PANAMA CITY — I love to see films on the big screen, especially the action-packed, epic blockbusters. It’s just not the same on a TV at home.
Others in my family, not so much — because they can’t stand to have to deal with talkers, texters and other noisy, distracting people who often get angry or act rude if you ask them to “shhh.”
Probably my worst-ever theatre experience was at a showing of “Highlander 3: There Should Have Been Only One” in Pensacola in the past century. I wrote a review of it based only on the ongoing narration by the guy sitting behind me in the theater, who was explaining everything to his girlfriend as it unfolded.
It was not funny at the time.
A close second was the time I asked two older women in front of me at a Panama City showing of “Sin City: Yes, That’s Josh Brolin, and Yes, That Woman’s Lips are Red, and Yes, Josh Brolin Just Killed Her” if they were planning to talk through the whole film. They asked me to move. I told them I was there first (which was true), and suggested they should go away because they wouldn’t like this movie anyway.
A few minutes in, it was still mostly black-and-white with odd touches of vibrant red, and Josh Brolin hadn’t come back, so they gave up and left.
This one time, at “Morgan Freeman Narrates Steven Spielberg’s Production of ‘War of the Worlds’ starring Maverick,” an older couple couldn’t grasp basic elements of the plot. Their questions to each other included: “Did the aliens stop time?” and “Why were those machines buried?” and “So God killed the Martians?” Admittedly, being able to laugh at that last one made all their other talking (which continued literally throughout the movie, despite numerous requests from other audience members to stop talking) almost worth our price of admission.
The second funniest talker was the drunk woman who went to see the first Hobbit film, “Bilbo Needs a New Pair of Shoes” (or whatever) in Panama City Beach. She had been accosting ticket-buyers outside, asking them what the movie was about. I told her it was about dwarves and hobbits and dragons and wizards and magic rings and — “I don’t think I explain it,” I said.
Of course, she and her husband bought tickets and took seats close to us.
So when the dwarves started singing “That’s What Bilbo Baggins Hates,” she stage-whispers to her husband, “I didn’t know it wush a mushical!” Five minutes later, the dwarves break out their “Misty Mountain” song and she throws up her hands: “I can’t take all thish shinging!” She stumbled out, but her husband waited another few minutes before following her, maybe hoping no one would know they were together.
The best story I have of this sort took place at a dollar theater showing of “We Should Have Called This ‘A Princess of Mars’ Since Any Fool Would Know Nobody Would Pay to See ‘John Carter.’ ” Just before the previews started (and I’m guessing at the mode of transport here) a Model-A Ford pulled up carrying 16 barefoot dustbowl migrants from a John Steinbeck novel.
The adults let the kids run amok and climb all over the seats during the previews, but to their credit they tried to settle the tykes down as the main feature began.
“You see that big TV screen up there?” a woman asked one of the children. “That’s what we gonna see that movie on.”
The child responded emphatically: “Nuh-uh!”
I bring all this up because I saw two movies at local theaters over the holidays: “Interstellar,” in which David Wooderson does better than “all right, all right, all right” in space, and “The Battle of the Five Armies,” in which Bilbo still doesn’t have a decent pair of shoes. Both had only a handful of people in the theater. Both had more than the usual number of mouthy, texting, distracters.
Now, it costs a day’s wages (or thereabout) to take a family to the movies, and I’d like to watch the darn thing without you asking why they’re doing that (just watch, most movies explain themselves if you give them a chance; it ain’t rocket surgery). Also, don’t night-blind everyone by checking the time on your oversized iPhone 6, or texting your cousin back to say, “not much, watching a movee, what R U doing?”
I know we live in an age of home video, and people are used to talking over their TVs and checking IMDB to verify where they’ve seen this actor before. (I do it all the time; I annoy even me.) But for the love of Gandalf, can you please keep that at home?
Or at least take it to the lobby. Maybe buy a $10 cola and talk it over. The rest of us appreciate it.
Peace.
(P.S. — That was actually Josh Hartnett in "Sin City." I should have consulted IMDB while writing this column.)