During Max Payne these two teenage boys in the next row back and over would simply NOT shut the fuck up! It was a total running commentary, something about what was different between the movie and the video game. After glaring at them and them not getting the hint, I stood up, walked directly into their view and said, in my best Angry Dad Voice, “This is not your living room. If you want to talk during the entire fucking movie wait until it comes out on DVD, ALRIGHT? alright.” ahhhhh it felt good! And they shut up! My girlfriend was mortified, she thought I was going to make a scene.
I went to see Return of the King with a friend when it was out in theaters back in 2003. The first two or three rows in front of us were comprised almost entirely of 14 and 15 year-olds who spent most of the film talking. After the jabber hit a crescendo two hours in, someone who was sitting next to us, whom we didn’t know, stood up, and pelted his full, 32 ounce soda against one of their heads, showering them all in soda before yelling “Shut up!!!” Not a peep was heard as they quickly exited the theater, to much applause. It was very surreal.
Holy shit. That was a hell of a story.
This made me laugh more than it probably should have. 
My talking in a movie story is funny/sad; I was watching some vampire/sexy movie (full of, naturally, violence and sex), and a the whole theatre got to hear someone’s young child asking if the condom the couple on screen were unwrapping was gum. You know what? There is no way that child is old enough to be in here. Bad mother! Bad!
My then wife and I went to a theater in one of the ritzier parts of town to see Gosford Park. Not long into the film, a well-turned-out lady sitting in front of us took out an emery board and damned if she didn’t start filing her nails.
I leaned forward into the space between her and her companion, and she must have sensed my presence there, but mistaken it for her companion leaning over, because she ever so slightly leaned closer to me, which must have made it all the more shocking when I said to her, “I’m sorry but I’m going to have to ask you to stop doing that.”
Her reaction suggested to me something in the vein of her having wet her self a little, but I’ll tell you this: she stopped filing her damn nails.
Oh man, brings back memories. I sometimes was the culprit in those talking during movies stories.
There was a theatre re-release of Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex”, and my mom , being a Woody Allen fan, took me (was around ten) and my bro (near fifteen) to see it. For those that never watched it, it’s a series of sketches, each of one introduced by a White on Black title card, dealing with a sexual problem. Obviously while I really laughed at the obvious raunchy jokes, my mother must truly have regretted bringing me when after the third card title showed up , announcing the theme of the sketch to come and the sexual practice it dealt with, the whole theatre heard a ten year old ask loudly “Mom, what does Sodomy mean?”
There was very deep silence for a few minutes afterwards.
“Ask your dad when we get home.”
When I saw Shutter Island last year some women in the back row was having a fight with her “Boo.” I don’t know if “Boo” was there next to her or if she was on the phone, but she was clearly unhappy with something he did and thought that in the middle of a serious movie would be the perfect place to hash it out. :rolleyes: Then she began to simultaneously cry hysterically and scream obscenities at him, while telling her companion “I ain’t gonna be quiet! Don’t tell me to be quiet!” When other audience members finally began yelling “shut the fuck up!” her companion finally was able to drag her out of the theater by her arm.
I was in college when they released the Star Wars movies, back in…what was that, 1997? I went to see The Empire Strikes Back at the midnight showing on opening night. Total geekfest, people were having lightsaber fights in the street, that sort of thing. Lots of fun. The best part was during one of the training scenes on Dagobah, Luke was complaining about something, and one of the guys in the audience yelled in a whiny voice, “I JUST WANTED TO GO TO TASHI STATION TO PICK UP SOME POWER CONVERTERS!”.
Everyone cracked up. It was awesome.
We were in line to see SICKO and an older couple a few places in front of us, they were exceptionally chatty. I thought to myself how swell (not) it would be if they were seeing the movie we were seeing. Well, they were seeing our movie, seated conveniently right next to us. They talked through the slides of ads, they remarked on the commericals, they discussed the trailers. They vocalized every line of text, every movie title, every tag line placed in front of their eyes like they’d just learned how to read (this couple was in their 50s). The woman took a cell phone call from her dad. The man took his shoes off. Fine, the movie proper hasn’t started, let’s see how they behave once the movie starts.
The movie begins and they continue to verbally react to every image. They’re in the process of commenting on the executive producer when I lean over and say “Okay, you two are going to have to ZIP IT.”
I think the secret is eye contact. Didn’t hear another word out of them until the movie was over.
When I went to see Mulholland Drive, there was an old woman snoring through the last half of the movie. Nobody had the guts to go over there and wake her.
Unfortunately, my wife is a bit of a movie-talker especially in movies where people are speaking with an accent (she’s not a native English speaker). I seem to recall a lot of “What did that guy say?” questions during The Departed, for instance.
I can’t stand people that think silencing a cell is enough, and they fire up their flashlight-esque touch screens. I’ve told people to turn them off. Only one guy with his date wanted to fight about it.
The first time I saw Pulp Fiction, there was a guy the row behind us snoring. Everyone kept turning and looking back at us.
There must be something about Lord of the Rings. During our midnight viewing of The Two Towers, my best friend saw Karl Urban as Eomer and loudly said “Caesar!” (Karl played Caesar in Xena and Hercules.)
Then, the second time I went, my sister and I took my mother. She’s lost the ability to be quiet, and just says anything that comes to mind. My sister was horrified. I was horrified. The whole movie she kept making comments. But at the end of the film, when Gandalf says “The battle for Middle Earth has begun.” My mother pipes up at the top of her voice, “But hopefully not tonight!”
We never took her to a movie again.
Heh, that reminds me of a totally non-movie story, sorry thread - my mom was responsible for my grandmother, age 90, when my cousin graduated from William and Mary. The handicapped seats were right behind a bunch of honored guests, including Sandra Day O’Connor (I think she was on the board? Or received an honorary doctorate that day? I don’t know, I wasn’t there.) So my mom and my grandma sat right behind Sandra Day O’Connor, which is awesome, except that my grandmother while totally there mentally couldn’t hear worth a damn, and her “quiet voice” was not. My mom was hideously embarrassed because they were there down right in front and everybody would hear “I HAVE TO GO THE BATHROOM” and later “DO YOU HAVE A TISSUE? I NEED A TISSUE!” Sandra Day O’Connor leaned back and gave her a damned tissue. “THANK YOU!”
Fellowship of the Ring: girl spent the first few minutes asking questions such as “who’s that? why is that house so strange? why is he barefoot?”. Guy finally told her “have you never been to a movie before? If you give them five minutes and pay attention to what they say, maybe you will find out!” “Oh!” From what they were saying as we left the theater, she had actually enjoyed it once she’d shut up - so had the rest of us. It looked like it might even count as a succesful date for them, depending on your definitions.
Two Towers: there is a scene where they go to a place whose name was translated differently in the movie and in the books. When the name was said, the whole theater answered back with the Real Name ™ - I’ve heard the same happened throughout the country.
Watching Aladdin, there was a weekend father in front of me, with a kid who looked about 4. The father explained about the theater getting dark and used the ads to make sure the kid wasn’t scared (at first he’d been, despite explanations). Half way through the movie, the father realized that his son was standing up, grabbing the backs of the seats in front of them with both hands. He whispered “wouldn’t you be more comfortable sitting down?” “Nu-hu!” “OK”, and that was it. It took him a while to unlatch the kid once the movie was over, too.
Érase una vez/Once Upon A Time, viewing in Philadelphia. The whole audience was Hispanic, except for these little old ladies. At one point, one of them told the others “you know, I do not think this is a fairy tale at all.” The audience exploded with laughter and there were calls of “no it’s not ma’am!”.
I was watching Fellowship of the Ring when I sat next to a middle-aged lady who gasped and went"oohh" at every plot twist.
Bilbobecame invisible. She went “ooohh”
Black Rider cutting down the gate-keeper at Bree Land. “ooooh”
Frodo being stabbed. “Oooh”
Arwen calling down the water-magic. “Oooh”
Gandalf falling off the bridge. “Oooh”
The ultimate came when Boromoir was shot. Right on cue, she gasped and went “ooohh” as each arrow punctured Boromoir. She literally went “oooh…ooohh…oohh… OOH”.
Oh man. It was annoying. Fortunately that was the nth time I had watched the movie so she wasn’t really ruining it.
I noticed it, too, and also almost shouted it out. Only problem is, I can’t even come close to remembering what the place was!
Dude you were watching the movie in your living room and that “old woman” was your mother. Get off the drugs.
The place shown in the poster, with the two giant carvings of ancient kings. What I don’t remember is what the two names were, and I don’t have my copy of LotR here to look up the Real Name. I think the bad name was “los reyes antepasados”, which somehow manages to sound like those kings were a verbal tense rather than being Aragorn’s foreparents (the literal backtranslation is “the foreparent kings”)… I think the Real One was “los reyes antiguos” (the ancient kings).
The Argonath? (Statues of Isildur and Anárion.) That was the poster for Fellowship though, not The Two Towers. Aragorn’s quote as they pass beneath them is “The Argonath… Long have I desired to look upon the kings of old…my kin.” I don’t remember them actually being named.
