Texas cinema texter becomes foul-mouthed movie star A Texas cinema with a strict no-mobe policy has demonstrated that it really means business by throwing out a persistent texter, then turning her mini-rant against ejection into a big screen trailer. Austin's Alamo Drafthouse explains: "Recently, we had a situation where a customer persisted in texting in the theatre despite …
1. Pay money - lots of money these days.
2. Settle down to watch movie in darkened cinema
3. Get distracted constantly by peeps in front of you messaging, texting, etc
4. Leave cinema at end of movie not having enjoyed movie quite as much as you could have
5. Feel mildly homicidal until after first drink
It's the light from the phones that causes the distraction, and the larger the screen, the more annoying it is. Watched one punter using an iPhone throughout the movie and was left wondering why he had bothered coming to see the movie in the first place.
Glad to see at least one cinema stops it, although I'm still not moving to Austin....
"Watched one punter using an iPhone throughout the movie and was left wondering why he had bothered coming to see the movie in the first place."
To video the whole thing on his iPhone and then post the resulting incredibly crappy cam footage on a moody torrent site to piss off everyone trying to download the film?
Obvious really, innit?
Most of my recent cinema experiences are thusly:
Shell out far too much just to watch a film, then at the beginning for many minutes into the film some twunts just won't shut their big mouths, right at the point where you're trying to get into the plot/atmosphere of the film experience - highly distracting and one of many reasons I'm not a regular cinema goer.
Thankfully I've not yet had the indignity of coat/bags being searched to find out if I'm carrying food/drink not purchased from the highly extortionate foyer or any sort of 'recording device', but the day that starts happening to me is the day I seriously think twice about cinema trips.
So big thumbs up icon to the cinema that doesn't take crap from the degenerates that are too stupid and ignorant to understand how much they piss people off just by their behaviour in a cinema.
I would love to see along side the "turn off your phone" pre-film messages a single line just saying - "This is a cinema where people have come to watch a film, not listen to your inane ramblings so STFU."
Near my place there's a theater where the tickets are just 3$ (you actually buy them at the food counter, there is no proper ticket cash). Obviously not the quietest place in there, people tend to tralk etc, it makes for a completely different experience (closer to the early days of cinema I would think) but not unpleasant. Of course when you shell out 7-8 times that chit-chat, texting and sweets bags noises become much more annoying.
(title just to annoy the anti-split brigade)
Well, the seat being 3 bucks, refunded or exchanged if you didn't like the movie, expectations tend to lean towards the "social" viewing model (no pr0n, mind you). That's not my "go-to" cinema for Gilliam, Lynch, Zhang, the "dogma" guys, or French neo-new-wave stuff., etc... But for old replays, nothing beats being able to discuss old nabbles with complete strangers.
Are you happy to sit in the cinema while all around ypu don't give a shit about what's on the screen? If you don't want to watch the movie - why the hell are you there in the first place?
This, as you wel know, is not a case of 'jobsworth' but of someone who can't give a shit about other people and then has the nerve to grumble publicly when informed that there are actually other people sharnig the same planet as them.
I can only assume you will also moan about some football (that's soccer to anyone else) 'fans' being ejected and arrested for thier continuous racist chants during a game. That their 'rights' to watch the game' have been breached.
meh, indeed
its football to the world and soccer to the nation too stupid to invent their own names for sports. football was around a hundred or so years before your padded rugby bore-fest.
<goes to invent a sport called baseball where men run around in tutus and doesnt have a ball or uses bases />
But... if theatre manglement are so keen to stop the rest of the punters from being distracted, why do they happily sell huge buckets of popcorn or sweets in plastic wrapping, that's made into a huge f*****ng drama being eaten as noisily as possible by the rest of the semi-educated slack-jawed customer? Oh - silly me - there's money in convincing a surly teenager that a film isn't complete without a colossal bucket of popcorn, plus a gallon of coke. That sort of distraction's allowed - there's money in it. Txting? On yer bike.
The first 20 minutes of the Senna film the other night was completely wrecked by these oiks who can't survive for any length of time without their comfort food. And it's all with the full blessing of house management. Stick your cinema.
for, unless the movie is about grass growing, the sound levels usually leave me deaf to normal sound levels for a few minutes afterwards. And, as I've spent most of my working life around running jet engines, that takes a LOT of noise to do.
...mine's the one with the smuggled-in crisp packets in the pockets...
Good films have a wide range of volume, like the Senna film - clearly v loud in places, sometimes deathly quiet and I don't think I'm giving the game away with that statement. You might take 20 minutes to adjust, my ears don't and when some ill-trained teenager & his mate are sitting 18" from my ears the noise of their dining performance is a major major distraction.
I want a film to sweep me up, to take me away, to let me be part of it. A plastic bucket of popcorn being eaten in the seat behind prevents that. Since when did people lose the ability to sit quietly for an hour & three-quarters without needing a sugar rush?
So you think if there where femto cell devices sold to cinemas so that they can provide a highly expensive roaming service to mobile phone user, then the phone usage would be allowed?
I think I have a business idea!
Anon so I am getting killed by the other commenters before bagging my million.
I'm also not.
So autistic I need people to sit up straight, stop fidgeting and be silent in order to enjoy watching a film.
Filled with a bitter hatred of anyone who is younger then me or enjoying life more then I am at the present moment.
Sexually frustrated enough to join a mob bullying another human being.
Gullible enough to trust the account of someone who is trying to humiliate someone in this way.
Prone to making random accusations about the habits of people who disagree with me .
Just for you
www.youtube.com/watch?v=py3u3P9OpBE
A good Garden Centre might be able to help you with your onion problem.
Now if they can just stop the people who feel they need to talk through it.
The food and drink they serve, as its just as distracting and makes a mess everywhere - My feet shouldnt stick to the carpet.
And the outrageous tickets prices - I'm only there for a couple of hours I dont know why I'm paying the staffs wages for the week!
Most (right thinking) people agree that people texting during a movie is bloody irritating and inconsiderate. But in the ad above, the movie house is preaching to the converted.
Nowhere do they appear to explain that the pointless rambling chickie was asked to stop, and they don't say WHY it's their policy. So thick-heads that text will still not understand why their behaviour is unwelcome.
Messaging fail.
Their business is to allow visitors to enjoy a movie. This appears to me as being basic knowledge, no further explanation required. People who fail to grasp (or choose to ignore) this bit of knowledge, are extremely unlikely to be swayed by bits of information (signs, lead-in announcements, cluebats), so it's wasted effort.
Anything that disrupts that enjoyment, disrupts their business. And given that it's within their premises, they can do whatever they like to disrupt the disruptions, short of summarily executing the disruptor. With or without further explanation as to why.
*if* this sort of thing annoyed me significantly, I'd go to a dodgy website, buy a cheap phone jammer for $27 (delivered) and switch it on whenever I see phones around me light up, the frustraition in their little faces, lit up by their phones screen would be worth every penny, ummm... I mean if they were legal to use in the UK that is ;-)
The people that run the Alamo Drafthouse, at least here in Austin, really, really love movies.
They serve decent food, sometimes excellent, have a strong selection of beers, don't show you 20 minutes of oversized TV commercials before each movie, instead digging up things like Japanese pseudo-BatMan TV shows to show before a BatMan movie, for example.
They always show fairly aggressive PSAs about leaving your phone alone, and obviously, they mean it. Nice to see them getting international acclaim for this one.
I dunno. You have to be careful with this "despising your customers" thing. It's okay to politely eject a customer, or bar them permanently. But going to this length simply in order to make the miscreant look foolish ? Sounds pretty spiteful to me. Maybe even illegal.
Never been distracted by a texter myself, mind. Must drive you insane.
In general business you may be right. In niche markets, other things come into play. It's clear this texting twat was not a member of their target customer group. Making an example of one of the more annoying ones to more clearly present yourself to your target group may well be beneficial as well as therapeutical.
The Fellowship of the Ring, scene at Galadriel's Mirror: Phone rings five seats to my left - Mozart's 40th and the owner, who clearly misunderstood the meaning of the movie's title, lets it run through a few times. Then he answers it and starts yapping at the top of his voice (all that film soundtrack was drowning him out ). I finally stood up and yelled "PUT THAT BLOODY PHONE AWAY" and got a small round of applause.
Git says "I've got to go, some idiot wants me to shut up".
Pirates of the Caribbean at Worlds End. Sat next to four twentysomethings who spent the entire movie texting. Flashlight bright screens were dazzling me and I asked the nitwit next to me FOUR TIMES to angle his screen somewhere other than in my face over the course of the film. Each time he seemed genuinely sorry and unaware he was being a git.
Personally, I think people should not be allowed to own electronics with a higher IQ than their own, and I applaud this cinema in taking the idiotette's own now-public domain rant and using it against her and all her ilk.
After a big trauma at an opera, I now remove the battery physically before entering the auditorium.
I once accidentally dropped a live Nokia down the back of the seat in front, during last year's run of "Niobe, Regina di Tebe" at the Royal Opera House, just after the beginning of the second act. The 25 mins attempting to retrieve it were some of the worst of my life.
I was rightfully physically battered by an 85 year old lady in the row behind. Thank god there was applause after every (superb) aria - as after the fifth lot of applause I managed to get the guy in front to look below his seat for the third time and we got it. But I'll never forget the cold sweat and dread it might go off and me be banned for life.
Fail because it was one of my biggest ever fuckups.
(Harry Potter's uncle Vernon, Uncle Monty in Withnail and I and Henry Crabbe in Pie in the Sky) has stopped mid performance on the London stage three times to berate mobile phone users who have interrupted performances by letting their phones ring.
Oh the number of times I wished he could have been in my carriage on the train home of an evening.
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