I’m just about to give up on movie theaters, not that I have ever been particularly enthusiastic about the damn things. Despite the lure of gargantuan screens with their matching vibro-lush sound systems, I am fed up with, disgusted with, sick and tired of, and at the screaming point about, the constant disruptive bad manners on display in movie theaters today.
Over the summer I saw an early matinee of the new Star Trek at the Metreon, hoping that by attending a relatively unpopular time slot I might have a chance to see the movie unmolested. No such luck: a guy sitting right in front of me was more interested in squiring his girlfriend than watching the movie, and talked to her incessantly throughout. That’s in a theater with maybe 20 people present—all of us in the “sweet” spot, naturally. Did it even occur to him that he was bothering other people? Would he have cared if he knew?
I remember seeing one of the restorations of “Gone With the Wind” over at Oakland’s gorgeous old Grand Lake theater. A friend and I went to the trouble to drive over there, find parking, all that, just for the fun of seeing GWTW in the kind of theater for which it was intended. Well, it would have been just peachy if some stupid broad wasn’t telling her 3-year old daughter everything that was happening onscreen, and if she hadn’t plopped down right in front of us, even though the theater was about 99% empty and we were sitting rather closer to the screen the most folks tend to do. But, no…she had to be right in front of us so there was a head silhouetted between me and the Civil War, even though she could have chosen any one of about 2,000 empty seats anywhere else. My friend and I shifted over a few seats, wrecking the perfect dead-center angle we had acquired, but then the bitch wouldn’t stop talking. Finally my friend leaned over, and in a foghorn-blast voice that drowned out everything—the blabby woman, Max Steiner, Mammy berating Scarlett for going out without her shawl—yelled out WOULD YOU GODDAMN SHUT THE F*** UP!!!!
At least that got her attention and she did, indeed, shut the f*** up. But why was it necessary? Did it ever occur to her that she and her daughter were not the only two people there?
Probably not.
I got the Blu-Ray of Star Trek and have enjoyed it immensely, aggravation-free. Nobody there to bother me. And I can hit pause when I need to go pee. Perfect.
Ditto the new ultra-sharp 8k sampled restoration of Gone With the Wind on Blu-Ray. No aggravation. Nobody there to bother me. Pee breaks. Perfect.
I saw Up originally at a press screening with a critic friend of mine. We had to sit through 20 minutes of the most insane, bone-jarring PR drivel from a screaming maniac with a microphone (isn’t the point of a microphone to allow him to be heard without screaming?), followed by a screening with the sound system ratcheted up to the point of causing pain, mainly to drown out the noise of the audience—lots of kids and teenagers. I still enjoyed the movie, a testament to Pixar’s irresistable filmmaking ability, but it was only when I bought the recent video release and was able to watch and hear it unmolested by screaming and ear-bending volume that I was able to appreciate it fully.
There are some marginally rude people at the Symphony on occasion, but nothing like the callous rubes who infest movie theaters. Although there are some folks who find the ‘collective experience’ as enhancing the movie, I’m not among them. On the whole I enjoy being in a Symphony audience, so we’re not dealing here with ochlophobia per se. It isn’t crowds I dislike, but inconsiderate rudeness.
And with high-def being the way it is, and home sound systems being the way they are, one loses little, if anything, by seeing the movie on a nice big home LCD or plasma model, off a high-def source like Blu-Ray. The screen is smaller, but not actually from one’s viewpoint—a 56″ screen viewed from six feet away fills the senses just as well as a wall-sized affair screen viewed from a theater seat. I’m looking forward to viewers that do for video what headphones do for audio—i.e., render it private and immersive.
So here’s to home video and freedom from being mugged by thoughtless cretins. Am I being anti-social? Hell yes, and proud of it, too.