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The Projector: Is There a Wrong Way to Watch a Movie? (Patreon)

Published:
2022-07-01 20:40:29
Imported:
2022-07
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Earlier this week on the Next Picture Show Slack we found ourselves talking about a string of tweets from Claire Downs, a writer and director, about an experience watching Elvis at an Alamo Drafthouse. During the screening she was handed a pre-printed card reminding her that there was "no talking or texting" while a film was playing. She was neither talking nor texting, but she was laughing at what another member of the audience considered inappropriate times.

I was not at that screening and cannot say whether or not Downs' laughter was disruptive. I do think Alamo's policy is, on the whole, an admirable one, having been to way too many screenings hampered or even ruined by disruptive and disrespectful audience members. But can you control how someone reacts to a film?

I don't think you can, even if it sometimes feels like you should be able to. I keep thinking about an article friend of the show Amy Nicholson wrote in 2015: "Stop Laughing at Old Movies You $@%@ing Hipsters," in which she recounts the experience of watching older movies with a crowd that thinks anything old is just a hoot. I've been there. I once saw Gimme Shelter with an audience largely fixated on laughing at the crazy hippie fashions. And one of the worst screenings of my life was seeing Vertigo with a crowd that seemingly decided that Jimmy Stewart's descent into madness and obsession in the second half was hilarious.

That said, what are you going to do? Talking and texting during a movie is obviously bad behavior, but can you penalize someone for not getting a movie? Or watching it wrong? Can you turn away moviegoers who've shown up for ironic enjoyment? Maybe the rule should be it's okay to be jackasses at home but at least try to put a cap on it if you're with others?

That said, it's not like I'm innocent either. One of my most memorable moviegoing experiences involved seeing the Britney Spears star vehicle Crossroads in a theater that was at least half filled with people who'd shown up to watch a train wreck. (Their numbers were padded out by my wife and our own Scott Tobias.) About halfway through the snickers became infectious and you could feel the crowd turning on the movie, even those who'd shown up with no irony in their heart. One of the holdouts, in frustration, exclaimed, "Come on, it's not that funny." I disagreed then, but I kind of feel for them now.

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Comments

Matthew ''from New Zealand'' Louwrens

I've seen Vertigo in cinema four or five times, and EVERY TIME, Scotty's line about how Judy's hair colour "can't matter" to her gets a derisive laugh - you can feel the people thinking "that's such an outdated view", thinking they're better than the film, and seemingly missing that the film is unambiguously criticising Scotty. I love Vertigo, will always watch it in cinema when there's an opportunity, but I always dread when that moment approaches.

Billy Thompson

I was at a SIFF film years ago and the crowd turned on it almost immediately. Even knowing that the director and members of the cast and crew were in attendance, the jeers and laughs poured on. I held back a little out of respect, but it was a horror movie where the director obviously cast his crush/girlfriend who was absolutely terrible in the role. Wooden line delivery and bizarre facial reactions. I left right as the credits rolled and saw the director hiding his face in his hands. I was told that during the post-movie QA he fainted on stage.

Brendan Steele

My then girlfriend (now wife) and I went to the now-razed University Square Four theater in Madison to see one of the Underworld sequels (maybe Evolution?). We knew it would probably be dumb, but we hoped it would at least be entertaining. We paid our $10-12, which was a lot of money at the time for poor college students. A couple of wannabe MST3K-ers sat down a couple of seats down from us and proceeded to heckle and talk through the whole movie. We became increasingly irate as they talked so loudly we literally couldn't hear the dialogue. Finally, I had to get up, walk over to them, and say "Are you seriously going to do this for the whole movie or can you just shut up?" It was already a pretty bad movie, but that whole interaction made the night miserable.

Josh Hammond

My friends and I were "wanna-be MST3Kers" in college, but we made the rule that we were only allowed to do that at the last show on a weeknight. So the 1040pm showing of Anaconda was fair game.

Ed C.

I saw Men recently with a moderately sized crowd. I adored it, but the rest of the crowd seemed to turn on it in the last act. I was laughing hysterically during the entirety of a certain sequence near the end (if you've seen it, you know what I mean), but I was not laughing at it. I was laughing with joy at seeing something so insane I'd never seen before and would never see again. I think the rest of the crowd was nervously tittering.

Ed C.

Years back, I saw James Cameron's Avatar with my brother. He's still mad at me for laughing during all the emotional parts of it. At the time, I just couldn't take any of it seriously. I've seen it since and turned around on the movie, though.

Ewan Beck

I'm always a little wary of seeing older films in cinema ever since I sat through a screening of Halloween with an audience who seemed to have come purely with the intent of laughing at this old dumb slasher movie. I think what bothered me most wasn't that they were laughing every other minute, but that the whole thing felt so performative, like they didn't actually find it all that funny but they had come to laugh, and it was beneath them to take it seriously. I hadn't read that Amy Nicholson piece before, I think she nails it here: "His stubborn laughter was an advertisement for his own superiority". During that Halloween screening there was one moment I thought was pretty revealing. It was the jump scare when Michael appears from the backseat of the car and strangles one of the girls. Clearly this audience hadn't seen the movie before because it caught them off-guard: the room went silent, there were audible gasps, and the sound of people jumping in their seats. A few seconds later the laughter started up again, just a little more forced, as Myers slit the girl's throat. I was at least able to find some humour in that moment.