Experienced by a friend when watching Fellowship of the Ring - a guy in front of him turned to his date and asked her, “Which ones are the hobbits?” and also at the end of the movie, “Wait a minute? That’s it?”.
It was clearly the guy’s first foray into the crazy world of Middle-Earth.
I don’t have any stories myself, but this essay by Harlan Ellison will always stick in my mind (scroll down to heading #2, “Violence”)
Went to go see “Drag me to hell” in the theater when it was out. A middle aged couple sat next to me, they appeared to be of the redneck variety. As soon as the movie started, the guy started commenting to his companion about every little thing that happened in the movie. This went on for about 10 minutes and finally, I politely said, “Sir, would you mind not talking during the movie?”, to which he replied, “Shut the fuck up!”, to which I replied, “No, YOU shut the fuck up”. He didn’t say anything for the rest of the movie, and I must admit that I felt a bit uneasy sitting next to him for the rest of the movie. But, hey, I paid my money just like everyone else, and I wasn’t going to have him ruin it". Then, after the movie was over and I got up, he called me an asshole. I didn’t say anything because obviously, he was an uneducated twit who wasn’t worthy of my sassy comebacks.
And it is true about certain ethnicities and talking during movies. I saw “Precious” at the theater and there was a group of olver black ladies behind me and they were talking to the screen as if it were a real person. It was annoying, yet entertaining at the same time.
I saw Cars with my brother and his kids. About halfway through, the guy sitting directly behind us got a phone call, answered it, and began yammering loudly in Spanish.
My brother – from a couple of decades of being a parent, I suppose – has perfected an “I’m not going to put up with any of your shit” facial expression. He simply turned around and shot the guy this look and said, “Amigo. No.”
After that, silence.
“HAVE THIS, YA WEE FANNY!” – the guy two rows in front of me, before slamming his large coke into the face of one of the teenagers who’d been making his life misery for the entire film. It was wonderful.
Edit: the film was Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself; the outburst and ensuing fight were far more entertaining.
2 big ugly guys came to the showing of The Return of the King and insisted on sitting right behind us. Now for those of you who don’t know, I loved Fellowship & TT and had been waiting anxiously for this movie all year.
These stupid guys kept laughing and making fun and mocking everything that was going on. I got pissed. I turned around in my seat and said, “I have been waiting a goddamn YEAR for this movie and you will not ruin it for me!”
They laughed at me, but quieted down for a bit. Then Frodo got stabbed by Shelob, and these fuckers laughed out lout. I turned around and glared at them again, and that just got them started again. Eventually, they got up and left.
I should have called a manager, but you know what? I wanted to watch the movie!
I just don’t understand assholes like this. Why did you pay the ticket price, you motherfuckers, if you weren’t even going to watch the movie? And I don’t care about the “sassy black lady” or anybody. Shut. The FUCK up. If you want to talk at the screen, take it home.
Grrr!
ETA: “wee fanny” - little pussy? Yes?
Haha, yes!
A friend and I did the same thing to a fellow who couldn’t resist spoilering each segment of Creepshow at the top of his voice followed by a bellowing “haw haw haw!” He got drilled with two Blad-R-Bust-R specials flung as hard as two muscular and angry 20-somethings could fling them. There was a veritable explosion of ice and soda.
My theatre experience when I saw *Avatar *was much like the OP. Some kids behind us asking their parents every 30 seconds what was happening and why was he doing that and what is that thing and blah blah blah. My reaction was also similar to the OP. Lots of stinkeye. Didn’t say anything, though.
When I saw Pirates of the Carribean I was in the back of the theatre. There must have been some distracting talking up front because at one point during the movie, a geneltman with a mullet stood up, turne around and pointed and yelled at someone, “if you don’t shut the hell up we’re gonna have a problem.”
The person’s response was quiet enough I could not hear it.
Mullet guy, still standing, yells back, “well then we can take it outside!”
Mullet guy walks out of theatre alone. He did not, to my knowledge, return. I wonder if he was genuinely waiting for the other guy to go fight him or if he then tried to re-enter and was denied by theatre pesonnel. It was one of the most amusing parts of the movie.
I thought that too. She could’ve sold it and given the proceeds to her granddaughter as a parting gift.
Prom Night 2. Midnight movies. Remember those?!
The scene where Wendy Lyon is naked standing on the principal’s desk.
“He 'bout to eat the puddy.”
Whichever Scream Jada Pinkett was in.
“Ohh, Jada! Ohh, Jada! Ungh!”
Showgirls. The first scene where Elizabeth Berkley takes it off.
“No, don’t do it Jessie!”
I’m sure I’ve had the annoying kind but those are less memorable.
Well, it wasn’t a stranger. My husband is someone who is better off watching movies at home, so most of the time we do. He can talk at home.
However, for the LOTR movies I didn’t want to wait and I wanted to see them on the big screen. He was mostly good for the ROTK, but right at the end . . . . the emotionally intense scene with Frodo and Sam and Sam gets up and does his famous line. He hauls Frodo up on his shoulders . . .
and my husband starts chanting “Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!” Just slightly louder than under his breath. He was definitely heard because the guys behind us started laughing.
I coulda’ killed him. (I also didn’t got to a movie with him in the theater for many, many months after that.)
In a similar vein: in the theater watching Bram Stoker’s Dracula. There’s a crazy nightmarish scene involving Mina’s friend Lucy and a wolven thing, very loud and crazy. If you’ve seen the movie, you probably remember the scene. Anyway, the scene ends with a sudden blackout and silence for a couple of seconds. In that few seconds, someone up front blurted out, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Well, that was disturbing.” General laughter, then watching the rest of the movie.
I forget what movie it was that Mrs Magill and I went to see, but we sat next to some teenagers in a crowded theater. The kid next to her kept pulling out his phone and sending messages, the screen was distracting, but at least it was quiet. His phone then rang, and he answered and started talking. My wife then turned to him, and said in her best Mother Voice, “You need to hang up. Right now.”
“I gotta go,” the kid quickly said, and hung up. He sat still for the rest of the movie.
I was watching Return of the King and there was this dipshit sitting right behind me with apparently his mother—he looked like he was in his 20s and she looked embarrassed to be with him.
He started commenting on events in the movie to her in a normal, talking outside in the day voice and I said “shhhhh” without turning around.
He kept it up and I turned to look at him and said “shhhhh.”
After a bit, he started again, even louder and I said “Shut up.”
Finally, he hit my last nerve and I turned to him, stared him right in the eye and said very slowly “Shut. The. FUCK. Up.”
He didn’t say anything after that.
Somewhat off-topic, but it is really quite astonishing how often the “Mom voice” will snap teenaged kids into line when they’re misbehaving in public.
She couldn’t have sold it - it wasn’t hers, and the Hockley’s likely made an insurance claim on it.
Er… back to topic.
I was watching some movie back in the midsts of time (Arthur?) and had two old ladies behind me, one of them telling the other "This is the scene where… ", “OH! This is the scene where…” "You’ll like this upcoming bit, because he… "
Can’t remember the movie (kid-friendly), but I took my stepson. Young adults behind were cursing (during the previews). He, not having heard such language in my house, was fidgeting. I turned to the source (3 guys) and said, “if you want to talk like that, move at least 10 rows away from me or shut the hell up. No one wants to or needs to hear your language.”
They shut up until the credits rolled.
Immediately after Aragorn’s savage and protracted fight with the head Uruk-hai in The Fellowship of the Ring, an encounter in which the head Uruk-hai’s head is severed from his body, a woman in front of me felt the need to add to the relief and exuberance of the moment by asking, very loudly, “This is a kid’s movie?”
To which I responded, equally as loudly, “No. And the next two won’t be, either.”
A side note: I’m surely not the only one in this thread to notice that a lot of audience interaction occured during The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
During Dances with Wolves, a woman began reading to her companion – very loudly – the subtitles when someone was speaking Lakota. She read them so loudly that everyone in the theater could hear her interpretation. When someone asked her to pipe down, she loudly refused, saying that her companion couldn’t read English. I wondered if her companion was also deaf, based on how loud she was speaking, and therefore wondered why her companion went to Dances with Wolves at all.
Finally (this one happened not during a movie but before it – don’t report me, please): I can’t remember what movie it was, but it was in an arthouse that didn’t show commercials before the trailers. The theater only had about 10 people in it, most of whom were quietly talking to each other – except for a grandparent-aged couple enjoying a video of their (presumed) grandchild on their cellphone. The volume was on the thing was cranked – if a cellphone’s speaker can be blown, they were trying to do so. It sounded awful, and it was so loud that people seated a few rows away couldn’t talk quietly with each other. One of those persons was Mrs. Urquhart, who asked, “Excuse me – does that have a volume control on it?” The woman replied, “Yes, but it’s turned up as far as it will go.” I just started laughing uncontrollably, because that’s about all I could do. Thankfully, the lights went down shortly after that, and the grandparents turned off their personal little movie.
“Dad voice” works well, too. Especially if you can put a little bit of a growl into it.