In the middle of Hannibal, I’m not sure whats happening, but Clarice is driving an SUV through a field full of cows. Me and my friend Buzz, both completly bored at this stage, simultaeneously shouted “MOOOOOOO!!!”
The entire theatre, seemingly as bored, erupted.
Hey, we’re a simple race.
Also, during a Hulk matinee, these little fuckin brats wouldnt shut the fuck up. Thats what you get when the Hulk doesnt show up for an hour, ans all the candy has been absorbed into little Johhnies system. After that, no amount of Hulk-smash action can settle them down. So I gave them my very best “SSHHHHHH!!!”
Do you know what one little brat did??
He “SHHHH!!!” 'ed right back!
Then another…
then another…
until every kid in the Mainly-kids audience were all “SSHHHHHH” ing for about ten minutes.
Refund, now.
Likewise, my family still tease me about a similar occurrence after Of Mice And Men, although luckily in my case we watched it at home so I spared a room full of strangers my incessant, unwavering and, quite frankly, terrifying wailing.
Some of my best movie experiences have been at college theaters, maybe because the audiences seem to be more appreciative and literate. My favorite experience of spontaneous cheering was watching Superman with Christopher Reeves, when the move first came out. I’m sure everyone in the audience knew the basic Superman story: Krypton, explosion, the Kents, yadda, yadda, yadda. The first chunk of the movie was the retelling of this story. When you finally saw Superman in all his glory, wearing the famous suit at the Fortress of Solitude, then flying off the screen, the audience erupted. Man, that was great.
Was watching Bourne Identity with a buddy of mine. During a very loud action scene, he leans over and shouts “I gotta take a piss!”. Right when he got to “gotta”, the action scene was done and it was dead quiet. So basically he shouted “Gotta take a piss!” in a dead quiet theater. I looked at him and said “So?”. People were laughing so hard.
The most recent movie I saw in a movie theater was Narnia, and I attended with about 200 people from our church. The youth had rented the theater. It was kind of fun to hear other people react to the same things we were seeing. We applauded thunderously at the end, and while I can’t speak for all movies, I think in this case the applause was a way of sharing our enjoyment of the movie with other people in the audience. Maybe a way of prolonging our enjoyment. One doesn’t always applaud for the benefit of those performing, sometimes it is for the benefit of the rest of the audience. A way of saying “That was really great, we don’t take it for granted”.
Agreed. I have no objections to people who scream in response to something scary and I think it kind of enhances the feel goodness of a comedy if people are getting a good laugh. I’m just talking about those that can’t keep their comments to themselves. It sounds like a few of you enjoy it as part of your movie experience, so please don’t take offense. Varying mileage and all that (but I will still tell you to shut the fuck up if you talk through the movie ).
My husband went to see Exorcist III at the theatres wehn it cam out. Sitting in the front row at the downtown theatre was a very drunk and stoned guy. There is a pretty tense scene with the camera shooting down a hallway. You see a nurse coming out of one room and going into another. Then she comes out again and into another room. This time the possessed guy is floating menacingly behind her.
The inebriated guy just erupted into screaming and kept going for a good two minutes.
That’s why you shouldn’t go to horror movies under the influence.
My mom still laughs at me after taking me to see Ghostbusters when I was eight. There were a bunch of teenagers in the movie, and the theatre was absolutely full. During the part where they’ve gone to the haunted library and are confronting the librarian ghost, she jumps out at them, and I let out this blood-curdling scream.
The entire theatre turned and looked at me, and then started laughing hysterically. I think the high-schoolers laughed the hardest.
I took my then 8 year old son to see LOTR:ROTK. He weathered it well until they got to Mount Doom. After about 5 minutes of high tension by the lava, he stood up and yelled “Throw it in already!” Laughter and applause ensued.
Went to see Hero when it came out in the theatres last year, and the movie goes on, and on, and it’s all great, and then when it comes to the point where the story has distinctly reached it’s end (if you’ve seen it, you know the scene), some little kid in the very back shouted, at the key post-dramatic moment “Now it’s over!”
Audience laughed for the next minute or so.
Star Wars: Episode III: Audience laughed when R2D2 ran into the wall being chased by the battle droids, and at various showings, after Anikan caught fire from the lava, one of my friends says that at her theatre, some little kid screamed “WHY DID OBIWAN SET HIM ON FIRE?!”, and was responded to by much innappropriate laughter.
Rocky Horror Picture Show of course shouldn’t get mentioned a lot here (since audience shout-outs are teh whole point of the movie), but my personal favorite was when the Blasphemer runs up on stage during “There’s a Light”, someone behind me shouted “PIKACHU! THUNDERSHOCK ATTACK, NOW!” and perfectly timed, the lighting struck in the movie
When I first saw Constantine, at an on-campus preview thing the week before the movie came out, they’re doing the bathtub thing with Rachel Weis that I never understood but whatever, and she asks “Can I keep my clothes on or do I have to be completley naked for this?” and Constantine just sits there thinking about it for a minute or two. Lots of whoops from the audience here at A&M for that one
My dad, who didn’t realize Lord of the Rings was a trilogy, stood up at the end of Fellowship of the Ring, just as it was ending and before the crowd started filing out, and yelled “BULLSHIT!” We rib him about it to this day, especially because in the subsequent years, he became a MAJOR fan of the three movies (and now proudly owns the Extended Editions on DVD).
When I lived in NYC, my wife and I went to the theatres near Lincoln Center to see “You’ve Got Mail” (please don’t hate me, I didn’t know). Halfway through the movie, the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan characters walk into the same theatre and sit down in the same screening room we are watching the movie in. The whole theatre, -1, broke into cheers. The one guy started yelling “shut up” to the other @80 of us. Normally, I like my movie theatres quiet, but this guy, in the face of his vast minority status, the hugely entertaining coincidence, and the lack of importance in following the “plot” earns this one lone voice a :wally.
I’ve told this story here before, but I went to the premiere screening of FOTR. The theater was, of course, filled with a crowd of HUGE geeks who were all but vibrating with the anticipation of having their decades-long dream fulfilled. The movie started, but the sound was screwed up. It took fifteen minutes or so to get the attention of the staff, so everyone was incredibly keyed up and anxious. Finally the film stopped (so they could restart it with sound), and an ad came up on the screen for some dress shop. The picture was of some girl wearing a nice dress, and I yelled out, without thinking and with perfect timing, “WOW! Frodo’s HOT!” Everyone laughed at that.
I think I was at Die Another Day on opening weekend; packed theater, young crowd. During the trailers, there’s one for Legally Blonde 2; it starts with Reese Witherspoon and her little ratdog looking directly into the camera and saying something like “oh look, Bruiser, it’s the preview for our new movie.” Then, scenes from the movie and finally back to her in full insipid mode “ooh, that looks good. We should go see that when it comes out.” Someone about four rows behind me says “I think we ought to spark up a doob because someone was high when they came up with that shit.”
I’ve heard too many of these things to even keep track. That’s what happens when you go to bad-movie marathons. I remember a couple of funny things I’ve yelled over the years (I want to post them, but I don’t want to be vain, so someone please make up my mind for me) and only a few said by others. Here’s a few of those.
A few years ago, at one of these marathons, we were already well into a shockingly terrible musical movie when, of all people, Milton Berle shows up. I was sitting next to a friend, a year or two older than myself, who had obviously grown up watching and loving Milton Berle’s work. When Berle appeared on screen, he cried out in this shocked, heartbroken way, “UNCLE MILTIE?! NOOOOOO!” Tragic for him, because it sounded like his inner child was being immolated, but hilarious for me.
The last time I went to this thing, there was a special treat on the schedule: a 3-D version of Creature from the Black Lagoon. We were given 3-D goggles at the entrance, but when the film started, for some reason (misaligned cellophane?) the things didn’t work very well. About a minute in, some Simpsons geek did her best Rainer Wolfcastle voice and hollered “ZE GOGGLES! ZEY DO NOSINK!” Huge laugh.
I think my favorite RHPS line, which I heard upon my first viewing and have repeated every time since then, also comes from There’s a Light.
My favorite example of this was a reaction which was the exact opposite of the one the movie makers had intended. At the end of Das Boot the last thing on the screen is a message which reads something like “During World War II xxx German sailors went to sea in submarines and yyy perished.” At that point the theater audience erupted in spontanious cheers and applause.
I went to The 5th Element when it was in theaters, and during the opening credits, some woman cheered and clapped when Gary Oldman’s name came up on screen. She stopped pretty quickly when she realized that not everyone was as excited by Mr. Oldman as she was. When the next name came up, fifteen or twenty people in the theater cheered and clapped, and the rest laught. Next name, about half that many cheered, half again for the next one as the crowd got tired of the joke. Finally, just when the joke was totally played out, Luke Perry’s name showed up on the screen. I booed. The whole theater broke up.
It’s amazing how many mentions FOTR has received in this thread. Here’s mine: my friends and I saw it while sitting behind a woman who shook her head and clucked her tongue during some of the more violent scenes. Finally, when the Aragorn/Uruk-Hai encounter (mentioned earlier) was resolved, this woman asked of no one in particular, “This is a kids’ movie?” very loudly so that her fellow theatergoers were aware that she didn’t approve.
I replied, as loudly, “Umm, no. Not unless they’re over 13.” (She’d apparently not been aware of the PG-13 rating.)
).