I don't even like going to the movies anymore.

The BBQ Pit
61

That is very rude, but I’m slightly amused that they considered Men in Black to be a “black folks movie”. Will Smith was the only black guy in the whole film. I guess Independence Day is a “black folks movie” as well.

We’ve been really lucky with my last few movies we saw: a couple of cell users, one crying baby quickly removed by mom, and one talky girl who was finally told to STFU by her friends.

I do miss the “old days” when I worked at a theater where the manager had a pair of brass ones. I started as an usher and we were expected to patrol the theaters and handle complaints on behavior. If someone was disruptive, we politely asked them to stop it. If they refused, we asked them to leave and refunded their money. If they refused to leave, we called mall security and they would ask them to leave and they got no refund. If they still wouldn’t go we called the police and had them removed* and banned them from the theater. We rarely had to go to that extreme, but it was good to have a manager who took no crap and we always got comments on how nice it was to see a movie at that theater.
*And when I say removed, I mean fucking removed. Local PD did not fuck around. You could walk out or be carried out, your choice. Second option came with complementary bruises, rug burn, and pretty bracelets.

62

Yeah, but, I see those types of movies too, all the time. In fact, the night of the Harry Potter OOTP midnight showing, we got to the theater very early. Our plan was to see Sicko, then get in line. We screwed up and got there late, and I never ever walk into a movie that’s already started, not if I haven’t seen it before. So since we had missed the first 15 minutes of Sicko, we saw 1408 instead (decent movie, btw). After it was over, my husband went to get in line, while I went to see Transformers, which I wanted to see for the special effects but that my husband had no interest in. (the special effects were great too, but the movie was very mediocre, which didn’t surprise me) Then I joined my husband in line. There were no problems at all, not even any minor inconveniences, at any of the three movies. Spider-Man, Pirates, Shrek, we see all those big Hollywood blockbusters as well as tiny indie films, and just don’t have or see problems. Not that they don’t happen, probably, but we sit way in the front (1st to 5th row depending on how full the theater is; 4th is our optimum) so that the rest of the audience is banished from us and if there are problems further back, they don’t reach us. The biggest problem we usually have is latecomers at sold out films who grumble and gripe because they have to sit in the front, but either they leave or quiet down.

Also, though we don’t see everything that comes out (Blades of Glory? Captivity? License To Wed? No fucking thanks) we usually do try to see the movies we want to see on opening day, or at least within the first week. With smaller and arthouse films it’s partly because it might be a movie that we’ve been waiting impatiently to see and partly to avoid spoilers elsewhere. Those reasons sometimes apply to blockbusters, but also because usually all the biggest wannasees are there on opening day and don’t seem to take any crap from people who are there to disrupt.

63

In fairness, the adjacent theater was showing Birth of a Nation.

64

I go to the movies three or four times a year…and that’s when my son is visiting. Otherwise, forget it! I much rather rent and/or download (member of rapidshare.com for years now) whatever I want to watch – and I do love movies – and fire-up my home-theater. My latest upgrade has me at 61" inches ofJVC HDTV picture heaven and an incredibly cheap though kick-ass digital 7.1 Panasonic reciever. Oh, and I have DirectTV as well.

Why the hell would I bother putting-up with all the inconveniences (and cost) of going out to watch what I can watch at home in the best of comfort and definition?

Invest in a home-theater. You not only won’t regret it, but I can guarantee it’ll save you money over time. And this comes from someone that’s had one since the late 80’s. I upgrade every five years or so and I still save a ton of money and enjoy the experience much better than I do at actual movie theaters.

65

I understand the point you’re trying to make here, but you kinda make the Other guy’s point for him. I’m guessing you’re not a teenager, but if you’re the projectionist, what good would you do in the above situations? You wouldn’t be the employee called in to assist if these “call buttons” did exist anyway. The mostly teen-aged ushers types would. Unless projectionists are routinely allowed to leave the projection room during movies that is.

While I disagree that they’re necessarily “stupid” teens, IME teen employees are very unlikely to assist (just try to take an incorrect or bad food item back at a fast food restaurant, almost 100% dumb deer-in-headlights look on the part of the employee). For the most part they’re either not sure how far they’re allowed to go in making patrons obey rules, or for minimum wage, they simply don’t care.

66

Good points, and I appreciate you making them in a way that warrants a response. I agree that at your average megaplex you’re unlikey to get a great deal of help; my experience has been that this is mostly due to the fact that the theater doesn’t want to pay *anyone *to keep an eye on the crowd. After all, if you come out to complain you’re likely going to talk to the person at the ticket drop, who cannot leave his post. He’s probably going to contact someone who has a hundred other duties to perform, who will do a cursory evaluation and move on before the boss starts bitching. In my theater, the usher at the drop will often call the projectionist to assist. This brings me to my next point.

I take responsibility for all aspects of the presentation, including controlling distractions. We do not tolerate undue talking, cell phone lights, or noisy food packaging. Unfortunately, the houses in the building I work in are all designed in such a way that the entire crowd can see me as soon as I walk in, so whatever the problem was stops immediately and until I leave. I get a lot of complaints about people up in balconies who can see me coming before my eyes can even get adjusted to the dark. I really do want to help, but unless the complainer (who never wants to be identified and often complains on the way to the restroom) can point the offender out to me, all I can do is stand there in plain view and wait for someone to mess up. It’s a pretty major design flaw of most stadium theaters.

You’re right, though… we have some part-time teenagers who help with the usher and concession work, thought I wouldn’t say that any of them just don’t care. A 120 pound teenager making minumum wage just isn’t going to be very effective with that kind of thing, and I don’t blame them. Kids shouldn’t be made to do this sort of work. I imagine that for your average megaplex it’s cheaper to just provide a crappy experience to the patrons than pay a bunch of burly Maglite-weilding security personnel to actually *enforce *the policies. It’s all about that dolla.

67

When I finally graduated to projectionist (usher, ticket seller, concessions, projectionist), I was completely cut off from what was going on downstairs. I was stuck upstairs in a dark room with lots of noisy equipment and unless the intercom was barking at me, I was unaware of any problem on the floor level. I was very good at the job, but it got pretty lonely up there in the projection room. Yeah, you got to watch movies for free, Hell, you were supposed to watch them to make sure there was no problem, but after you watch The Little Mermaid for the 50th time…you get kinda numb. It was pretty cool to put the movies together when they came in, and you got to watch the movie before anyone else got to see it because you had to make sure it worked right before it was shown to the public. All in all, I preferred working concessions because I liked interacting directly with the customers (and I made the best popcorn).

My manager made the rules of engagement perfectly clear to us when it came to disturbances in the theaters (see my post above). If you’ve seen the movie Roadhouse, it was like Swayze said: 'Be nice, until it is time to not be nice."…except when it was time to not be nice, we let the PD handle that part. We may have been just lucky, but we had really good, smart, reliable people working at the theater. The idiots wound up at McD’s or the corn dog place, which may explain your troubles at fast food resturants. It helped that the manager selected ushers that were somewhat physically intimidating, I was the smallest at 5’11 190#. In my two years at that theater, only a few people had to be “escorted” out by the authorities…most looked up and saw a hulking brute saying: “Please, Sir, we have had a complaint about noise from your seat, would you mind refraining from disturbing your fellow patrons?” while wearing a look that says: “STFU or I will rip out your eyeball and skull-fuck you.” I would love to see how this manager would have handled the cell phone problem…possibly armed the projectionists with a sniper rifle and ordered them to shoot at any blue screen they saw in the theater. I loved this place, people would drive 30 miles from a bigger city with a bigger theater to watch a movie at our place because they didn’t have to put up with the asshattery of theaters with weaker managers.

[sub]Also, we had the best popcorn in three counties (I take my secret to the grave)[/sub]

68

Oh. come ON! Did you sign a confidence statement for life? Give!! I love good popcorn. :smiley:
Thanks for the inside info. The “Please sir…” part made me laugh, for some reason I got a “please sir, may I have some more” accent to go along with it!

69

I must go at the right hours as I never have problems like that, but I usually never go on opening day, except on Christmas and new years and theres no one else there then anyways!
Last week I went to the dollar theatre to escape the heat and chose Blades of Glory (really, every time I think I will dislike a movie, I like it).
There was only one couple there, and they laughed through the whole movie, every moment, even ones that were not even meant to be funny.

70

Now that’s what I call entertainment!

71

The only problem with that is with every theater in america now being a cineplex, after the first week or 2 the movie you want to see on a big screen is likely to be playing on a screen not much bigger than the one you used to watch home movies on.

72

[QUOTE=Equipoise]
I never ever walk into a movie that’s already started

Alvie Singer would be proud of you.

73

“Skyler” and “Brandon” coming in, kicking off their Birkies, and putting their size-14 feet (what the fuck are these kids eating nowadays??? Horse testosterone? Why are they so god damn big?) on the chairs in front of them, so the characters from Harry Potter are peeking over a forest of toes.

Two girls illuminating the entire theatre with the blue lights from the screens of their phones as they text their meat puppets the entire time.

Ninety-three minutes and 18 seconds of “AAAAAAAAAAAAAA (gasp! choke! gargle!) AAAAAAAAAAA!!!111111one” from a child in the back, whose mother refuses categorically to remove him. And no, walking up and down the aisle near the front of the theatre bouncing him and saying “SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” for 10 minutes is not less distracting, thanks! Of course, there’s also 120 continuous minutes of “Mom…mom…mom…mom…MOM!”, which is at least as bad.

$12 for a few handfulls of popcorn and a 128-oz soda. Which still isn’t as bad a soaking as the family I saw the last time, who gave each one of their kids a grease-laden hot dog, large popcorn, 2 huge trays of nachos with melted plastic that for some reason is named “cheese” to share, a box of candy, and, of course, each one has their 128 oz fountain drink. Then the next 2 hours is filled with the grunts, rattles, whinneys, moos, and neighs of them eating. Typically fun ensues when “Jhosie, yes, with an h” decides that the people in front of them would like nacho cheese poured on the back of their seat, or “Dakotah, yes, with an h” spills his huge drink and has to get another one. Not only must the family have paid as much as they would to eat at the Golden Ox, it’s no wonder half of all the kids I see under 10 seem to be heading towards morbidly obese.

And, of course, $8 for a ticket to fund an establishment of new American Royalty and all their hangers-on and servants who fill the papers, magazines, radio and TV, and the web with their antics and misdeeds.

For many years I used to go to the theatre every 1-2 weeks, but now it’s down to every 2-3 months. It really is getting worse.

74

This past Friday night, we went to the drive-in. This is the first time we’ve been to a drive-in in over 20 years.
We had to travel about an hour and a half to get there, as we don’t have any drive-ins close to where we live, anymore.

It was a great experience! We hooked up our own speakers to the car speakers, brought our lawn chairs, blankets, cooler and snacks.
We watched a double-feature…‘Transformers’ and ‘1408’.
This was only $6 per person.

We were parked in the front row, and everyone at the venue was all set up in their ‘space’.
There were kids playing baseball under the big screen, people tossing a football around, people brought their dogs and were playing Frisbee and tossing balls with them, too.
All this happened before the movies started.

When the movies began, everyone moved to their spaces and a hush swept over the venue.
No one made an ass of themselves.
No one was at all loud.
There were no kids screaming, there were no dogs barking, there were no cellphones going off!
We actually got to watch the movie without any sort of distraction at all.
It was astounding to us how everyone minded their manners.
For Og’s sake, even the dogs in attendance had manners!

From what we could see, the people there were mostly families with more than one child, with ages ranging from a few months old, to late teens.
We wondered if it was going to be a free-for-all when the movies began, but it wasn’t.
The people we were parked around us were very friendly, and we/they struck up several pleasant conversations.

We look forward to seeing those same folks there the next time we go.
It was just fantastic!

We’ll never go to an indoor movie venue again.
We always chose to wait for the DVD to come out when we wanted to see a movie, but thought it would be great to go to a drive-in again, just to see if the ‘magic’ was still there.
We pleasantly discovered that it was.
So, whatever the season is for drive-ins in this area, that is where we’ll be going!

75

Yay for the Annie Hall reference…I love that movie!

76

Sorry, the movie popcorn gods would strike me down if I told. :wink:

Glad to help with the other info though, I really did love that job. I wish we had thought of using the Oliver accent, that would have been hilarious.

77

I’d just like to add my own most recent theatre experience, and to show that misbehaving theatre-goers are not all teenagers.

Went to see Harry Potter last night at 10:30, so didn’t have many toddlers or tweens to contend with. However, a small group of middle-aged folks sat in our row a few seats away from me. It appeared that one of them had never a) seen any of the earlier HP movies or b) read the books, because for the first 15 minutes of the movie the woman closest to me was explaining the entire series to the man next to her. Not even in super-hushed, uber-whispers that just sound like unintelligible shhh-ing, but only slightly less loud than normal conversational tones. Just when I was ready to give her a hearty shushing, though (hard to do when they offender is two seats to your right and can see you) she finally stopped. And, for the most part, kept quiet for the rest of the movie. Except to explain who a new character was occasionally. Then, just as the movie progressed to a quiet, sentimental scene, I heard a phone ring. And ring. And ring. The woman started to look around, then her male companion said, “Did you turn your phone off?” “Oh!!” she exclaimed, grabbed her phone and silenced the call. Then silenced her phone completely, which required several buttons to be pressed, making even more noise. Finally, when she was done, she whispered “Sorry” to the theatre at large.

What a cow.

78

We also went to go see Harry Potter (again) last night.

The group that sat behind us came in at the last minute. No big deal. Well, except for the two guys who yanked my hair and whacked me in the head as they walked behind me. They began yammering quite loudly in Russian. Again, until the movie started, no big deal.

Once the movie started the fun began.

THUMP thwack KICK

Against the back of my chair. Turned, looked.

Ten minute pause of movie watching happiness.

THUMP Thump Head whack

I turned around - “Excuse me, could you please STOP?”

Received a long drawn out yammering to in Russian. Okay. One would THINK that one would want to have a passing understanding of English to see a movie in English. I didn’t use any words that were especially difficult to understand. A “Sorry” would have sufficed. Even “No bitch” would’ve worked. But to go on for 2-3 minutes in Russian?

Ten minutes later:

THUMP.

(I won’t even mention the cell phone calls they were making and receiving nor the whiny baby tworows down.)

79

Try this "Starry perdune". Means “Old Fart” but it is very very bad, like “bloody” was in England. :stuck_out_tongue:

80

It’s usually stupid old ladies ruining if for me. People who never learned how to whisper. I don’t know how you get to your sixties without the skill of whispering, but it happens. You just don’t talk from your diaphragm. Use only your mouth with a bit of air, and your voice won’t carry more than a foot or two, it’s perfect for speaking into someone’s ear. Note: If you’re chest is vibrating YOU ARE NOT FUCKING WHISPERING!

So many stupid old ladies constantly asking their husband what is going on. It’s like, “If you shut up and paid attention, you’d know!”