simply more attuned to projection problems than others. I had a recent experience in which a film I shot was erroneously screened at a festival in Eugene from an extremely low-quality online screener file (sub-standard YouTube PQ!) and while the director and I both recognized it was soft, blocky, contrasty and riddled with the worst compression artifacts imaginable, all on a big screen, nevertheless one of the film's lead actors (who obviously has a vested interested in the film's presentation and had already seen it several times in good circumstances) said she hadn't noticed at all. A couple other people in attendance who had seen it before said the same thing. I felt such an odd combination of relief and disappointment after that....

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I have a positive movie experience to report! This was the first year I watched It's a Wonderful Life in a theater on 35mm (a Christmas miracle!) and on December 25th no less. The packed audience was so respectful of a movie pushing seventy years old and almost on cue in the last real, you could hear the sniffling noses of people on the verge of years all around the theater like it was in surround sound. As someone who goes to the theater multiple times a week, I've never experienced something like that.

But to cancel that euphoria and love of humanity, I was mugged in the street right after. The police apparently caught the crooks and I'll get my stuff tomorrow. Oh well!

[Red Screamer]

Seeing Nebraska yesterday, I'm reminded why I try to avoid an elderly audience. I was lucky enough to not have any narrators in the group but it seems that they would laugh hysterically at anything that was happening whether it was comedic or not. This happens just about every tine I'm with an elderly audience and I just don't get it. What makes everything do damn funny to them

[LQ]

Seeing Nebraska yesterday, I'm reminded why I try to avoid an elderly audience. I was lucky enough to not have any narrators in the group but it seems that they would laugh hysterically at anything that was happening whether it was comedic or not. This happens just about every tine I'm with an elderly audience and I just don't get it. What makes everything do damn funny to them

At least you weren't seated next to a pair of greyhairs who kept leaning over to each other and whispering at the top of their lungs, "HE'S DEAD" a zillion times in the 2nd act. (We got the constant laughter too, but this experience was particularly egregious, as they kept doing it after we shushed them, only "quieter")

[domino harvey]

Feeling better and better about my attempts to avoid the theatre experience all together

[flyonthewall2983]

That reminds me of the time I saw Prairie Home Companion with my mother. When everyone had filed in I looked around and said to her, "I think you and I are the youngest people here".

[Red Screamer]

That reminds me of the time I saw Prairie Home Companion with my mother. When everyone had filed in I looked around and said to her, "I think you and I are the youngest people here".

Here in Iowa I'm surprised to not be the youngest person in the theater, unless I'm at Anchorman 2 or the sort

[Lemmy Caution]

600 People Involved in Movie Theater Brawl, 5 Arrested

[Sandman]

600 People Involved in Movie Theater Brawl, 5 Arrested

Oh dear, not my idea of a fun evening.

[med]

The talkativeness of the elderly has been addressed earlier in the thread. Here was my contribution:

When I saw In the Mood for Love, I was sitting near an old woman and a much younger man. I don't think they were there together, but they were talking amiably enough before the movie. And during the trailers. And when the movie started. I don't recall much of the conversation until what was being said as the film began:

Old Lady: So I guess they spend a lot of time in noodle shops in this movie. That's a popular thing for Asian people in those countries. Always in the noodle shops. Slurp slurp slurp.

She was actually making slurping sounds, not saying "slurp." She was even miming the motion of eating noodles, this I know because I had turned to look at them, the better to say loudly and firmly "The movie has started. Will you PLEASE stop talking."

The young man's response was instant, but with a tone of apology: "It's just the credits." The woman was apparently shocked by my request, as 20 seconds passed before she hissed at me, "who are you. Who are you." I didn't tell her. Neither she nor the young man said anything for the rest of the film.

I also remember having to shout down about half a dozen senior citizens at a screening of 10 Things I Hate about You (!)

[lacritfan]

But to cancel that euphoria and love of humanity, I was mugged in the street right after. The police apparently caught the crooks and I'll get my stuff tomorrow. Oh well!

Seriously? That part of Fairfax isn't safe anymore?

[Professor Wagstaff]

When I saw "Amour" in theatres last winter, a late-middle age couple decided to talk throughout much of the beginning of the film. They were shushed, first at low volumes then quite loudly. Individuals in the audience started to sternly demand they be quiet, until they entire theatre began screaming at them.

I don't find myself having too many problems with talkers and texters so much as I do with people who act strangely throughout the film. I recently sat next to an elderly man at a screening of "Out of the Furnace" who gave off a Max Cady style laugh at all the horrific violence (particularly the opening in which Woody Harrelson assaults his date at the drive-in).

[RossyG]

The woman was apparently shocked by my request, as 20 seconds passed before she hissed at me, "who are you. Who are you."

I think my response would be "I'm a fucking angry cunt who wants to hear the film and not your puerile yapping, that's who".

Or words to that effect.

[RossyG]

When I saw "Amour" in theatres last winter, a late-middle age couple decided to talk throughout much of the beginning of the film. They were shushed, first at low volumes then quite loudly. Individuals in the audience started to sternly demand they be quiet, until they entire theatre began screaming at them.

Until the mid-80's - in Britain at least - there'd usually be a staff member in the auditorium to make sure this didn't happen.

Since then, they don't give a toss about obnoxious audience members. They have understaffed cinemas to save money, but they must lose a hell of a lot of custom. They've certainly lost mine. I've gone from going once a week to never going at all.

[Sandman]

I've gone from going once a week to never going at all.

I also. I haven't been to a regular cinema house since the early 90s (Groundhog Day, I think), and the last time I went anywhere to watch films was the Fritz Lang retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in DC several years ago. Just can't tolerate people talking, unwrapping candy, bumping my seat, etc. I'm content with cable and home video.

[willoneill]

Until the mid-80's - in Britain at least - there'd usually be a staff member in the auditorium to make sure this didn't happen.

The two independent theaters in Ottawa still have staff in the auditorium, but that practise has long since ended in the multiplexes. They do pop in to check every half hour or so, and last week when I saw Out of the Furnace, the manager himself was checking while these two girls (who walked in 20 minutes late) had been texting people and talking through the entire film. The manager walked over to their seats (they were near me), and politely told them that he if saw their phones, or heard them talking again, they'd be removed from the theater. Problem solved. But, after the movie, they left ahead of me, and when I walked into the lobby, I saw one of the girls almost screaming at the manager, claiming she had to text through the film, because her father "might have been having a heart attack." ???

The other incident I witnessed yesterday was at a sold out showing of Saving Mr. Banks. Almost all of the good seats were full, with a few singles here and there. A woman walked in less than 5 minutes before the start time, and loudly started demanding that people shift seats in different rows so that members of her large extended family could all sit together, at least in pairs. Now I have a strong opinion on requesting people to move, that varies depending on the theater, but by my count this woman insisted on displacing 19 different people, which I think we can all agree is excessive.

[FerdinandGriffon]

People are so self righteous about this stuff, as if they're losing face publicly and have to defend their honor every time someone politely asks them to do anything. At a screening of Persona the other day, there was a main in the row in front of me, maybe mid-fifties, with a girl about half his age seated next to him, possibly his daughter. He spent the twenty or so minutes we shared together before the movie started barraging this young woman with his deep, profound love of Bergman, and his fascination with the relationship between Ingmar & Liv. When the movie started, he kept going. A few minutes into the prelude, I shushed him. He angrily insisted that the movie hadn't begun yet (I guess because there hadn't been any dialogue?). I assured him that it had, and asked him to please stop talking, which sent him into a splenetic fit of hissing and muttering that took about five minutes to subside.

At the same theater (Walter Reade) I've had couples who chatted incessantly throughout a film tell me point blank that they never said a word when I've told them how rude they were after a screening.

Was once nearly chased out of the Harvard Film Archive by a man outraged that I had shushed his wife during a screening of Monsieur Klein. She had been talking at normal volume (and pointing at the screen!) constantly, and he only backed down a little when about a dozen other annoyed patrons came to my aid.

No matter how bad it gets, I don't think it'll ever scare me away from the theater entirely. Sometimes it seems to be getting better. MoMA, which a year or two ago was HQ and barracks for what I dubbed "the Plastic Bag Brigade", is noticeably quieter these days, and I was shocked to find myself in a sold-out screening of American Hustle in a Massachusetts multiplex that was absolutely silent over the holidays.

[Mathew2468]

God, I can't stand people or noise. I haven't been to a theatre in 7 years. I don't even watch DVDs on garbage day because I can hear the truck.

[Murdoch]

I've come to the point where I only go to the theater when a friend insists we go, and then only to a showing when it's in its last run. It doesn't always work out, but I did get to see Certified Copy in a nearly empty theater thanks to going on a Tuesday during its last screening. Although I haven't done this in a while and with my current schedule it's gotten to the point where I only go out to see a movie two or three times a year.

[Numero Trois]

I try to go to the theatres twice a week. Over the years there's only been a few times where there's been anyone chattering or making noise. Generally because I only go to Saturday or Sunday matinees. And if I go at night, I try to avoid Friday & Saturdays as much as possible. Of course, it doesn't hurt if one lives in an area where the movie-going culture isn't terribly strong.

[med]

I rarely go to movies anymore, but when I do, I try to hit the earliest showing possible on Saturday or Sunday. (If it's at a multi/megaplex, this will be in the morning.) In my experience, the people who go at these times go to see the movie and not socialize.

[Ibnezra]

I was in a film club, and when they had screenings the theater was indeed choked with blue-hairs. The elderly that attended the showings were usually very respectful, but when I went to their screening of "The Artist" a woman of approximately 83 sat in the seat in front of me. I think she had dementia or something. Every thought she had was verbal and very audible, and with a suspension of disbelief that was profound.

She would shout:

"He's gone deaf! No he's blind! Deaf, deaf, he's.... he's blind, he's gone deaf..."

Then later:

"OOOOOH! He's gotta gun! He's going to SHOOT somebody... NO! He's going to shoot himself."

And there was sincere desperation and urgency in her voice, just as if a member of the audience had brandished a revolver. I swear, I thought she was about to scream at the top of her lungs, "Somebody stop him!" And not imploring the characters on the screen, but the other patrons in the theater.

This went on the entire movie, and no one ever said anything to her about it. It was a singular event, just really, really bizarre.