Attention

In Roger Ebert’s latest ‘Why I’m so conservative’, Roger opines on what he considers to be critical to a movie going experience, and as I have in the past, I want to comment on one thing that he mentions in particular.

Attention.

Yes, we have all seen the cell phone wielding moviegoer, seemingly waiting for that perfect moment of the movie to take a call, and consequently jolt everyone around them back to attention, allowing the veil of imagination and escape to slip away.

Or for the hardened moviegoer like myself, you find it difficult to immerse yourself in a movie, as you have become so aware of the people around you, you sit there almost expecting and waiting for someone to ruin the film.

But, the people that I find most interesting, and no, not in a good way, are the people who come to the theater to seemingly hang out. They aren’t really there to see the movie – it’s more like a place to go for the evening.

They chat, they sit for a while and then leave for a bit, they take a call, they go check out other theaters to see what their friends might be watching, they make multiple snack runs and have conversations as if they were sitting in a restaurant or their living room.

It’s an entire movie length production that makes you consider whether to ever even bother returning. Your only real hope in these situations is that you are sitting far enough away in a big theater that you don’t even notice them.

Or, as I have had to do, condense the majority of your movie watching to a Friday afternoon double feature, when the theater is, for the most part, completely empty.

I wish I was running my own theater.