I hate to bitch, but....can we talk about movie theater etiquette for a few minutes? Let me just start with this. I love going to the movies, and it has very little to do with how a movie looks on a big screen. Special effects mean nothing to me. I am all about sharing the experience of the movie with a group of other people. I am there to feel the energy of the room when something great happens on the screen...an entire theater sighing when Julie throws Tommy's locket out of the window in Martha Plympton's Valley Girl, having an entire audience cheer when someone scores a goal in The Mighty Ducks, or hearing an audience roar with laughter at Aunt Bethany saying the pledge of allegiance in Christmas Vacation-- those are the moments I live for.
There has to be a certain environment created for this to happen. For starters, you need the people. Multiplexes today have been cut from 200-300 seat theaters to a slim 50-60. A cinema that size creates a much more intimate experience, but it definitely doesn't allow itself to the energy one historically is accustomed to in a theater setting. An anecdote I'll share is the opening weekend of Gary Marshall's Runaway Bride. I saw it at a multiplex in my hometown of Waukesha, WI on a Sunday afternoon, and I remember the theater being PACKED with people. As the Touchstone logo came up and everyone quieted down, someone close to the front sneezed and someone in the back yelled "Bless you!", leading an entire audience of 300 people to break out in laughter. This set the tone for the film, and for the better part of two hours we all united in the gift of laughter and forgot whatever was going on that day. I've revisited that film several times since and always enjoy it, but nothing can match the energy of seeing it with a group of people that opening Sunday afternoon.
When I moved back to Waukesha after living in LA for 10 years, I found all the multiplexes had done away with auditoriums with a larger number of seats and replaced them with recliner seats. There still are the rare independent theaters that might run a blockbuster, but the majority of the theaters were now simply leather pink couches, fewer seats, and a very different experience than what I was used to out in Los Angeles. Some people prefer this! A friend of mine expressed how much they loved the change, replying "People are awful."
And I get what they mean. People text in movies, they talk, they take pictures of the screen. I have no patience for this. If you are texting in a theater, and you don't stop when I ask the first time, I will have a theater employee throw you out. And if it's a kid movie and you have a child with you, I will wave and smile as you both get thrown out and your child is throwing a temper tantrum because they can't see whether the Paw Patrol gang will make it home.
A few years ago, a Miyazaki retrospective was released to one of our multiplexes, and I went with a friend to see My Neighbor Totoro. Five minutes into the movie, he starts gabbing to me about his dating life and I did a very polite "shhhhhh", and he very loudly yelled back "You shush!". Fifteen minutes later, after sulking, he pulled out his phone and started texting. I took a breath, very frustrated, and before I had a chance to ask him to put it away, someone behind me did instead and he left the theater for 30 minutes before coming back and watching the rest of the movie with me. As we exited, I tried to clear the air and apologize if my reaction was rude but everyone else there, including myself wanted to see the movie. he responded "Yeah, people here are getting a little bent out of shape over a fucking cartoon, an old one at that..."
And that response seems to be normal when it comes to repertory screenings of movies. "You can see this at home, why do we have to act like this is a regular movie at a regular theater?" seems to be the attitude, not understanding that people are there because they want to have that theatrical experience of this specific movie and that makes the theatrical experience even more important than if they went to see a new film that was just released.
Not to say that this kind of behavior improves at a newer movie either. Shortly after moving back to Wisconsin, I took it upon myself to go see On the Basis of Sex. There are days I am at the movies when I find it easier to move than try to address the situation of loud rude people in theaters. That day I switched seats about 4 times. I went from a woman behind me giving her commentary about her thoughts on RBG (the phrase "Yah! That's what my sister Debbie was sayin' about her!" was actually uttered), to a bored boyfriend on a date texting, to a pair of grumbling Republicans behind me who had nothing but disgust for RBG's existence (which of course makes sense that they would pay $10 to go see a movie about her life then). Finally, I moved back to the texter, asked him to please turn off his phone, and finished the film.
But ultimately, doing the Lord's work by myself isn't enough. We need to go back to creating a culture that encourages people to want to be at the movies. One where people would much rather look at what's on the big screen than what's on their phones. And I'm not asking people to shush other people. I haven't always gotten positive responses when doing this and it can be dangerous when you get that toxic person who is purposely texting so they can challenge someone to a physical fight outside the theater when asked to stop (an experience I had at a repertory screening of Jurassic Park). I'm asking the theater to be responsible for creating a better environment.
It starts with removing these damn pink couch recliners and going back to real seats in theaters. The big problem with these couches is it encourages an environment that makes people forget they are in a public space. The nonsense that happens at these theaters now is astonishing and a direct result of expecting to hang out on a couch all evening. By treating theater-goers like they are at home, they lose all self-awareness. It used to be that when one went to a movie theater, one dressed up. I don't mean what one would wear to church or the office, but at least clothes that lent themselves to going out for an evening. Generally, the rule should be if you wouldn't wear it at a restaurant, you wouldn't wear it at the movie theater. This is a dated concept now. Going to a multiplex on a Friday, one is lucky to see other theatergoers wash their faces and comb their hair. Many even show up in pajamas and with blankets. This leads to theatergoers becoming too comfortable, to a point where they're not even there to watch the movie anymore.
The concessions that coincide with going to the movies have fallen to the waste-side as well. We used to eat popcorn and candy. Coffee, tea, water, and soda were the only options available for beverages. Our multiplexes offer gourmet pizza. In the Midwest, this is code for pizza that smells like feet, and it truly does. It is very nauseating and in the smaller theater our multiplexes have created, the funk permeates quickly and lingers for a long time. This also leads to more conversations about the food than the whispered "Can I have some popcorn?" All of a sudden, people are arguing over whether the toppings were correct, turning on their flashlights to hand out napkins, and making far too much noise when the pizza turns out to be too hot for the roof of their mouths-- all while I'm trying to enjoy an actor in an Oscar-nominated performance.
Alcohol is a huge contributor to this theater problem as well. And I get it, people have been getting bombed before going to the movies since the advent of the motion picture. One of my favorite events in Los Angeles was the annual screening of Auntie Mame, a gay camp classic, sponsored by Absolut Vodka, with funds going to the Outfest Legacy Project. People had free drinks for two hours, went into the movie, and cheered along with it for the full 2+ hours, creating the perfect laugh track. But somehow, this worked because of the environment that the alcohol and the film lent themselves to. We were all still dressed like adults in street clothes, we knew there were 600+ people in the theater with us, and we needed to all be respectful of the other 600+ people there. When you mix alcohol WITH stinky food AND cozy couches AND the permission of blankets in a theater AND smaller theaters where you're not surrounded by that many people, it's no wonder that this leads to a disaster in manners.
I recently was at a showing of the film Spencer with my husband and my sister. In front of us was a row of women in their 40s and 50s who had decided to make this their 'night out'. Each of them were on what seemed to be their fourth or fifth drink of the evening, and as the movie progressed, it became clear that this wasn't what they were expecting and that they had no interest as a group in watching the movie. There were about 10 other people in the theater besides them, but being a smaller theater, their behavior spilled completely over into everyone's viewing experience. Throughout the film they talked, they took selfies with their phones, they played on their phones, and they showed each other pictures of their dogs and kids. Fortunately for me, I had no idea that the phone activity was that bad. It was the talking that was driving me nuts and it was getting worse. Finally I leaned into the entire row and asked them to stop and the reaction was "Oh, sure."
Honestly, I was a little more aghast by this reaction than the reaction of the man who wanted to beat me up for asking him to turn his phone off. We've created a culture at the cinema where talking and texting has become such a norm, that when people asked to stop, the reaction is as if you asked them to move their jacket so you wouldn't be sitting on it. They didn't see anything wrong with their behavior. In fact, they probably expected that what they were doing was totally normal for the movies, and the sad part is....this behavior has become normalized.