Movie Theater Experiences

[Antoine Doinel]

Same deal when I saw Salo many years ago and same with Holy Mountain. Those kinds of extreme or outrageous scenes will either elicit uncomfortable laughter or stunned silence.

[MichaelB]

Regarding SALO, a friend of mine caught it at an art cinema somewhere in the D.C. area on original release. He was very absorbed in the film but was not unaware that there were more than a few walkouts and appalled murmurings. When the house lights came up and he was exiting with the hardy survivors he noticed all the virtually untouched tubs of popcorn and sodas sitting in the seats and on the floor and couldn't resist commenting loudly: "My, my just look at all those treats someone left behind. Wasn't anyone hungry?". He said some of the angry looks he got could have literally killed!

I can beat that - the first time I saw Salò was in Italy in the mid-1980s (I think it was the first time the film had been given an uncut release there), and I bought a bunch of grapes from a fruit stand outside the cinema just before going in.

Generously, they also came free with assorted small insect larvae, which I only discovered after I'd already eaten a few.

Something tells me Pasolini would have found that highly amusing.

[HerrSchreck]

So you bugged out watching the show heh heh... eh?

[HerrSchreck]

The 11th best film of the year. It is rivetting for 90 minutes then falls apart, but that's ok. Jill Clayburgh needed to be in this. The audience I was with loathed it and that actually enhanced the experience. Lotsa laughing AT the WTFness. I am not a huge fan of Hoffman, Sammy Morton or Michelle Dawson-Creek, but Hoff was good, Morton is tolerable for the first time ever and Michelle actually is an actress--who knew? Best of all, it is nice too look at--that was by far the biggest surprise. Also, I slept through a good 20 minutes here and there and I'm sure that helped. But it shows genuine egomaniacal ambition somehow without, in my view, being pretentious--very rare these days.

Barmy seems to always get his money's worth via two shows for the price of one. Have you ever seen a dude who so consistently reports on audience reaction? I've been going to the cinema in NY all my life and I keep missing these halls filled with open laughter, audible WTF-ing, trailer mockery, etc.

The best part is I suspect he goes to Lincoln Center a lot.

[GringoTex]

Barmy seems to always get his money's worth via two shows for the price of one. Have you ever seen a dude who so consistently reports on audience reaction? I've been going to the cinema in NY all my life and I keep missing these halls filled with open laughter, audible WTF-ing, trailer mockery, etc.

Maybe he's going to black theaters.

[Barmy]

People were literally saying "WTF" at Synecdoche. And this was UES, not Times Square.

[swo17]

Literally saying the letters W T F?

[Barmy]

Yes. And there were some L O L s as well. But they were LOLing AT, not with, the flick.

[Grand Illusion]

I just wonder what kind of determination it takes to keep going to the theater. The 11th best movie of the year was a movie you slept through?

[knives]

While I can't touch what most of what this thread comprises of I've got a few good ones. Recently when watching Funny Games (about February) There was a total of eight walk outs, but the funniest one was two old women who walked out when they were on the boat. Why the hell go through everything else and then walk out when the movie is about over? What was sure to be the worst was already very much so over? Also the first time I saw Once Upon a Time in the West around the time the black guy stands under the water some random guy yells out, "Now I see why it's so fucking long"

[TomReagan]

Does this qualify?

[tavernier]

already brought up in the Button thread

[Perkins Cobb]

A hero for our times.

[LQ]

Barmy might appreciate this. Who knows, maybe it was Barmy.

So at last night's screening of Gomorrah around the 30 minute mark a loud slobbering snore rang out from somewhere in the back left. The audience seemed to be tickled pink by this new development, as it was far more entertaining than the movie. No one made a move to wake him, so the perpetrator continued to rasp through another half-hour or so, whereupon we took our leave and never looked back (needless to say, we hated the film). I don't think I've ever been in an audience where a persistent and noisy snorer is allowed to go so long unscathed!

[JonathanM]

I went to see Joseph H. Lewis' under-rated gem Gun Crazy at the weekend and people were roaring with laughter at some of the lines of dialogue ("I want things... lots of things... BIG things" and "I've been reading articles about FUNERALS!") but then those same people applauded at the end of the film. I could live with that kind of audience reaction.

Two favourite experiences of mine :

I went to see that Kevin Costner film in which he plays a serial killer. There was a guy in the front row who was asleep by the time the adverts moved to trailers. He slept resolutely throughout the first 45 minutes of the film, snoring and occasionally muttering in his sleep. He then stood up and left. Then returned and went back to sleep. He also had a bandage around his head. The only thing I can think of to explain this is that he was either concussed or half-sedated but for whatever reason couldn't go home and sleep it off. I do love the idea of waking up halfway through a film, getting up and then going back in in order to go back to sleep.

I saw Ang Lee's Hulk in a cinema in Switzerland and it was a weekday. We sat down and just before the film starts, these two twenty-somethings accompanied by about a dozen mentally handicapped people sit down. Every five minutes through the film we would get a loud retard-roar and three or four times one of them got up and started wandering around the cinema until one of the helpers escorted them back to their seat. What was interesting was that a) the cinema staff refused to do anything about it and b) the responses to the roars got more and more fascistic as the film went on. Initially there were polite chuckles and then hushes but by the end of it people were shouting "is someone going to shut that THING up?"

EDIT : I'm amazed at the stories of wanking, cruising and plum-sucking in non-porn cinemas. I got to the cinema probably close to a hundred times a year and I've never seen anything like that. However, this does go some way to explaining why cinemas in London tend to have their house lights up a bit. I had always assumed it was for 'ealth n' safety reasons.

[fiddlesticks]

You use a demeaning term like "retard-roar," then criticize the insensitivity of the rest of the audience?

[JonathanM]

You use a demeaning term like "retard-roar," then criticize the insensitivity of the rest of the audience?

Would 'gurgling moan' be more appropriate? it was one of those noises traditionally associated with the mentally handicapped. It was a poor choice of words though, I apologise.

[Mr Sausage]

I do love the idea of waking up halfway through a film, getting up and then going back in in order to go back to sleep.

Maybe he went in search of an easier movie to sleep through but decided nothing was going to beat Kevin Costner.

[thirtyframesasecond]

When I saw The Class last weekend, there were a young couple who'd got there before us, quite a while before the film was due to start. They had, how should I put this politely, "learning difficulties". They spoke throughout the trailers - fair enough, but began to do so throughout the start of the film until someone near them told them to be quiet. They walked out about ten minutes later.

[jbeall]

You use a demeaning term like "retard-roar," then criticize the insensitivity of the rest of the audience?

Would 'gurgling moan' be more appropriate? it was one of those noises traditionally associated with the mentally handicapped. It was a poor choice of words though, I apologise.

I dunno, I think "retard-roar" is wonderfully descriptive! (Incidentally, "retarded" is coming back, at least as an adjective if not a noun. When school counselors try the political correct approach, telling parents that their kid has a "learning diability," apparently too many parents think that just means that their kid needs extra help, like a tutor or something. Ergo, telling parents that their child is retarded is the only way to get the message through.)

Here's my story: I was in the theater (can't remember which movie), and someone several rows directly behind me answered their cell-phone and began giving a play-by-play. After about a minute, someone somewhere up and to the left yelled "Shut the fuck up!"

Pause.

Then the cellphone user said into her phone, "ohmigod, is that person talking to me?" And from somewhere behind me and to the right, someone else yelled, "Yes, you idiot!!!!" The entire theater burst out laughing, but at least the cellphone user got the point and hung up.

[Antoine Doinel]

The AV Club staff recount their Barmiest moviegoing experiences.

[zedz]

Oh, that dredged up a memory.

Back in university I attended a film festival screening with two friends (either Sammy and Rosie Get Laid or Belly of an Architect). We were seated in the centre of the back row, in front of a low (six foot or so) wall between the entrance and the seats. About 15 minutes before the end of the movie, one of my friends had to leave for some other engagement and rather than disturb everyone else in the row, he clambered over the wall. In doing so, he deliberately let out an incredibly loud "WHOOOAH!!!", at which everybody in the cinema (full house) turned around to stare at the apparent source of the bellow: me and my remaining friend looking like possums in headlights, trying desperately not to laugh.

[domino harvey]

The AV Club staff recount their Barmiest moviegoing experiences.

The As Good As It Gets one is hilarious and almost justifies that film's existence

EDIT: I've spent the last hour reading the comments and I hate to admit it but the Onion's readers owned this thread

[Matt]

You know, I have so many of these stories, I wouldn't know where to begin: watching 28 Days Later in a theater that shared a wall with a restaurant in which someone had left the radio on at top volume (so that terrifying climactic moments were accompanied by the strains of Steve Winwood and Journey; watching Holy Smoke in a theater while a fucking rave was being set up in the lobby; watching I Stand Alone with a guy down front laughing HAW HAW HAW like he's in a Jack Chick tract every time something horrible happens to someone (which, in that movie, is every 5 minutes); watching Mullholland Dr. at a sneak preview with the temperature inside the theater at about 85 degrees, a girl behind me snapping her gum, my boyfriend about to lose his shit because he can't stand the sound of someone snapping their gum, and the film breaking--two times; the 20-minute "intermission" I had to take during Bounce because of explosive diarrhea (probably still more entertaining than the movie); walking out of Syriana after 10 minutes because the only other people in the theater was a group of teenagers in the back row talking, laughing, and texting on their phones (in Syriana!); watching A.I. as a giant, blurry mess because my glasses were broken (but this was made up for by the woman behind me saying, as the credits rolled, "I'm going home and taking the batteries out of my Furby"); watching a private collector's print of a John Ford film seize up and melt in the projector; or maybe being dragged to see The English Patient, being bored enough to ask the guy I was with if we could leave, having him say no, and then watching him fall right asleep.

None of these are really "audience reactions" though, so I guess I just wasted a bunch of time posting this in the wrong thread.

I can think of one time where I was the guy trying to ruin everyone's movie experience. After suffering through Scream 3 (I know, right, what was I expecting?) my friend and I came out of the theater and announced, repeatedly, to everyone in line for the next show, "Scott Foley did it!" Hey, if it saved at least one person the price of a ticket, I feel good about it.

[karmajuice]

Went to go see a movie with some friends once. We were sitting on the front row of the middle section. Just below us, down the row from me but in front of my friends, a very old couple was sitting in the aisle seats.
It started with the coughing. I thought it was the man at first, because the coughs were so hearty and full of phlegm-gurgling, but it was the woman. She went into a fit, coughing and coughing for minutes. She sounded like she had TB, like bits of her intestines were coming up with each cough -- so not only was it loud, I would go so far as to call it graphic. She was so persistent everyone in the theater started chuckling. My friend leaned forward and asked if she was alright: she just coughed at him. She eventually stopped and we wondered whether she had died.
Nope. She went into at least one other coughing fit. But it didn't end there, either.
She got a phone call. Of course she answered it and started having a conversation, trying to talk louder than the movie so her friend could hear her. General grumbling in the theater. My friend leaned forward again and asked if she could step out of the theater if she were going to talk on the phone.
She turned around and said, "I can't walk." And went on talking.
And none of us knew how to respond to that, so we just started laughing. She eventually hung up, but I'm pretty sure she got another phone call later on, too.

No big loss, though. I think we were seeing I Am Legend.