RANT: Movie Theater Etiquette is F@%*!king DEAD

Before you read ahead, please know that the rant you’re about to read is no-holds-barred, expletive-filled, and not concerned with anyone’s feelings. You’ve been warned.

 

Before I dig in to the topic above, let me give you a little bit of context about who I am, and how I arrived at the unfortunate conclusion that movie theater etiquette is fucking dead.

I’ve been a pretty big movie buff my entire life. I recall at a very young age receiving very specific instructions from my parents about how to behave in a movie theater. Having said that, I’m told I was the devil incarnate when I was a child, so the guidelines were absolutely necessary, and had to be hammered in pretty hard. But anyways, the rules were clear: when you’re in a movie theater, you sit still, watch the movie, and don’t talk. And so I did. Easy.

But as we all know, people talking during movies is not a new phenomenon. And as long as it remains a semi-social activity, it will continue to be something that just happens. That’s why when a lovely theater chain we’ll call the Barklight (for anonymity) seemed to change the game, I jumped on board with enthusiasm.

If you were willing to pay a premium for your ticket at the Barklight, the theater promised a few things that set it aside from the rest: they had no obnoxious commercials before the previews, they didn’t let people into the theater after the film started, they offered assigned seating (a real game-changer), as well as a lovely staff member that would walk out before the movie to introduce it, and to kindly remind you to turn off your phones, and to not talk. An actual person. Coming out before the movie. To tell you not to talk. They no longer left it up to people be decent human beings; it was an actual directive from an living, breathing person before the movie. SOLD!

And for a while, this created a sanctuary for true cinephiles. No longer did you have to miss crucial parts of the movie because some idiot didn’t have the goddamn time management skills to get there on time. No longer did you have to suffer through incessant whispers – or outright normal-volume talking –  of people who would rather have a conversation during the movie than escape into it. No longer did I have to wait in line all day for the latest summer blockbuster just so I could get the best seats, because now I could choose them ahead of time online. I was in movie buff heaven, and I came to associate this theater with the place that serious movie lovers went to soak in the beauty of film, uninterrupted.

Well, that’s all blown to shit now because I every time I go into a movie theater, there’s about a 70% chance that I’ll be sitting next to completely uncivilized assholes that have no concern for everybody else’s movie-going experience. Let me plead my case.

Exhibit A

The most recent example came when I recently went to go see Blade Runner 2049. This was the first showing at the Barklight, so you would think that the audience would consist of hard core fans of the original Blade Runner who would shut the fuck up and watch the goddamned movie. NOPE. That wasn’t gonna happen, because I had these two giggly grown-ass women sit down next to me with their wine and their hot dogs and plopped down to proceed to ruin absolutely everything. I was a little worried when during the previews they were already in a bit of a chatty mood, but I decided to try and stay calm and hope that they would just stop when the movie started. You know, like someone with actual fucking manners would do. But no, they thought it was totally appropriate to continue their intermittent conversations and laughter – yes, LAUGHTER during Blade Runner 2049 – for the first part of the film. Why did they stop? I fucking MADE them stop. Knee slap, cock head, look them dead in their worthless fucking eyes, and say, “Excuse me, but would you please stop talking?” Add a dash of Joan Crawford in there, and silence is yours. But they did have the nerve to look at me like I was the one being the dick. Cute.

Exhibit B

At another incident at the Barklight, I happened to be sitting next to a couple that thought the movie theater was their goddamned living room. They had an arsenal of home-brought snack in grocery bags at their feet (that they rifled through constantly), and a giant blanket splayed over the two of them. Not only did these inconsiderate fuckers talk the entire time, but this woman not only takes out her phone and turns it on, but proceeds to look up actors on IMDB on her fucking phone, and say moronic shit like, “Oh, yeah, she was in this other movie with that guy!” In her NORMAL VOICE. But it stopped. You wanna know why? Because I had to make them fucking stop. Knee slap, cock head, look them dead in their worthless fucking eyes, and say, “Excuse me, but would you please stop talking?”

The guy seemed to get the hint right off, but his idiot girlfriend had the audacity to look offended. Absolutely awful excuses for human beings.

Exhibit C

I like to pick a very specific seat at the Barklight when I buy my tickets. I pick a seat that’s behind the handicap seats that has a rail behind it so I can prop my feet up since my knees sometimes become little douchebags in the middle of the movie. It’s incredibly rare that someone is in the handicap space anyways, so I can usually prop my feet up and give my legs a quick stretch mid-movie without getting in anyone’s way. But for about a year straight, this seat was cursed. Because without fail, I would go to my seat, and there’d be someone else in it. Sometimes, it was an honest mistake. Someone that just didn’t know the seating in this particular theater as well as I did. Understandable! But there were a few times where I was either asked to move, or where the wicked seat-stealing troll in question just wouldn’t give the seat up. I shit you not!

First of all, if you want me to move just so you and your friends can sit together, then maybe you should have gotten online a little earlier to get your seat so that you could all fucking sit together! I wouldn’t be nearly as mad about this if it wasn’t for the fact that I knew I was paying a premium for getting to pick a very specific seat. It’s ASSIGNED seating. ASSIGNED. Meaning if the number on the ticket is different from the one you’re sitting in, you’re in the WRONG FUCKING SEAT.

Yet another instance, during a different movie, had me walk to my seat and sit down next to a couple. The seat felt a bit off, so I looked back at the seat number and noticed that the woman next to me was actually in my seat. I looked at her and laughed and said, “Oh, I think that I’m supposed to be in that seat.” And she just looked and me blankly, grabbed her boyfriend’s arm and said, “Yeah.” Then proceeded to keep her entitled ass in the seat without another word. Her boyfriend looked over at me and said, “Thanks.” As if I had just given this little wench permission to stay in my seat through my powers of telepathy. Because I sure as hell didn’t say that shit out loud! Since the movie was about to start, I just sat and watched. But I watched with clenched teeth and reeling from the stench of injustice that hovered over me.

Exhibit D

Perhaps the most egregious example comes from when I went to go see The Theory of Everything. I was at the Barklight, and the attendance in the theater was rather light… Except for a couple sitting in the same row as me and my friend; they were about 5 seats down. And yep, you guessed it. They proceeded to talk at normal volume for a good portion of the movie. I finally turned to them – sans knee slap, mind you – and simply asked that they stop talking.

This woman turns to me and – get this – says, “YOU shut up!” And then – and this was the cherry on the top of this already shit-tastic experience – her boyfriend turns to me and says, “They’re not even talking in the movie!” As if they had the god-given right to fill in whatever silence wasn’t filled by the actors on the screen. THIS. ACTUALLY. HAPPENED.

The inconsiderate fucktardery on display left me speechless. My friend attempted to come to my defense, but it was too late. Because my faith in humanity had just been flushed down the toilet. By rude, self-absorbed assholes.

Why Is This Happening Now??

Well, that’s the question of the hour isn’t it. I mean, to a certain extent, assholes will always exist and some of them will eventually go to a movie theater and annoy the ever-loving crap out of me and others. And there could be a variety of reasons why people’s movie theater etiquette has disappeared. Could it be because people are watching movies in the privacy of their homes (where there are no rules) so much that they’ve lost all sense of what’s appropriate in public? Could it be because we live in an over-sharing society that thinks the world wants to know/hear their thoughts no matter what the venue? Could it be that we’ve become such special snowflakey narcissists that we simply can’t see the offense in disrupting others’ experience? Are we so insulated into our own little worlds that we don’t see the offense period? For a hot minute, AMC even said they were considering letting people text during movies, as if to acknowledge that younger audiences no longer have the capability to wrest their attention from their phones, even in a darkened movie theater where you would assume they’d paid money to watch the effing movie.

But I suppose that the ensuing uproar from AMC’s announcement – and their subsequent abandonment of the in-theater-texting-idea – should give me hope that there are still others out there that value the movie going experience as much as I do. That despite my ennui with a growing segment of the movie-going audience that has descended into outright enraging douchebaggery, that there are still enough of us out there to raise our voices to keep it a sanctuary.

And after we’re done raising our voices…I hope everyone shuts the fuck up and watches the goddamned movie.