So you didn’t complain at all during the movie. Then you waited until well after the movie was over and the offending people were miles away from the complex before talking with a manager (aka guy with a red vest and nametag) and were shocked to find out he couldn’t do anything.
What did you want him to do at that point anyway? Sprinkle magic pixie dust in a pentagram and summon Volrach the dark lord so he could bring the kids back into the building and you could then watch the manager physically kick them out? The movie was over. The kids were gone. You’re not getting your money back. You’re not kicking them out. There’s absolutely nothing anyone could do.
Next time, try complaining earlier. Barring that, come to an online message board and ask whassa matter with kids today. I mean, why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way?
Bana is most famous for being on a long-running comedic skit show where his most famous character was an OTT stereotypical bemulletted Aussie yobbo.
I think he also had a brief role in The Castle, which was quite big in Australia but from what I’ve heard, bombed in the US.
Okay, I’ll admit to talking but only if it is turning out to be a really bad movie and I can’t help myself. I’m better than I used to be - my friends used to draw straws to see who had to sit next to me. If I’m shusshed, I become quiet.
I can recall roaring with laughter over ‘Robinhood prince of theives’ - it was just like a Month Python flick at times. Noone told me to be quiet.
I took my family to see a matinee performance of Cats at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton last week; we had the misfortune to be sitting immediately in front of about half a dozen teenage girls who giggled and chatted through the whole show; evidently they had been shopping first, as they each had several large plastic carrier bags; too many to put in the space at their feet, so they kept them on their laps, fidgeting and crackling all the time. Yes, and the mobile phones came out a couple of times.
It was pretty bad, but I ended up saying nothing because my children (aged 5 and 8) were so wrapped up in the show that they were oblivious to the problem and I didn’t want to spoil things for them by drawing their attention to it. Several other people nearby tried telling the girls to shut up, but it only made them defiant and gobby.
Full Frontal was the show I remember him from. Typical Aussie skit show. Good for him he has been able to change his image…it just won’t work for me.
Hot kiwi blokes? Cliff Curtis mmmmmmmmm 
Somebody needs to let the little loudmouths know that if they keep that up they’ll be going to the “special hell”.
You’re my hero!
Believe it or not, those ‘warnings’ that they play before the movie can actually have an effect on the audience. When it is made CRYSTAL clear that you should SHUT UP in the theater and TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE then I’ve noticed that behavior actually is better. But when the “warning” is some model putting her finger to her lips or a drawing of a cell phone with a red line drawn through it I’ve noticed there is more trouble.
Personally, I would like what I saw in a moviette before seeing Master and Commander. There was a very short movie (part of project Greenlight) called “Mafia Movie Madness”. It was supposed to show mafia thugs runnig a theater in intimidating mafia style (Guy want a small soda, get ‘encouraged’ to buy a large, etc.), but when two enforcer types with baseball bats were shown in the aisles before the movie started saying “Anyone talks during the movie, they get some of 'dis”. All I could think is “I would patronize this theater every night…”
He did - I believe he plays the daughter’s husband in it. Terrific little movie, btw. I have a copy of it and I only own about a half dozen movies all together. I’ve read critics’ articles who say it didn’t do well in the U.S. because Americans didn’t understand the Australian culture and values represented by it. That’s crap, IMHO. There are people here who are just like the family in the movie and I found it very easy to relate to. I think the real problem was that it wasn’t marketed here, and if you don’t hear about a movie you can’t very well go and see it.
As for the OP - I only go to a movie about once a year, and always a matinee at that, because I am sick to death of the same sort of behavior ava experienced. Management needs to grow a pair and start dealing with this kind of stuff in a way that really makes a difference. If prices for tickets keep going up the way they have been the last few years, the day is going to come when teenagers are going to make up less of the market for movies, and if adults don’t want to go, who will?
I’m not going to try and blame teenagers, it’s general assholish behavior on the part of a significant chunk of the population. Things I’ve had to deal with in recent memory:
-Mom & Dad bringing TINY baby into a 10pm Saturday night showing of “Alien Resurrection”. Kid predictably can’t sleep and cries the whole time. Hello, WTF were you thinking?
-Whole row of 8-10 year old kids sitting behind me unable to be quiet, quit arguing over who gets the popcorn in LOUD VOICES, etc. I’d turn around and politely ask them to be quiet which would work for maybe 5 minutes.
-Numerous adults leaving cellphones on annoying loud ring, answering them and carrying on a loud conversation during the fucking movie. “Hey pal, come on” got the response “Fuck you!”.
-People leaving their phones on and then letting them ring until the caller hangs up. Put it on “silent” you shit, or better yet turn the damn thing off for two hours, you’re not a transplant surgeon waiting for an emergency call.
-People in general who don’t seem to realize that they’re annoying others and when asked, politely or otherwise, to be quiet, responding with “Fuck you bitch” or words to that effect.
Part of it is the movie (more of this during something like “Bad Boys 2” than “Calendar Girls”, I’d wager), part of it is the theatre (pleasant experience at the Parkway in Oakland - cell phone got one ring out and an annoyed patron yelled “Turn that fucking thing OFF!” in a Very Angry Voice. Phone owner scrambled to obey, crowd had a pleasant chuckle).
Since people by and large aren’t showing any courtesy and theatre staff can’t/won’t do much about it, I’m all in favor of blocking cell reception in theatres, so long as that fact is prominently advertised (so the oncall surgeon can go elswhere). Shield the theatre. I can see big advantages:
- It’s quieter.
- It’s a selling point. I’d pay a dollar extra each time if it ensured that I wouldn’t have to listen to some fool’s phone.
- I’d be more likely to go to the theatre in the first place.
Mr. Winnie has found that sometimes telling teenagers forcefully, yet not in a confronting way, to “Shut the F*ck Up” will get them to calm down. They don’t have that adult jadedness yet that makes them think “I can do whatever I want because I paid $9 and how are anyone tell me otherwise.”
We were in a showing of Mallrats years ago and some unruly teenagers were being generally loud and disruptive. One shout of “Shut the F*ck Up” quieted them down and all 10 of us in the theater enjoyed the rest of the movie.
Couple of weeks ago some friends and I went to a late showing of Envy because we figured there’d be lots of kids and noise in the earlier showings. We sat near the back of the theater, up high so we could see the screen very well.
Behind us was a group of 8 or 9 kids that looked like they were about 13 years old who would not shut up and quit running around during the first 20 minutes of the movie.
Laughing out loud is expected at a comedy, but not running up and down the row and whacking me in the head several times, so at one point I half way stood up and said ‘Somebody is going to make these kids shut the hell up.’
Couple seconds after that, all of them just left.
I’m sure their parents would say ‘not my little angels’, but then again, their parents weren’t there, naturally.
I wanna go to the movies with Eve!
My roommate and I discovered that there is a ‘family’ theater near here (it’s the only one in the whole area with a student discount) where if you go to a late weeknight showing there are few if any people there. When we went to see The Rundown for the second time, we were literally the only people in the theater, and it was great because we could discuss the movie without bothering anyone. When there’s people, of course, we either whisper very quietly or save our discussion till we get out.
– Dragonblink, living in The World’s Lamest College Town Ever (Land Of Only One 7-11 And Good Luck Finding It)
I heard tales of a legendary theater in Atlanta (this was about 10+ years ago, I really hope that it’s still around) where there are security guards that walked up and down the aisle with muzzled dogs. The person who told us (our 7th grade English teacher) said it was the quietest theater ever.
There are a lot of liability issues there, but damn, I really hope that it was/is a real place.
The theater I worked at was right next door to the World’s Gym and they got a bunch of bodybuilders to act as security guards. They also had a “surveillance room” upstairs that may or may not have been used for beatdowns because every time I went in there, everything was covered with plastic. When that stopped working, they started carrying guns and when that stopped becoming a deterrent (not that they ever shot anyone, mind you), they just stopped breaking up the fights that inevitably broke out when people started talking and wouldn’t shut up.
Needless to say, I haven’t been there in years.
From all these stories I’m getting a picture that Merkins do not behave well in public - please tell me the majority of movie theatre going experience is not disruptive. If it is common place for people to behave this badly, is it not indicative of the decline in Emotional Intelligence because people are being brought up to think about themselves only but not be more self-aware?
In NZ, thank goodness, I have rarely experienced such bad behaviour at the movies - the occassional phone going off, or chit chat from people behind.
It’s because of situations like this that I never go to the movies without bringing a high school football coach with me.
No, the vast majority of Americans behave quite nicely but there’s a small number who don’t, and they make things absolutely miserable for the rest of us. I do agree with you that they simply don’t understand (and often don’t care) that everyone else doesn’t really want to listen to them.
[QUOTE=MelCthefirst]
From all these stories I’m getting a picture that Merkins do not behave well in public - please tell me the majority of movie theatre going experience is not disruptive./QUOTE]
It’s not.
Also, it’s not always such a good idea to formulate an opinion about an entire country worth of people because of a few posts on a relatively specialized-population message board in the section devoted to bitching and moaning.
–p
[QUOTE=passengerpigeon]
Oh, please! I am patently aware of this but if all these observations (more than just a few) are indicative of societal behavioural trends, then it begs the question, is this the norm? People on this board do represent a segment of society, how large, hard to tell.