Movie Theater Experiences

[Matt]

I dunno, seems like an appropriate response to finding yourself at a screening of Chipwrecked.

[Perkins Cobb]

Hmmm, maybe that explains where this cutie thought she was.

[hearthesilence]

Not sure what's the best place for this, but the Film Society at Lincoln Center has been doing an ongoing series celebrating the 50th anniversary of the New York Film Festival, and this weekend they've programmed three New German Cinema masterworks:

FRI 6:15pm Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
FRI 8:15pm Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
SAT 2:00pm Wim Wenders’ Kings of the Road (not on DVD in the U.S.)

...and you can buy 4 tickets for the price of 3 via this link.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Not sure why they're laughing

[Oedipax]

Not sure why they're laughing

It's because by this point they were 3.5 hours into the screening, the film having broken twice already. The ads coming up near the end of the film was just one more absurdity at that point.

[Roger Ryan]

While it still ticks me off that the film was ruined in such a manner, I found myself laughing along with the audience. It plays out just like all those comedies where the wrong film is shown or a film is screened with inadvertent double-exposures (as with Keaton's THE CAMERAMAN). I don't think you can ignore the juxtaposition of Kingsley's Melies describing the fantasies he created at the dawn of cinema with the sudden appearance of the hip-hop dancing KIA hamsters. My favorite moment was when the Broadway production of WARHORSE was advertised superimposed over the ghostly carriage pulled by the skeletal horse!

[kinjitsu]

THR Poll: 9 out of 10 Call Social Media New Form of Entertainment; Young People Want Texting in Movies

[Gregory]

Millennials want their public moviegoing experience to replicate their own private media experiences

Private media experiences involve all sorts of things that shouldn't be replicated in public theaters.

Having dedicated social-media-friendly seats, or even entire theaters, can make the moviegoing experience more relevant and enjoyable for them.

It can make the experience more relevant to what for "millennials"?

[warren oates]

I think texting should be allowed in books! I don't see why I even have to click out of my Kindle iPhone reader to text, wtf! It's like censoring my feelings!

Seriously, folks, today my mid afternoon matinee of a Terence Davies period piece, heavily attended by blue hairs such that I who am pushing mid-age was practically the youngest in attendance, was nevertheless beset by all manner of cellphone douchery, including someone at least 10-15 years my senior who had to be asked loudly and twice to turn off his phone and still wouldn't. This is a self-selecting audience of old folks out to see a quiet little art film. No wonder teenage jackasses want to be free to text about how much Transformers 5 sucks while they are half-watching it.

[domino harvey]

I know everyone's saying it already before we read this, but Christ, we're so fucked as a society

[Brian C]

Seriously, folks, today my mid afternoon matinee of a Terence Davies period piece, heavily attended by blue hairs such that I who am pushing mid-age was practically the youngest in attendance, was nevertheless beset by all manner of cellphone douchery, including someone at least 10-15 years my senior who had to be asked loudly and twice to turn off his phone and still wouldn't. This is a self-selecting audience of old folks out to see a quiet little art film.

No surprise. I've been saying since I first began ushering in a movie theater (i.e., May 1994) that old people misbehave in movies just as much as teenagers. They talk to each other relentlessly about everything (e.g., "oh, what a pretty house!"), and are exponentially more likely to either ignore requests to please be quiet or get downright belligerent about them.

I don't want to paint with too broad a brush here, because in my experience old folks are also the ones most likely to complain about other people who are too loud. But teens get a bad rap, honestly.

[warren oates]

Oh, I have a classic old-person story I should have posted years ago (because I should have joined years ago)

A little scene-setting: 2002...MOMA...Sokurov retrospective...sleeping on my brother's floor in Queens...blissing out everyday to incredible films there was no other way to see at the time...most of the shows, most of the audiences were amazingly attentive and polite...once two guys came in late and said "excuse me" in my row a minute or so before the show...already almost meditating I was annoyed as I noticed who they were: Lou Reed and Julian Schnabel...Susan Sontag was there a lot too...For me this was like a religious retreat

Cut to Mother And Son one of the few Sokurov films I was able to see before this, though I was eager to take it in again alongside all the others. It's a Friday night and the screening is packed, a near sell-out crowd...as lights go down and the delicate soundtrack comes up softly over black...

When all of a sudden: a serious commotion of shushing arises about halfway back behind me somewhere. An old man responds to this very loudly and indignantly: "What!? I'm just talking to my wife!? The feature hasn't even started yet!? What!?" Clearly a senior abusing his regular discount or membership or whatever who didn't check the schedule or just expected something from Hollywood's Golden Age or whatever.

A couple people started trying to shout him down: "Will you please be quiet!" But he only became more entrenched in his own position: "No! Why don't you be quiet! The picture hasn't started!"

Ugh. This went on, of course, until the first images came. But by then my adrenaline was up and surging as it is wont to do every time an asshole tries to ruin a screening like this and it took me at least another 10-15 minutes to calm down and enjoy the film.

[dustybooks]

I was seriously going to bump this thread yesterday to gripe about my experience seeing 'A Separation,' beset by similar behavior. The two elderly ladies behind me narrated every shot in every scene in the entire movie with their own interpretations of what was happening / predictions of what would happen next. (For those who've seen the film:

Spoiler

during the sequence when the Alzheimer's-afflicted father is in the bathroom and his son can't get the door open, the conversation behind me went like this...

Lady 1: "Oh, he's fallen."
Lady 2: "Uh-huh, I bet that's what it is. I bet he fell down so the door jammed and now they can't get in there."
Lady 1: "Looks like he probably fell. Look, now they're gonna try to push it open."
Lady 2: "I bet he's just fallen, probably fell out of the bathtub."
Lady 1: "If he fell that probably means that -- oh, look. Look!"
Lady 2: "Yep, he fell. He sure did."
Lady 1: "I knew that was what it was. I knew he fell."

That was the tip of the iceberg.)

As we were leaving, we mostly heard complaints from this crowd -- as warren oates said, self-selecting and invariably decades older than I am -- about how long and "tortuous" the movie was, people glancing at their watches and claiming to be appalled at the time. Isn't it fairly normal behavior to check the runtime of a feature before you go and see it?

We don't have an actual arthouse venue in town; this is a weekly event hosted by the public radio station here, and it's a great idea for a midsized city like ours... but every time I go I remember why I tend to avoid it. Last time we went was for "Melancholia" and the talking back to the screen through the entire film was infectious, and an usher (who happens to be a volunteer at the library where I work, but this is still weird) asked me if I enjoyed the movie and berated me about how young and stupid I was when I said yes, then accosted me the next day at work with the same critique! The point being, I actually have a worse time with rude people and bad attitudes when I go to these legitimate and supposedly upper-scale screenings than when I see something at the multiplex, where I would actually expect distractions.

[warren oates]

Another oldie but goodie from a screening of Carlos Reygadas' The Battle In Heaven...There's a guy in the row behind me who I imagine is of the species I think I like least in any art film audience -- someone who seems to be there out of sheer obligation because he feels he must see such-and-such to check it off his list or denounce it at whatever party he's going to tonight. About twenty minutes in, I can tell he's seriously not enjoying it. Lots of shifting around and then increasingly vocal huffing and scoffing at everything that happens on-screen.

Weirdly, the film actually seems to be, in some sense, working on him. As the film continues, he's becoming incredibly uncomfortable with what's happening on-screen, just like the rest of us, more or less exactly like the filmmaker intended. The difference is that he's not able to process this discomfort properly, he's not appreciating it as a necessary part of the experience, so his grumbling just grows and grows in spite of being quietly and repeatedly shushed by me and some others nearby.

Those who've seen this film know that it all builds painstakingly to one fateful moment where the protagonist

Spoiler

does something horrible and shocking.

So just as the film is about to payoff its intense slow burn, the dude behind me can't take it anymore. He blurts out: "This movie is so stupid."

And I turn around, look him right in the face and answer him loudly: "Then shut up and leave!"

He didn't leave, but he did shut up. And everyone else within earshot actually clapped, applauding my telling him off.

[Calvin]

I went to a screening of The Hunger Games last night and there was not one but two rounds of applause (one during the film, one at the end). I was slightly taken aback because I've never seen that before. Unfortunately, the two women (early 20s) who were seated next to me decided to give a running commentary on the hotness of the male actors.

[MichaelB]

I went to a screening of The Hunger Games last night and there was not one but two rounds of applause (one during the film, one at the end). I was slightly taken aback because I've never seen that before.

You should have seen Chang Cheh's Five Element Ninjas at the late lamented Scala Cinema in the mid-1980s. I suspect for most of us this was our first exposure to full-on Hong Kong genre insanity, and we reacted accordingly.

If I remember rightly, the biggest round of applause accompanied the defeat of the evil water ninjas by the cunning expedient of our heroes forming an upside-down human pyramid, the one on the bottom skating across the water on his toes while the others speared the ninjas on either side. And no wonder.

[domino harvey]

My co-worker went to a midnight screening of the Hunger Games Thursday night and she said it was like going to see a play, with constant applause and cheering-- depending on how much time you spend with teenagers, you'll either be surprised or nonplussed by this response. These books have been huge for a while now and by all accounts the film is of the Bazin model in that it catches the spirit of the book if not the letter

[Guido]

My partner is an avid silencer of morons in movie theaters, and, unlike myself, is capable of facing down even the most intimidating idiots in the room, not to mention those that might be five, six or more rows away from us. My favorite incident took place at a screening of 300, which we had been invited to by kind but clueless friends, and out of respect for them, we couldn't just get up and leave.

This may have been opening night, and the excitement was palpable. I'm all for screenings that incite dramatic reactions from the crowd (when I saw Grindhouse, the film worked like magic, and the collective gasps, laughs and rounds of applause worked incredibly well), but there was one poor guy behind us who was taking it a little too far.

Sandwiched between about ten of his friends, the guy became the spokesperson for his group, dedicated to letting everyone in his vicinity know just how AWESOME this movie was; like, he couldn't even like, contain himself, you know?

"Holy shit, bro - that was fucking awesome! [...] Did you see that, man - that was pretty fucking awsome! [...] That shit is too awesome! [...] This slow-mo stuff is fucking awesome!"

At the top of his lungs, ad infinitum. My partner turns around, looks this guy in the face and says: "You know what would be awesome ? YOU SHUTTING THE FUCK UP." I've never seen a pack of guys that large stop in their tracks, and for the rest of the movie, they toned it down to a more appropriate level. Of course, they gave us dirty looks in the lobby afterwards, but none of them had the gall to say anything.

Suffice it to say, we were recently married.

[Calvin]

My co-worker went to a midnight screening of the Hunger Games Thursday night and she said it was like going to see a play, with constant applause and cheering-- depending on how much time you spend with teenagers, you'll either be surprised or nonplussed by this response.

I am a teenager but I was honestly quite surprised at the response - I've been to see numerous Harry Potters (meh) and Twilights (ugh) and there was never any applause. I'd like to think it's because they can tell a good film when they see one! The only other screening I've been at when there was full applause was The King's Speech.

[MichaelB]

Renoir's Le Crime de Monsieur Lange was a London repertory favourite in the 1990s, and all five screenings I attended ended with applause.

[med]

I saw Boogie Nights opening weekend. People applauded at the end. Whether it was due to their enjoyment of the movie on the whole or their enjoyment of the large penis, I'm not sure.

EDIT: Also, yes, I as well have encountered as many obnoxious elderly people as I have teenagers.

[CSM126]

I've seen applause at a few movies but the only time I felt compelled to join was when I saw Courageous. The movie was rubbish, but it was a Christian film and the theater was packed with church group people and, frankly, I find those types terrifying so I clapped just to not stick out.

As if my shoulder length black hair and goatee didn't make me stick out as the resident Satan (alternatively: Penn Jillette) of the pack.

The 300 post reminds me of my own experience with that film. Some man a few seats ver from me spent the whole movie groaning and squealing because he was so squeamish about the violence. A lady eventually asked him ever so politely to "shut the fuck up" and his reaction seemed to be that he thought his behavior was actually expected and necessary. The movie sucked anyway so I didn't mind.

On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised at the constant murmurs of derision during Eddie Murphy's new flick. Some movies deserve to be talked over.

[med]

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.

[Cold Bishop]

If I remember rightly, the biggest round of applause accompanied the defeat of the evil water ninjas by the cunning expedient of our heroes forming an upside-down human pyramid, the one on the bottom skating across the water on his toes while the others speared the ninjas on either side. And no wonder.

It was the drawn-and-quartering scene which made my audience burst into spontaneous applause.

[Brian C]

I had the option to go see The Hunger Games last night - my wife decided to go - and I passed because of the overwhelming crowds. But now I wonder if I shouldn't have gone precisely because of the crowd. I remember seeing the first Harry Potter film, and like Hunger Games I hadn't read the books and knew next to nothing about them. But in the Potter screening, we had a couple of kids sitting behind us, maybe 10-12 years old or so and obviously familiar with every word of the book, who narrated most of the movie as it was happening. I have a lot of patience with younger kids so I wasn't annoyed, but on top of that I actually found it really helpful to fill in the gaps for a Potter newbie like myself.

I gather that The Hunger Games skews to a slightly older crowd, but it would probably benefit the movie to see it in an auditorium full of people that are really excited about it.