Movie Theater Experiences

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Antoine Doinel
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Re: Truly Barmy audience reactions

#226 Post by Antoine Doinel » Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:44 am

....just got back from a screening of Truffaut's "The Woman Next Door" and had the experience of two women behind me who thought every little mildly light moment, was the height of hilarity. Two lovers try to call each at the same time and get a busy signal? ROARS OF LAUGHTER. A child plays outside with his friend and is sort of cute. FUNNIEST THING THEY'VE EVER SEEN IN THEIR LIFE. When the film goes darker in the last half hour it finally shut them up, but it was almost as if they were expecting one of the Antoine Doinel films but decided to make up for it by laughing whenever possible anyway.

As a counter to that, at the final scene of "Inception" the audience audibly gasped and burst into applause. That was kind of awesome.

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Svevan
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Re: Truly Barmy audience reactions

#227 Post by Svevan » Sat Jul 17, 2010 4:29 am

A couple of people in the audience at my screening of Inception first yelled "Awwww come on!" but that was followed by a mass sigh and a few giggles (including from me). Not bad giggles. The kind that come after a roller coaster.

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ola t
They call us neo-cinephiles
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Re: Truly Barmy audience reactions

#228 Post by ola t » Tue Aug 17, 2010 2:41 pm

Looking forward to seeing Charles Laughton Directs "The Night of the Hunter" again on the Criterion release. It won't be same as having Robert Gitt narrating live in the room, but at least there will be no drunk audience member belly-laughing at all the wrong moments, with the line "Charles Laughton never directed another film" the apparent comedic highpoint. (This was in Copenhagen a few years back.)

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oldsheperd
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Re: Truly Barmy audience reactions

#229 Post by oldsheperd » Tue Aug 17, 2010 3:29 pm

When my Dad was stationed in England him and my Mum went to go see A Man for All Seasons. These two English ladies were sitting in front of them talking(I imagine like Graham Chapman and Eric Idle did when they were ladies), so my parents decided to leave. When they were leaving my Dad threw his soda at them.

Another time my Dad went to go see The Exorcist when it first came out in NYC. He said that a whole family, kids, babies, parents and all were in the audience. There was soo much screaming and crying by the kids. My Dad was in total disbelief that someone would bring their kids to see that flick.

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domino harvey
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Re: Truly Barmy audience reactions

#230 Post by domino harvey » Tue Feb 22, 2011 12:22 am

Man shot for eating popcorn too loudly during Black Swan-- the best part is that the guy waited until after the movie ended to shoot him, so as to not also interrupt the film with noise

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Cinephrenic
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Re: Truly Barmy audience reactions

#231 Post by Cinephrenic » Tue Feb 22, 2011 12:26 am

Probably was during the sex scene.

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tavernier
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Re: Truly Barmy audience reactions

#232 Post by tavernier » Tue Feb 22, 2011 12:32 am

Actually, the man eating the popcorn was the shooter, not the shootee.

Perkins Cobb
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Re: Truly Barmy audience reactions

#233 Post by Perkins Cobb » Wed Feb 23, 2011 12:15 pm

domino harvey wrote:Man shot for eating popcorn too loudly during Black Swan-- the best part is that the guy waited until after the movie ended to shoot him, so as to not also interrupt the film with noise
See, I always face this dilemma: some asshole who's talking or has his mobile device on obviously deserves death, but if I kill him, maybe they'll stop the movie? It's a no-win scenario.

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oldsheperd
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Re: Truly Barmy audience reactions

#234 Post by oldsheperd » Wed Feb 23, 2011 12:27 pm

Saw True Grit a month or so ago. Cell phones went off twice during crucial scenes. I got a bit irked but most of the folks in the theater were older folks so I let it go. I'm merciful.

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skuhn8
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 4:46 pm
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Re: Truly Barmy audience reactions

#235 Post by skuhn8 » Thu Feb 24, 2011 7:13 am

oldsheperd wrote:Saw True Grit a month or so ago. Cell phones went off twice during crucial scenes. I got a bit irked but most of the folks in the theater were older folks so I let it go. I'm merciful.
Thank you for not shooting.

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tarpilot
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Re: Truly Barmy audience reactions

#236 Post by tarpilot » Sat Mar 05, 2011 6:41 am

X-|
Last edited by tarpilot on Fri Jul 24, 2015 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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gcgiles1dollarbin
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Watching Films in a Theater

#237 Post by gcgiles1dollarbin » Sun Apr 17, 2011 4:41 pm

I'm trying to find some topic thread that relates to this--for surely it has been discussed here--but all attempts to work the alchemy of the search function have been for naught. Please redirect/delete if this is redundant, superfluous, or an abomination in the sight of God.

I want to hear about memorable experiences you have had watching films in theaters, whether good or bad. With the ever-ascendant fetish of home theater, we expect so much control over our viewing experiences--no talking among viewers, pristine images, perfect sound--that the rag-tag crap shoot of watching films in a theater can provoke anxiety.

I have been spending so little time in movie theaters recently--and so much time in front of a monitor, watching movies--that I have become nostalgic for the communal theater experience. But when I wipe the Vaseline off the lens, I have to admit that I have not felt the exhilaration of being among people in a dark theater watching a great film since... I can't even remember. Mostly, it's been a disappointment. I recently saw Uncle Boonmee at the Rafael Theater in Marin County, CA, as part of a "Buddhist Film Festival." I question whether this film is really appropriate for such a program--perhaps an "Animist Film" series would have been better--but more aggravating than that is the fact that this otherwise admirable theater is unfortunately at the mercy of Marinites who will keep any piece of quasi-spiritual crap held over for weeks (just put "Tibetan Lama" or "Crazy Wisdom" in the title). Uncle Boonmee is a Thai film; it makes reference to past lives in the title; and it won Cannes: these are the reasons it found itself in a festival that includes a Wavy Gravy documentary. And then they got, of all people, Wes Nisker--a radio DJ and meditation instructor--to introduce the film, who kept saying how much he enjoyed saying "Apichatpong Weerasethakul." And, to top it off, the print was a worn-out piece of crap.

Here is another egregious experience of mine, originally posted on Girish Shambu's blog, in response to his post on "Difficult Cinema":
I’ll give you difficult: After an argument with my fiancée, we decide to relax and see a movie in a theater (a rare treat). There are two problems with this: 1) for some perverse reason, we choose District 9, and 2) we see it at the Regal Cinemas Jack London multiplex in Oakland (where we live). So, with a hangover from bickering, we subject ourselves not only to the visual and aural assault of a ham-fisted apartheid allegory tricked out as science fiction satire, but also the ubiquitous Oakland attendee who sits in the rear of the theater blithely talking on her cell phone in a piercing voice that actually competes with and distracts from the toxic mayhem on the screen. I finally turn around and tell her to “shut the fuck up.” This serves as a trigger for another theater patron a few seats away (we were at a matinee with few patrons), who echoes my sentiments with equal candor. Undaunted, the woman on her cell phone screams at us, trumping our profanity with a few choice racial slurs. This, in turn, causes the other theater patron to stomp up the aisle stairs in order to meet her challenge, but after a brief stand-off, the woman leaves, showering threats of physical violence upon us that, in their richly imagined detail, rival the CGI gore onscreen that by now seems only to be the fevered projections of our misery. I leave with my partner shortly after, having lost the thread of my existence as well as the plot of the film. I would rather watch a five-hour loop of the drunken dancing scene in Sátántangó.
On the other hand, I do have fond memories of watching films in a theater. (Yes, that last sentence does sound absurdly elegiac). When I was a teenager, I read Theodore Roszak's Flicker and discovered, to my delight, that he was curating a program of films at the now-defunct UC Theater in Berkeley. I saw, for the first time, Mad Love and White Zombie, both of which Roszak introduced. It was incredible for a variety of reasons: Roszak is a fantastic speaker; I was just falling in love with old movies; the UC Theater was cavernous and ramshackle--perfect for the double bill; I was with my dad; I had just read in the novel about the mystique of these two films; the audience was fired up: responsive but respectful; and, of course, the films were amazing. To see White Zombie and then realize that another treasure awaited in less than twenty minutes... I can't tell you how blissed-out I was, perhaps more than any upper-middle-class Theravada Buddhist who has blown thousands of dollars on meditation classes at Spirit Rock.

There is, no doubt, a mother lode of experiences among the lot of you. I would like to read some, in an effort to restore my faith or confirm my fatalism--either way, it should be fun.

BTW: Thanks for the transplant, mods. I missed this thread somehow.
Last edited by gcgiles1dollarbin on Mon Apr 18, 2011 10:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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dad1153
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Re: Watching Films in a Theater

#238 Post by dad1153 » Mon Apr 18, 2011 6:02 pm

When I saw "The Godfather" at the now-Nokia theater in Times Square (back in the mid-1990's after I had just moved to Gotham) it was so surreal that, at moments, this super-dramatic classic movie that everyone has seen on TV a million times played the audience like a yo-yo. The entire audience (a pretty packed crowd) would laugh in unison (Don Vito raising his eyebrow after the 'horse' scene), be gripped into total silence or just woosh during the best-known cool scenes. Though I haven't made it a habit to go see in theaters popular movies readily available (on home video, cable, download, etc.) this one "Godfather" theatrical showed me how fun it is to see something you're used to seeing at home expanded by both the size of the screen and the reactions of other patrons.

On this same theater (used to the Astor Plaza of Times Square) I also saw a 75mm theatrical showing of Kubrick's "2001" during a contractual limited theatrical engagement in either 2001 or 2002. The movie started, then went dark in the middle of the first space ship ballet and me and the nine other patrons spent the next 45+ minutes waiting for the movie to be re-spliced together (we were talking, having relay races on the aisles of the theater, etc.) while the 10 or so theater employees were pushing us to take a raincheck ticket to come back another day (which we got anyway at the end of the day)... except that was the last day/showing of the "2001" engagement and the next day some other crap movie was scheduled to start. Finally, at 9:45PM, the showing that was supposed to start at 8:30PM began again from the beginning (this had the black at the start and end) and the nine of us that started and ended watching it all had a ball. Easily the best big-screen showing of "2001" I've ever attended, long wait and all.

When I saw Mike Leigh's "Secrets and Lies" at the Film Forum back in '96 the movie had moments and scenes that spontaneously brought laughter/applause from the sold out crowd. Rewatching the movie later on premium cable it came off far less funny and way more dramatic, including scenes that in the theater made us all laugh (with the characters though, not at them). It remains one of my most treasured theater-going experiences ever, a permanent reminder that some movies are just meant to be seen on a big dark theater with a bunch of like-minded cinephiles.

Back when I was a 5 or 6 someone (either my father or mother but not both because they were already divorced) took me to see "Superman: The Movie" at an old movie theater in San Salvador, El Salvador (where I'm from). This theater didn't have air conditioning so, right next to the screen, a giant (to a little kid my age) rectangular fan was turned on and blowing (hot) air at the theater seats. I loved the movie but I will never as long as I live forget looking at that giant fan as often and with as much fascination as I had looking at Donner's flick.
Last edited by dad1153 on Mon Apr 18, 2011 6:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Gregory
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Re: Watching Films in a Theater

#239 Post by Gregory » Mon Apr 18, 2011 6:25 pm

I don't get to theaters as much anymore, partly because I don't see many reasons to privilege brand new films over all others (supporting working filmmakers is surely one, but I have my own viewing interests), and the one or two places here that do repertory screenings seem to stick to the kind of thing I've seen 2+ times already (or once, if I didn't like it at all in the first place). I understand the pressures that lead them to screen what sells most of the time, but a little more risk-taking would probably also get people in.
And I'm sure I have a similar litany of complaints as dozens of others here. To mention a few:
-Perhaps worst of all, projected DVDs not advertised as such. These have gained some notoriety in my hometown (Portland), with some venues pretty much exclusively relying on DVDs rather than prints, despite a vocal minority complaining to no apparent effect. In some cases, screenings have been advertised as "newly restored print!" and after the film has to be sent back, the venue quietly continues the screening with a DVD.
-Films entirely out of focus, and when I complained once I was told that the entire projectors were in no condition to get a good, focused image and needed to be replaced -- okay, then!
-Unsupervised children running through the aisles throwing their parents' grapefruit-sized keychains up and then picking them up off the floor while parents sat watching the films
-Volume far too loud, e.g. I once sat through an entire screening of Ashes of Time redux with my fingers plugged firmly in my ears, after urging the person I was with to leave with me in the middle of the film.
-People continually kicking my seat, even when I turn around and try to make direct eye contact; I didn't want to speak to these people thus disturbing others sitting nearby.
-People checking cell phones and other devices when sitting right next to me. Last year at a screening of A City of Sadness, it was a totally packed house. The guy seated next to me checked his phone every ~5 minutes, including during innumerable emotionally moving moments. At one such moment, he even asked the person he'd come with, in a regular tone of voice, "How long is this movie?" Earlier a man in the row behind me had finally snapped and close-to-shouted at the woman beside him, "Would you please just put the phone away?!" The guy next to me looked back and said, "...the FUCK?" and kept on checking his own phone every few minutes. It didn't seem like it would have done any good to ask him to stop. Unfortunately, this kept me from getting absorbed in A City of Sadness -- perhaps if I could see it at home on Blu-ray or DVD things could be different.

Perkins Cobb
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Re: Watching Films in a Theater

#240 Post by Perkins Cobb » Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:00 pm

Gregory wrote:-Unsupervised children running through the aisles throwing their parents' grapefruit-sized keychains up and then picking them up off the floor while parents sat watching the films
That happens to me all the time too!
Gregory wrote:-People checking cell phones and other devices when sitting right next to me. Last year at a screening of A City of Sadness, it was a totally packed house. The guy seated next to me checked his phone every ~5 minutes, including during innumerable emotionally moving moments. At one such moment, he even asked the person he'd come with, in a regular tone of voice, "How long is this movie?" Earlier a man in the row behind me had finally snapped and close-to-shouted at the woman beside him, "Would you please just put the phone away?!" The guy next to me looked back and said, "...the FUCK?" and kept on checking his own phone every few minutes. It didn't seem like it would have done any good to ask him to stop.
You don't ask (at least not after the first time), you say, "Put that device away or I will smash it," and be prepared to do exactly that. I suppose in a multiplex screening of Transformers 3 this would be a lost cause but I can't believe an audience that came for City of Sadness sat through three hours of that behavior. In New York the guy would've been dead (caned to death by a half dozen seventy year-old ladies, most likely) after three minutes.

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Gregory
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Re: Movie Theater Experiences

#241 Post by Gregory » Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:13 pm

West Coast vs. East Coast -- the differences are vast. The City of Sadness screening was at Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, so enough said. And I'm as nonconfrontational as pretty much everyone else out here, even though I'm surely seething inside a lot more.

Perkins Cobb
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Re: Movie Theater Experiences

#242 Post by Perkins Cobb » Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:24 pm

I've never had to take it any further than leaning right into somebody's space and firmly asking to please shut off their phone now. But I gave up on first-run movie theaters a few years ago, in part because I knew I would have to keep fighting that battle over and over again until somebody decked me.

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The Elegant Dandy Fop
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Re: Watching Films in a Theater

#243 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:29 pm

Perkins Cobb wrote:
Gregory wrote:-People checking cell phones and other devices when sitting right next to me. Last year at a screening of A City of Sadness, it was a totally packed house. The guy seated next to me checked his phone every ~5 minutes, including during innumerable emotionally moving moments. At one such moment, he even asked the person he'd come with, in a regular tone of voice, "How long is this movie?" Earlier a man in the row behind me had finally snapped and close-to-shouted at the woman beside him, "Would you please just put the phone away?!" The guy next to me looked back and said, "...the FUCK?" and kept on checking his own phone every few minutes. It didn't seem like it would have done any good to ask him to stop.
You don't ask (at least not after the first time), you say, "Put that device away or I will smash it," and be prepared to do exactly that. I suppose in a multiplex screening of Transformers 3 this would be a lost cause but I can't believe an audience that came for City of Sadness sat through three hours of that behavior. In New York the guy would've been dead (caned to death by a half dozen seventy year-old ladies, most likely) after three minutes.
I had a friend who went a couple years ago to the LACMA to see Je T'aime, Je T'aime where in the middle of the movie, a guy answers his iPhone (when the iPhone was still relatively new) and begins chatting when an angry guy in the row behind him yanked the phone from him and stomped it to bits in front of the audience which solicited cheers. Later on, my friend saw the guy who's phone was broken in the parking lot just standing by his car looking sad..

If it's anything, threats have always worked for me. I told some teenagers who kept chatting during Insidious (I was asking for it though by the seeing a PG-13 horror film and it being a matinee) to "shut their greasy fuck faces" and they piped down the rest of the movie. Highlight of that viewing though was when the theater and the film was dead silent, this confused fat ex-chola that was by the entrance of the theater yelled "YO BOO!" to try to find her friend (I guess her friend's nickname is Boo).

Other exciting and memorable moment was seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70mm and when the entr'acte started with just a black screen and the Ligeti playing, someone in the front started yelling "Picture! Picture" and in the corner of the theater you just hear someone yell "It's the entr'acte, cocksucker!". That got the whole audience laughing.

EDIT: I keep screwing up the quote code. Finally fixed.
EDIT AGAIN: I just remembered I posted the Je T'aime, Je T'aime story a while back in this same thread. My mistake! :(
Last edited by The Elegant Dandy Fop on Tue Apr 19, 2011 12:26 am, edited 5 times in total.

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Yojimbo
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Re: Watching Films in a Theater

#244 Post by Yojimbo » Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:35 pm

Perkins Cobb wrote:
Gregory wrote:-Unsupervised children running through the aisles throwing their parents' grapefruit-sized keychains up and then picking them up off the floor while parents sat watching the films
That happens to me all the time too!
An extraordinary memory thats remained with me now for over 40 years is a bunch of kids chasing each other atop the backs of seats from one end of the cinema to the other, - and all without one of them once losing their footing
(it was at a Saturday matinee screening of 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly': I'm not sure which was which, though)

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Movie Theater Experiences

#245 Post by matrixschmatrix » Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:40 pm

It's funny, every time I read one of these threads I see all sorts nightmares, but with one or two exceptions the worst I ever get is quiet murmuring or crinkling snacks. I used to think it was a movie selection thing, but I'm kind of shocked to hear about that kind of crowd at arthouse movies. Maybe it really is West Coast vs East Coast, since more or less all my movies have been on the East.

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Yojimbo
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Re: Movie Theater Experiences

#246 Post by Yojimbo » Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:44 pm

matrixschmatrix wrote:It's funny, every time I read one of these threads I see all sorts nightmares, but with one or two exceptions the worst I ever get is quiet murmuring or crinkling snacks. I used to think it was a movie selection thing, but I'm kind of shocked to hear about that kind of crowd at arthouse movies. Maybe it really is West Coast vs East Coast, since more or less all my movies have been on the East.
Yep, there definitely seems to be a 'better class' of citizen that frequents art houses, but I once memorably had to turn to request a patron sitting behind me to delay the completion of what might have been a five course meal that he brought into the cinema, until the conclusion of the film.
He obliged, reluctantly

Perkins Cobb
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Re: Movie Theater Experiences

#247 Post by Perkins Cobb » Tue Apr 19, 2011 12:18 am

Yeah, those food wrapper rattlers can be a real pain, and can take far longer than you would expect to consume their fucking meals. I've always seen it as a gray area -- I mean, some of the food for sale in the lobby does come in noisy wrappers -- but I think I'm going to start yelling at them, too.

Tuco
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Re: Movie Theater Experiences

#248 Post by Tuco » Tue Apr 19, 2011 12:55 am

Oh man oh man, do I have a good one! I had wanted to see the Douglas Fairbanks ROBIN HOOD ever since I read Brownlow's THE PARADE'S GONE BY...(one of the best books on film, as far as I'm concerned) when I was a kid. Finally, it was shown at a theater in Minneapolis, the Oak Street Cinema (this was about 15 years ago), at the time, a great place to see movies, with live music for silents more often than not. The musical accompaniment for my silent Holy Grail? ? An accordion. Adding further insult, the Gilligan Island's theme whenever Alan Hale Sr. was on the screen, "Sealed with a Kiss" when Robin leaves on the Crusades....yecch! Of course the entire audience decided the movie was complete camp. Yet, somehow, life went on...

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gcgiles1dollarbin
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Re: Watching Films in a Theater

#249 Post by gcgiles1dollarbin » Tue Apr 19, 2011 1:36 am

dad1153 wrote: This theater didn't have air conditioning so, right next to the screen, a giant (to a little kid my age) rectangular fan was turned on and blowing (hot) air at the theater seats. I loved the movie but I will never as long as I live forget looking at that giant fan as often and with as much fascination as I had looking at Donner's flick.
I love this because it reminds me of being a little kid in a dark living room with a bunch of adults having a quiet conversation while I was messing around with a Russian nesting doll in the light of a fire, just barely registering what they had to say. I was enacting some sort of disemboweled-Russian-nesting-doll-action-figure drama on the carpet, smelling the sour balsa wood and lacquered paint. And the adults were talking about a cousin who had recently died in a motorcycle accident. And to this day... synesthesia! I swear that I smell that wood and paint whenever I think of my deceased cousin. I wonder if you hear a rattling fan and feel warm air whenever you think of Superman (which sounds a little weird out of the context of your anecdote). Maybe theater experiences can benefit from that real-world interference beyond the viewer's or filmmaker's control; in the moment it's a nuisance, but over time, I have found that it serves as a kind of mnemonic device. Home theaters are always the same: they smell the same, they feel the same, they look the same. More often than not, that's good. But I do have more vivid memories of films I have seen that are coupled to unusual distractions, whether it's a useless fan circulating warm air (in your case) or a spilled bucket of popcorn (early childhood trauma during opening credits of The Black Bird, a dreadful George Segal movie). Remembering The Black Bird from when I was five years old has not improved my life, but there is something to be said for the memorable hooks created by these strange intersections that can only be found in environments beyond our control.

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The Elegant Dandy Fop
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Re: Movie Theater Experiences

#250 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Tue Apr 19, 2011 2:22 am

Tuco wrote:The musical accompaniment for my silent Holy Grail? ? An accordion. Adding further insult, the Gilligan Island's theme whenever Alan Hale Sr. was on the screen
This maybe the best thing so far in this thread.

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