A tiny bit of historical background, or, “people were always awful!” Back in the silent-movie days, a major annoyance was people who had to read the titles out loud, to each other or to themselves. In books and songs of the 1910s–20s, there are frequent references to these boobs. So, to repeat, “people were always awful!”
And maybe he should have sat in an aisle seat. :rolleyes:
I hear ya. I went to * Planet of the Apes* last weekend, and there was this 13 right behind me whou wouldn’t stop talking. I mean it, he just wouldn’t.
(POTA spoiler)
When the damn Chimp finally landed at the end, you could hear the one gear in his head going. Then he says very loudly “ooohhhh… the monkey’s from the * ship* created the apes!” (the message on the crashed ship notwithstanding.)
Then when Marky Mark crashed land in front of the Lincoln Memorial, he went up, say the ape head, and started to walk down. All the Ape’s drove up and arrested him, and you here him say in a puzzled voice “How come those monkey’s are in Washington?” as if he didn’t notice the changed Loncoln Memorial. Jesus! Did you have to broadcast your stupidity?
Last weekend, my girlfriend and I went to see Rush Hour 2. Seated right across the aisle from us were 3 boys, somewhere between 8-11 I would guess. Of course, they were yammering themselves senseless from the moment the lights went down.
About ten minutes into the movie, an usher came in and told them to get their feet off the seats and shut up (Okay, I’m paraphrasing). They were quiet for all of five minutes after that.
They started up again, incorporating the added fun of going up the aisle and back a few times. I just sucked it up for a few minutes. The movie was fun, and I was hoping they’d just get involved with it and chill. No such luck.
I have a technique I almost always use when I confront someone in a theater. After being polite in my initial request for civil behavior, I take 5 seconds or so and turn into an even bigger asshole than the offender.
I duckwalked across the aisle and said, very quietly, “Look, the usher already told you guys to quiet down. Do you mind? Other people are trying to watch this too.” One of the kids apologized and the settled down.
For ten minutes. When it started up again and lasted, I stood up, stepped into the aisle so I was standing right next to the nearest offender (Remember, I’m a 6’1" goth with a fairly well developed psychotic look in my arsenal when I want to draw on it) and said, “HEY, WOULD YOU LITTLE FUCKWITS KEEP YOUR GODDAMN MOUTHS SHUT BEFORE I DUCT TAPE YOUR SHIT SHUT?!”
I’m an equal opportunity offender and use this approach on everyone from 8 year old boys to 50 YO bikers. It works for me every time. YMMV.
I wish I was a six foot one goth. Then I’d get some respect.
I think JC might be onto something here. My mom is no kid and started going to movies well before VCRs, butit’s difficult to keep her from talking during movies. The problem started at home, and now it continues on the infrequent occasions we see movies together. It’s as if she’s not capable of letting a plot development go by without commenting on it. She also echos dialogue, which is incredibly annoying.
This is why I date big goth guys.
People may or may not fuck with bouncy blondes. People will never, ever fuck with a bouncy blonde holding the hand of a large goth guy.
And blonde hairs show up so well on black clothes.
Too bad I have to look for a new one.
(no offense but)…Bullshit
It occurs to me that this behavior in movie theaters started when some liberal yuppie pinkos decided on some alternative parenting methods that don’t include disciplining their hellspawned progeny. Daowajan wouldn’t need to do anything to me in a case like he described…my mom would have been way ahead of him. If I was being a particular nuisance she might invite Daowajan along to practice neck-breaking kicks. Humor aside I’m serious that my brothers, sisters and I were left with NO doubt as to how to behave while in public (which mostly meant sitting quietly).
Also the point when those same yuppie assholes decided they had no use for common courtesy and figured it was their right to drag junior with them to any damn place they feel like is also when things started going down the tubes. I’m not suggesting that parents must be homebound till their kids grow but some things should be obvious. Taking your kids to see Mulan or Beauty and the Beast is fine. I’d expect hear the pitter-patter of little hooves all over the place in a movie like that. However, if you want to see the re-release of Blue Velvet maybe you should consider LEAVING THE KIDDIES AT HOME!
Just chipping in on the “people have always been awful” theme, I’ve read accounts of Saturday afternoon nickel matinees that portray the kids therein as absolute zoo animals. Yelling, throwing popcorn at the screen, etcetera. Nothing, in short, that you can’t see in a modern multiplex.
There’s an anecdote I read a while back about the Marx Brothers. It seems they made a silent movie. Never heard of it? That’s because it was shown once; to a matinee audience consisting of mostly kids. The reaction they got was so bad that they burned the film. Possibly apocryphal.
As Eve has already poited out, this is simply not the case.
People have always been rude in theaters, children included.
And lazy parents have always been lazy parents, your protestations of liberal pinko yuppies notwithstanding.
The trouble is that now some people seem to have the idea that it is their right to talk in theaters. I’ve read newspaper articles where people try to justify black people talking in movies theaters as a ‘cultural thing’. Sorry folks, rude is rude no matter what you size or race.
Kids also will still plainly still if the movie gets their attention. Trouble is there isn’t much that does that anymore. If the movie is slowpaced, cerebral, doesn’t have enough special effects (or even if it does!) then kids get figity.
Looking back to my youth, when movies were nowhere near as ‘eye-candyish’, I am amazed at the crap I sat through. I must have been just overwhelmed by the experience of being in the theater to misbehave.
My personal solution is to have much, much much better warmings at the begining of the movie. NOt just a person saying ‘Quiet please’, but am outright death threat, [sub] prefereably delivered by a 7’1" goth. [/sub]
Now excuse me while I look for my attention span.
I think I should explain about this theater a little more.
It’s smack dab in the middle of the richest part of town, and since there’s nothing else to do around here, all the spoiled hellspawn’s parents drop them off at the movies. Did I mention that it cost the three of us fifty bucks for tickets and food? The only reason anyone goes to that theater is that it’s in a very trendy mall. No one really cares about seeing a flick, it’s just a two-hour time killer.
Kids everywhere are not like this. At the movie theater we usually go to, which can’t be more than 10 miles from this one, the kids always sit still and watch the movie.
Although kids being assholes in movie theaters isn’t new - my dad used to tell me about going to the nickel matinees in the 50s, and if the movie sucked, he and his dirtbag buddies would throw their popcorn boxes at the screen until they stopped the movie.
Now, I’ll grant you that I wasn’t exactly expecting a bunch of stuffed-shirt brainiacs at Rush Hour II. But jeeeeZUSS, there was a girl behind me whose sole means of interacting with her peers was to call attention to everything she didn’t understand. About Rush Hour II. Which was a lot. 15 or 16 years old, I’d say, and truly, really and truly, had nothing to say except, “I don’t get that”, or, for variety, “Why is that funny?”
She didn’t get the jokes her friends were making before the movie started.
She didn’t get the Green M&M commercial!
She didn’t get why a Chinese woman calling Chris Tucker “Kobe” was funny.
And so on, every 5 minutes, throughout the show. It was staggering.
That’s one of the few instances I’ve heard uttered regarding goths getting respect.
It’s not size or wearing a lot of black that gets results, Daowajan, it’s the ability to look as though you would severely enjoy mauling the person who is bothering you, no matter who they are.
Whether that look is legitimate or not is irrelevant. (No way would I actually get into a fight over movie rudeness, and I’d certainly never hurt a kid no matter how tempted.) If you can make them BELIEVE, you get a world a slack, even if you’re in a polo and Dockers.
So Medea’s Child, how YOU doin’?