The Wonderful World of Shutting Up

I was at a "friends and family" screening for a movie last weekend. That means the people in the audience worked on the movie, or at least work for the company that made the movie, so they worked on the movie in the sense that they posted the job opening for the in-house lawyer in the international sales department who then advised other people who sold the movie to distributers in Uruguay. So granted, they may not be so terribly invested in the magic of filmmaking any more than your average ferry worker is into seafaring (which incidentally some are, not a lot but some).

But it still was a bizarre experience to sit in a theatre on the proverbial lot in which people still let their phone beep every five minutes for the second half of the movie, talked loudly to each other and crumpled popcorn bags in their fists apparently for the sheer fun of it.

At a screening of No Country, the old woman next to me was muttering away with her old husband in her loud, old-person, just-tell-me-if-I'm-yelling voice and when the title card came on the screen, she whispered, "TERRIBLE TITLE" and I got up and moved. The people sitting next to me during Atonement filled me with so much rage with their talking (they did not even have the good grace to think they were whispering) that my own emotional journey was becoming much more compelling than the one on screen. What the fuck people, watch it at home if you are going to say "do you want some popcorn?" to your canoodling mate in a normal speaking voice in a crowded theatre.

It makes me wonder: who are these crazy people? Who do they think they are? Where do they think they are? Obviously their own living rooms in Ultrasuede recliners. It turns out even people whose livelihood depends on people enjoying the movie experience are perfectly content to crap on the work of others. If I could punish these people, I would make them sit through a mix. Like, the whole thing. Of a feature. A Michael Bay feature. That would teach them.