January 15, 2008
Shut the hell up!
The writers at Pajiba -- home to snarky reviews and much scabrous language -- offer their pet peeves for 2008, and Daniel Carlson lets loose on something that makes my list, too.
People Who Talk in the Theater: Shut up. Shut the f**k up. Every single last worthless one of you stupid braindead sh*ts. This is not your home. This is not your space. You are sharing this space with me, and I am younger and smarter and quicker and I could kill you with my mind, so just shut up.
When the hell did this even start? People suddenly think it’s OK to speak up or whisper or talk to their friends or significant others or whatever other mouth-breathing bottom-feeding moron they’ve dragged with them to the theater. But the movie theater is not a living room, and you just have to shut up.
I’m completely on board with laughing, crying, gasping — any of those pure gut reactions that spring forth unforced when the movie is doing its job. But to talk, to offer commentary, to SPEAK ALOUD ABOUT THE FILM is never acceptable, and it marks you as a giant douchebag.
The problem is that it’s everywhere. Even here in Los Angeles, which purportedly can draw (very very) slightly more discerning audiences than other cities, it never fails that there’s always some dumbsh*t talker sitting near me.
I was at the ArcLight to see There Will Be Blood, and when the action shifted to the mansion that Daniel Plainview has built with his oil money, including a shot of a pair of bowling lanes he’d installed in his house, the woman behind me whispered loudly to her friend, “That’s what Uncle Dave could do with his spare room.”
Who gives a flying f**k about Uncle Dave’s spare room, lady? What makes you think this is the time — in the middle of a darkened theater, in the film’s final sequence — to talk about your stupid Uncle Dave? I can guarantee that you will never hope to understand what was happening, and I mean really happening, in that movie; no one who was emotionally connected to the film, to any film, would speak up like that. You hear me? No one. You will never get this. You will never get any of this. You will probably not even understand why I’m asking you to shut up or go home and die, so just trust me on this one: I need you, all of you, to stop talking. Forever. Starting right now.
I've basically sworn off going to the movies because of the unbelievably rude, self-obsessed, ill-mannered louts who can't shut up for a couple of hours.
One of the commenters came up with a truly-inspired response to a cinema chatterbox.
One time I had sweet sweet revenge on a theater-talker. This girl was sitting in the row in front of mine. She came to the movie late, talked to her friend throughout the whole movie, and ate candy that must have wrapped in the crinkliest paper known to man.
As we were getting up to leave, she told her friend that she was late because she was picking up the sixth Harry Potter book. I told her the ending. The look she gave me is one I will treasure until the end of time.
I'd have given anything to see that look, too.
Now that's entertainment.
Posted by Mike Lief at January 15, 2008 09:41 PM
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