stevesbets

Something just happened to me that I would be willing to bet will never happen again. My friend and I were chastised for talking during the ads before the sneak peaks before the trailers at a movie.

We went to an afternoon showing of The Lovely Bones at 62nd and 1st. We arrived about a half hour early and we were the only ones in the theater. There were the usual advertisements flashing through the screen. People started filing in about 15 minutes before showtime. There were about 15 people total in the theater by 3:50 for the 4pm showtime.

Now let me set the stage. My friend and i were chatting in a voice well below a normal volume level but slightly above a whisper. The lights in the theater were on, people were checking their cellphones and munching on popcorn around us. On screen was a commercial about not talking on cell phones during the movie which was followed by about 2 minutes of elevator music with a screen saying “silence your cell phones”. Note that this was not the usual post trailer vignette about how silence is golden, this was an odd ad of sorts stuck in among the quirky games and commercials that they play before they get to the trailers. The lights in the theater were on and people were coming in.

Right as the people saying turn your cell phones off dissappeared and the sounds turned to the elevator music, a small, bearded, 50 something man with his wife 2 rows in front of us turned around and said in a nasty tone, “C’mon guys, I can’t hear A THING”. Both my friend and I were too taken aback to respond.

If you are an avid reader of this blog, you know that I despise talking during movies more than most people, I even included it in my blog about etiquette here. As I said in that blog, during trailers I prefer silence but you can’t get too bent out of shape if people are talking, particularly if the lights are still on (which varies theater to theater). However, I have never even contemplated that someone was capable of getting so frustrated by talking BEFORE the trailers that they would feel the need to say something.

I have read stories about people getting shot at movie theaters for getting into arguments, and while this guy was small, i figured that anyone who would get bent out of shape over people speaking softly during elevator music 10 minutes before the previews to a movie start, is someone with a high likelihood of being nuts. For that reason, I resisted the strong temptation to say anything back. My friend and I were talking on the way out of the movie about how we most likely will never see someone chastise someone else for talking at that point in a movie viewing again at that point of a movie viewing for the rest of our lives