'I need a large polo mallet'
This hasn't happened to me in a while.
Caught a screening of the upcoming film "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" tonight, and I sat next to the most odious couple imaginable. They didn't smell. They reeked of ignorance and poor manners.
First, they chatted right through the trailer. Then, they fell into their annoying pattern of repeating things said by the main characters, chortling at every comic line as if they had a feather tickling their feet. Then they would start chatting amongst themselves as if they were in their living room, not a public hall where people are trying to watch a movie.
They weren't kids, either. They were an older couple who should ... know ... better. So what's a movie lover to do? They jabbered just infrequently enough where I thought every last bit of blather would be their last. Wrong-o.
P.S. - Blog title comes from "Annie Hall," when Alvy Singer comes across two "fans" on the street one day.
posted by Toto @ 10:10 PM
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6 Comments:
As opposed to a Pollo mallet, which you would need if a chicken sat next to you ...
Unconventional Wisdom has it that the ever-eroding public sense of decorum has an ever-growing percentage of cinema audiences behaving as if they were at home, informally, rather than at a commercial establishment, formally, has been a significant factor in the decline of movie-going by Americans.
The Ancients claim that once upon a time, there were cinema guardians of public decorum known as ushers, who attired and comported themselves to a high standard of behavior and reinforced the same to cinema patrons.
Alas, that those times seem to be in the distant past.
Seriously, Movie Guy, what *does* one do? Leave a film in progress, seek out the manager to complain, and miss what might otherwise have been a pleasurable screening experience?
Hm.
~ Dagnabbitt
Daggy ... a tough choice, indeed. I once shushed a Neanderthal next to me and his response suggested I might not live much longer once the theater lights snapped back on. Nothing happened, but his response dampened my joy for the film in progress. I contend someone dumb enough to talk in a theater isn't the sort to take to someone shushing them well.
My strategy has stages.
Stage 1: Where I can move to if I am bothered during the film? I've only moved once that I can remember. This is Stage 1, because I check out the options before the film starts.
Stage 2: The glare (usually very effective)
Stage 3: The Shhhhhhhhhh (I get pushed pretty hard before I'll do this. Again, usually effective)
Stage 4: The "could you please be quiet" (the only thing to say to teens and drunks, I'm always VERY polite)
Stage 5 (I've never done this): get an usher
I'm amazed at folks who'll answer a cell phone call during a movie. Funny how there are usually several people telling them to take it outside. I also notice that the older the offenders, the more tolerant I am.
Good tips, Linda. I'll try them the next time I sit next to rejects from charm school.
Cinema etiquette has decomposed so much in recent years that I neurotically insist on sitting on the end of a row, or in the very back of the theater. Anything to shield myself from the movie-watching poison of the overlaughers, commenters, and line repeaters. I once endured a mother and daughter openly discussing “The Fellowship of the Ring” while the film was playing. To quote another Woody Allen line, “What I wouldn't give for a large sock full of manure.”
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