Movie Theater Experiences

[Swift]

At home, I watch all credits through to the end, but at he cinema I'll usually stay until at least the cast credits have rolled. Staying longer depends on who I'm with, what type of movie it was (some films require some mulling over for a few minutes, some are not worth giving any further thought to), whether I'm curious to see the name of a song or want to know a filming location, and whether the staff are waiting (at the Cineplexes here at least, the staff stand at the front and wait until everyone leaves before they start cleaning, so I always feel uncomfortable making them wait, especially if it's just me there)

[Michael Kerpan]

A few shows have nice little post-credits extras -- so our family always stays until the end.

[Monterey Jack]

This routine resulted in a unique experience when I went to an evening screening of Furiosa last year at a multiplex in a small town I had been visiting for work. Needless to say, I was the only one to stay for all the credits, but when I stepped out into the theater lobby after the end of the film, I quickly became aware that I was the last person left in the building - the remaining employees had all left and turned off the lights! Fortunately, I was still able to exit without setting off an alarm. I briefly had visions of being trapped in the building until the next afternoon with only stale popcorn as sustenance.

Sounds kind of sublime to me.

[Matt]

A "Twilight Zone" episode where you're in a movie theater for the rest of your life but the only film you can watch is Furiosa.

[Black Hat]

Has anybody ever had someone talking to themselves? This happened to me a few weeks ago, and I keep thinking about it.

[willoneill]

Has anybody ever had someone talking to themselves? This happened to me a few weeks ago, and I keep thinking about it.

A couple of times, though the one that sticks out in my mind, the person was clearly intellectually disabled, so I didn't think much of it.

[willoneill]

Saw Kill Bill TWBA last night a local chain multiplex (it's playing in 35 mm at an independent theatre in early January, but I'll be away). At the intermission, I got up to use the bathroom and get a drink refill. A young staff member saw me leave the theatre and ask if the movie was done (presumably because he'd then be required to clean it). When I explained that no, it's just the intermission, I got a blank stare and then had to explain what an intermission was. I'm guessing this young man was hired after the theatre played The Brutalist last year.

The kids these days!

[Brian C]

Has anybody ever had someone talking to themselves? This happened to me a few weeks ago, and I keep thinking about it.

I was working as a manager once and we got complaints about a woman loudly talking to herself. So I go in and it turns out, she’s not actually talking to herself, she’s talking and gesturing loudly at the screen. So I go up and ask if she’d mind please keeping it down. She ignores me, so I ask again, and she turns her head to me and says, “shhh! I’m watching the movie,” and then goes right back to interacting with the movie. She seemed lucid in the sense that she obviously understood what was happening in the movie, but also seemed to have only the vaguest of notions that she was out in public among other people.

Another time, got a complaint about a group of kids that were making noise. Turns out it’s a group of college kids, and only one of them is making noise, once again talking to the screen. His buddies all saw me coming and started nudging him to shut up, but too late. I asked them all out into the hall, and what was happening here was that the talker was drugged to the gills, red-eyed and angry, and his buddies all stood around apologetically while he threatened to kill me if I messed with him.

Police ended up removing both from the building.

[Guido]

That reminds of a truly exceptional screening many moons ago at the Somerville Theatre. My ex and I went to see Korine's The Beach Bum in one of the smaller downstairs theatres which turned out to be nearly empty that night: the two of us, a guy behind us, and a shadowy figure sitting in the front row who started out calm enough but soon started laughing, clapping, pointing, and hollering in excitement. But his wasn't just a vocal performance — the drugs soon had him jumping on seats, like Cruise on Oprah cranked to 11, in not just one but multiple rows. He paced like this for the rest of the screening, having the time of his life. Given the movie in question, we did too.

Speaking of Korine...I used to usher once in a while at the Harvard Film Archive and was lucky enough to be working the night he came by to introduce a screening of Trash Humpers. I remember he was wearing a spectacular bomber covered in Looney Toons characters smoking blunts (naturally). Right before the screening, as Haden Guest was introducing him and the film, he walked up to me in the lobby and asked if I could spot him a dollar bill to grab a chocolate bar from the vending machine (which I sadly didn't have). But the kicker was seeing him take the piss out of Guest during the Q&A, deflecting every serious question to ramble on about important matters such as how he and his best friend growing up — whose father, wouldn't you know, invented the choose-your-own-adventure novel — would spend their afternoons tap-dancing on concrete parking blocks across Nashville...

[beamish14]

Speaking of Korine...I used to usher once in a while at the Harvard Film Archive and was lucky enough to be working the night he came by to introduce a screening of Trash Humpers. I remember he was wearing a spectacular bomber covered in Looney Toons characters smoking blunts (naturally). Right before the screening, as Haden Guest was introducing him and the film, he walked up to me in the lobby and asked if I could spot him a dollar bill to grab a chocolate bar from the vending machine (which I sadly didn't have). But the kicker was seeing him take the piss out of Guest during the Q&A, deflecting every serious question to ramble on about important matters such as how he and his best friend growing up — whose father, wouldn't you know, invented the choose-your-own-adventure novel — would spend their afternoons tap-dancing on concrete parking blocks across Nashville...

I think I discussed this somewhere else on the forum, but I had a truly awful Q&A experience with Korine at the American Cinematheque, as the jackass friend he chose to moderate had some incredibly imbecilic questions and used the term “wigger”, which nearly caused some audience members to scream in disgust.

Korine did sign an art book of his that I brought to it. I’ve generally had good experiences when asking filmmakers to sign books or posters that I have, and I usually don’t get into conversations (although I had a very nice one with Terry Zwigoff, who told me that he didn’t keep copies of his scripts or old ephemera and did not care about leaving behind some kind of legacy at a university). Terry Gilliam is the only one I remember wanting to get an autograph from, but he literally ran out to his limo after the screening concluded.

[Zot!]

Speaking of Korine...he walked up to me in the lobby and asked if I could spot him a dollar bill to grab a chocolate bar from the vending machine....tap-dancing...incredibly imbecilic questions and used the term “wigger”

Sounds very on brand to me. He drew a bathroom-stall dick on my Gummo laserdisc. Actually come to think of it, when Bela Tarr introduced Satantango, he gave a very impassioned (on the verge of tears) speech about the importance of creative integrity, then said that something very terrible had happened and he had to leave immediately. Again, truth in advertising.

[beamish14]

Speaking of Korine...he walked up to me in the lobby and asked if I could spot him a dollar bill to grab a chocolate bar from the vending machine....tap-dancing...incredibly imbecilic questions and used the term “wigger”

Sounds very on brand to me. He drew a bathroom-stall dick on my Gummo laserdisc. Actually come to think of it, when Bela Tarr introduced Satantango, he gave a very impassioned (on the verge of tears) speech about the importance of creative integrity, then said that something very terrible had happened and he had to leave immediately. Again, truth in advertising.

My Korine drawing is a smoking bunny

[Monterey Jack]

A "Twilight Zone" episode where you're in a movie theater for the rest of your life but the only film you can watch is Furiosa.

Again...sublime.

[hearthesilence]

I don't know if he still does this, but apparently when Albert Serra signed stuff for people, he'd do some epic sketching incorporating the person's name, his own and a few words of his choosing. I'm guessing he doesn't get mobbed by autograph seekers because it sounds like something that would take a while to do for each person.

[beamish14]

I don't know if he still does this, but apparently when Albert Serra signed stuff for people, he'd do some epic sketching incorporating the person's name, his own and a few words of his choosing. I'm guessing he doesn't get mobbed by autograph seekers because it sounds like something that would take a while to do for each person.

Clive Barker does some incredibly detailed sketches at book signings. You can probably see some examples on Abebooks

Orson Welles often included sketches on his signatures, too

[domino harvey]

As did Krusty the Clown (fun side note: when I opened my bank account at eighteen I tried to make my signature have stars on either side of my name like Krusty and I was sternly told that wasn’t allowed. I still sign birthday cards with the stars though)

[domino harvey]

Excellent 2008 Chris Fujiwara essay on how modern American audiences treat a Sirk film versus how the Japanese receive them - everything he mentions regarding art house cinema watchers and Hollywood films remains the same or worse

[Michael Kerpan]

Chris seems to be pretty permanently based in Japan, as far as I can tell. Alas, I didn't get to have a get-together with him when I was in Tokyo this year.

I do think Japanese reception of other types of film is also better. Thus, (back in the early 2000s) they laughed at the obviously funny parts of Tokyo Story -- while American audiences (and apparently critics) sat reverently through those same moments.

[hearthesilence]

In all honesty, I think a film's home country audience is more prone to laughing at the humor while foreign audiences who are respectful tend not to. Todd Haynes observed this with his own films when they screen at Cannes and then the NYFF.

[MichaelB]

The late Gilbert Adair once described being repeatedly shushed by a fellow audience member for having the temerity to laugh at Buster Keaton’s The Navigator. Accosting him afterwards, Adair asked him what on earth was wrong with laughing at a comedy, and was told “it’s not a comedy, it’s a classic!”

Buster Keaton would have found that attitude utterly bewildering.

[domino harvey]

In all honesty, I think a film's home country audience is more prone to laughing at the humor while foreign audiences who are respectful tend not to.

He mentions in the essay that they laughed at the parts which were meant to be funny, but didn’t derisively laugh at what American audiences find worthy of mockery

[Drucker]

For whatever it's worth, my all-time favorite moviegoing experience was seeing Imitation Of Life at BAM before the pandemic. I found the audience remarkably respectful and drawn in. During the climax of the crane shot, right before the ambulance drives away, you could hear people tearing up and sniffling in the audience. It was truly remarkable to be a part of. #notallSirkscreenings.

[domino harvey]

In my experience NYC audiences are generally immune from this because some older viewer will not hesitate to tell them to shut the fuck up so they’re usually on better behavior. But it’s getting bad elsewhere. Music Box in Chicago had to add a PSA to their screenings asking people to stop laughing inappropriately after they got (justifiably) dragged in online reviews for how bad their audiences were getting

[Zot!]

In my experience NYC audiences are generally immune from this because some older viewer will not hesitate to tell them to shut the fuck up so they’re usually on better behavior. But it’s getting bad elsewhere. Music Box in Chicago had to add a PSA to their screenings asking people to stop laughing inappropriately after they got (justifiably) dragged in online reviews for how bad their audiences were getting

The Music Box was always a bit more "punk rock" rather than art house kind of theater, and I associate it with the live organ player, all sorts of goofy gimmicks, a rattling basement boiler, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I saw a 35mm John Holmes movie in 3D there. They just had a 35mm screening of Gummo with a heavy metal record fair in the lobby. If I wanted a more respectful experience, I think I would go to the SAIC Gene Siskel instead, it's far more geared for sophisticates.

[Brian C]

It's funny, because Music Box Films is almost impossibly genteel.

My experience with the Music Box throughout the 2010s was mostly with their (oft sparsely attended, at the time) weekend matinee repertory screenings and first-run releases, I was never the audience for these kinds of "audience participation" shenanigans. But nonetheless, it seems like The Room - which the Music Box leaned very hard into - was probably a big turning point in general. Rocky Horror screenings have been their own thing for decades, but it never seemed to spill over ... time and place, etc. But with The Room this kind of thing really broke containment, and ironic enthusiasm became a became a big cultural signifier.

Very possible that I'm wrong about this, but I seem to also have vague memories of Music Box being an early adopter of the "sing-along" screenings that Disney eventually started doing themselves. I don't remember specific movies (maybe Christmas musicals? or Willy Wonka or something?) But having been away from Chicago a few years, I'm not really surprised that Music Box in particular is having problems with this kind of stuff, it feels like they incubated it themselves over time.