DANGER GUERRERO: Brains for Dinner, Brains for Lunch, Why Can’t We Have Some Guts
So there was this girl I liked back in 2001, right? Like, like liked. Valentine’s Day was rapidly approaching, and since we were both single I pulled the old “Hey, since neither of us have a date…” thing that dorks in movies do, and asked her if she wanted to see a movie with me, instead of staying at home by herself. (I am very smooth.) She thought about it for a second and said “Sure. I really want to see Hannibal.” SCORE. I mean, I generally don’t watch scary movies because I am a huge baby, but I was willing to make an exception here, for obvious reasons.
Here are two things you need to know about Hannibal: 1) It is the sequel to Silence of the Lambs. 2) There is a scene where Anthony Hopkins removes the top of a very much alive Ray Liotta’s skull, extracts a piece of his brain while talking to him, cooks it, and feeds it to him front of Julianne Moore.
After this series of events happens on the big screen, a few hours into what had been a very pleasant evening to that point, we started to hear some whispering behind us. Then more, louder whispering. Then we heard the unmistakeable sound of someone puking their guts out onto a hard floor. Apparently some dude had a very weak stomach and/or was very drunk, and the brain-eating scene had caused him to involuntarily empty his stomach in the theater. It smelled bad. It smelled very bad. We spent the remainder of the film holding our noses and hovering our feet above the floor so none of his bile trickled down the slanted floor and onto our shoes, and after it was over my disgusted, now-also-green-faced date wanted to be taken home immediately.
The moral of the story is this: That guy is an asshole.
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JULIEANNE SMOLINSKI: Crazy Heart of the Matter
I saw “Crazy Heart” in one of those theaters that has wine at the concession stand. There was this old couple sitting in back of us, wearing those old people berets, drinking wine and getting louder and drunker as the movie progressed. It was funny, especially given the subject matter (Don’t remember? IT WAS ALCOHOLISM). When Jeff Bridges puked for the third time, they were like, “OH GAWD. He’s hit rock bottom!” and the whole theater was laughing, which only confused the hell out of them.
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LAREMY LEGEL: When Scary Movie Got Scary
There was a time in my life when I was seeing just about every new release that came out. I wasn’t getting paid for this, mind you, I was just heading off to the ol’ cinema, by my lonesome, checking out the latest offerings. Basically, I was a marketer’s wet dream. Looking back, I think it was a healthy mixture of OCD and wanting to be ready for any potential water cooler situations. You know the ones, “Have you seen NEW MOVIE X?” Yes. Of course I have. I have seen all of your movie choices. Let us discuss, and then partake of water.
Anyway, this is the story about the time I went to see Scary Movie and almost lost my life in the bargain. It is not a rebel story.
It was July of 2000 (or “aught aught”) and I was planning to see the 11pm showing of Scary Movie. It was probably a Saturday night, because I can’t imagine they had a Friday midnight showing of frickin’ Scary Movie. I had just finished my shift at the restaurant I waited tables at, so I had cash in hand, ready to dip into the delicious satire that was Scary Movie.
Note: I knew even then that this movie would not be good, but that wasn’t part of the equation. It was simply a new movie that I hadn’t seen, and my recollection is that only one film came out that week. It was poised to win the weekend, so I couldn’t let the chance pass. What I’m getting at is I didn’t head into this like some sort of idiot thinking Scary Movie would be hilarious. I knew instinctively that it would be awful. But I got my ticket thirty minutes early, took my normal (far left, last row) seat, and waited for the action to commence. This was a box to be checked, nothing more, and there was always a chance that the trailers were misleading and they were saving the good stuff for the show (Ha!).
Okay, so me, alone, back seat of Scary Movie. The place I lived at the time, Norfolk VA, was pretty much known for rougher crowds. It’s a navy town, and a place where fellas like to drink, so I didn’t expect huge amounts of decorum, but it wasn’t a big deal because Scary Movie wasn’t really worthy of anyone’s attention anyway. About 30 people were seated in the theater when the trailers started (“Nutty Professor 2? BOSS!!”)
The first three minutes of the movie were fairly non-eventful. Then, a group of about five dudes in hoodies came in, sat in the front row of the stadium seating, and started making comments to the screen. People shushed them. More comments, more shushing.
Finally around ten minutes in, one of the gentleman had had enough of the censorship and waived a gun around, slurring something to the effect of “I will have my say, sir, you shan’t silence me.” You could tell it was a 9mm or something of the like, its silhouette clear against the screen. This caused the crowd to pipe down extremely quickly. Cold fear swept over the group in short order.
At this point my self-talk was “Wow, I’m going to die in a manner that will make even the obituary writer snicker.” I won’t sugarcoat it, I was extremely sad about the whole thing, especially because I hadn’t even been shushing the group. They were annoying, sure, but I figured they’d pass out eventually. After about five minutes of further heckling someone made a run for it, you could tell because they did that “duck around the corner, don’t shoot me” thing. Three minutes later cops came in with a theater manager and hauled the guys away. Two minutes after that I left the movie. They had an employee handing out rain checks, but I demurred. It just felt like I should immediately start repressing the whole thing.
To this day, I still don’t know how Scary Movie ends, but I like to imagine it was in a hail of gunfire.
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Don’t know about movies, but I did see a guy get stabbed in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium, if that counts.
That’s included in the price of a ticket, isn’t it?
Dodger Stadium: Boring extra orifices into San Franciscans since 1962.
I remember watching The Usual Suspects with my parents in the theater and my Dad leaned down about 15 minutes in and whispered, “just you watch, Kevin Spacey is that guy, that Keiser guy.”
I have pressed him at length to admit to having had that spoiled for him in advance and he always swears he figured it out on his own.
Laremy, why haven’t we heard your story about seeing Scary Movie with Vick brothers before?
I like seeing shitty movies in ghetto movie theaters. Everyone just says “fuck it” and it becomes a mass MST3K situation. Only reason I paid to see The Hot Chick and Drumline.
Drumline is a perfectly fine movie.
I finally saw Magic Mike and don’t understand Filmdrunk’s obsession with it. The movie has more plot holes that the Prequels. The movie escalates to an interesting point then all of a sudden they must have been running low on paper and finished the movie in 2 pages. Tatum’s love interest is an awful actress and their dialogue together is awful.
Hey, you know what was a piece of shit? The Darjeeling Limited. BOOM!
you take that back…you…mean man you!
Come on, you walked into that. But on a serious note, I won’t argue with you that that chick was a brilliant actress, but that scene where C-Tates is trying to explain why what he does doesn’t define who he is and then gets sort of flustered and confused about it himself was one of my favorite scenes all year. I couldn’t believe the guy could actually act before that. And the fact that they resolved his story with the kid without some cheesy, Oliver Stone, in-too-deep-with-some-drug lords scene made it even better for me. The kid was just turning into an asshole and C-Tates felt responsible. I thought that was totally relevant to male group dynamics and something that hasn’t been explored many places.
If you watched Magic Mike and focused on the girl…you just might be gay.
Agreed, the male group dynamics are some of the best stuff in the movie.
But what I don’t understand is why does Mike have bad credit? He either owns or leases that truck. Has a business. Either owns or rents his house. That has to show up well on credit reports, right?
And Adam’s sister went from pissed off at C-Tates for what her brother has become to being okay with him coming over to not worrying about her brother going to Miami and possibly overdosing. She did a 180 in like 15 minutes.
Yo, C-Tates’ C-Piece is like a magic wand, yo, cures all yo troubles. As for his credit, yeah, I wondered that too. But I didn’t find it too hard to swallow, maybe he just had no credit? If you always work in cash, that’s a possibility.
None of those things reflect either well or poorly on credit reports. Business owners, as a group, have the same credit as everyone else, from terrible to great. I’ve seen business owners who appear from the outside to be doing well, but with credit scores that ensure they won’t get another loan for years.
My half sister was about six when we took her to see her first movie in the theater. A delightful family romp with absolutely no sad parts called Up.
1: No, we didn’t know people would die not five minutes into the movie. (Not since The Bear has an opening been so upsetting)
2: It didn’t matter, because in a theater full of shocked and crying people as the old man watched his wife die, my sister laughed. She laughed HARD. She was also six so she wasn’t exactly verbalizing well why she was laughing so much.
Ever since then I’ve been sleeping with one eye open when she’s around, just in case…
Tell your sister to call me when she turns 18.
I was a male bridesmaid in a wedding this year (I’m straight I swear!) and all the bridesmaids went to see Breaking Dawn Part 1 and dragged me with them. Now we saw this at not the most stellar theater in town and I was at the end of the group cuz no one wanted to hear my sarcastic quips. Turns out I was speechless because the woman next to me had clearly never read the books but was just enthralled by the films, so every new plot point needed to be remarked on. When a vampire is running through the forest to kill Bella she exclaimed “Oh this bitch? Not this bitch.” And whenever Taylor Lautner took his shirt off there was a “Ooh he fine.” Well worth the price of admission.
Your first sentence was the biggest lie of all time. Stopped reading there.
Ummm. Hmm.
I saw the first Paranormal Activity in a packed movie theater (<10 seats left) and after the first couple nighttime bedroom scenes the entire crowd would audibly groan anytime a scene cut to that shot of the couple in bed. Near the end of the movie, they cut to the bedroom and a guy in front of me just yells, "AIN'T THEY NEVER HEARD OF A HOTEL. DAMN"
I saw that god-awful 1408 back in aught seven with my brother and a couple friends. I remember there was a young highschool-aged couple walking ahead of us leaving the theatre -a dude and his inexplicably shaken up girlfriend. My brother is telling me the one part of the movie he enjoyed (he described it as ‘a nice piece of corn amongst a mountain of shit’) and I told him my favourite scene *SPOILER ALERT* was when Samuel L. Jackson shouts “I have had it with these mothafuckin’ ghosts in this mothafuckin’ hotel room!”. We all had a good laugh about it, even the dude walking ahead of us. His girlfriend didn’t think it was very funny, though, and promptly slapped him for laughing while she was still scared.
Oh to be young again.
Damn straight Burnsy gets top billing!!!
Nice work too Vince on actually doing the legwork to put a thoroughly entertaining post together (tho I didn’t read past the Burnsy part). As someone who knows how the audience can heighten the experience of any event (see Chicago) I’m looking fed to your next live FROTCAST starring Ashley Burns.
Haha nice one, Burnsy.
Or possibly Burnsy’s mom.
This is scary.
Definitely C-Tates.
*BRAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHM*
The first 65 huge Burnsy fans weren’t so outspoken
Post your self-insert fanfic or GTFO.
This is comment of the year material.
2012 was the most fun I’ve ever had at the movies, hands-down. I saw it at the Prospect Park theater (it’s better now, Vince, but they still don’t give a shit about you blatantly carrying in a sloppy hoagie and some FourLoko… ok I make it worse when I go) and everybody there was in on the joke. I haven’t been to see a comedy in years, but I can’t ever remember hearing that much laughter in a theater.
Years back I went with some friends to see some scary movie remade from a Japanese one about some haunted house with Buffy The Vampire Slayer as the star. The theater was so crowed for some reason my group got split up from 6 people we had to sit 4 and 2 higher up the seating. As the movie goes along there is a flash of some painted white Japanese boy who is like 8 and completely naked. Its supposed to be creepy or scary idk, but I hear my friend who was forced to sit away from us burt out laughing like a donkey before he mutters a complaint about not being able to see the little guy’s junk. Needless to say I choose incorrectly when I sat with my date instead of my friend. Lession learned.
Hanging around with not much to do one day a couple of friends and I thought we’d go catch whatever was playing at the local theatre, to wit, Scorpion King. It must have been nearing the end of its (no doubt long and majestic) run, as there were just us and two other guys in the theatre. These two connoisseurs then proceeded to comment excitedly on all of The Rock’s doings throughout the movie.
At one point a gang of evil henchmen pursued The Rock into a cave, at which point a lively debate arose on whether or not The Rock was going to kill them all one by one, a consensus eventually developing in the positive. Nor were they mistaken.
I saw Hustle & Flow in Memphis on opening weekend. The first time they built up the beat of “Whoop That Trick,” people had already removed their shirts, and were waving them around their heads like a helicopter.
By the time they actually started recording songs, it was a full-on roller rink party.
Damn, imagine “Roll Bounce” then.
Shit….I still wear cargo shorts.
My wife likes to tell the story of how she went to go a movie that she thinks was “Cruel Intentions” with her parents. At some point in the movie, the word “Cocksucker” is crudely scratched on the hood of someone’s car. Apparently it wasn’t on screen long enough for my future father in law to read, so when it panned away, he loudly asked: “COCK-WHAT?”
When I saw 127 hours I was seated next to a couple that seemed to be on a first or second date, judging from how uncomfortable they got during the jerk off scene (i.e. nervous rummaging of popcorn, nervous giggles, guy says “ugh, that’s not necessary” as if he wouldn’t jerk off while stuck in a fucking rock for days) Anyway, when it finally got to the amputation scene I heard sort of a gasp from the woman and her drink and popcorn spill on the floor. I looked over and she had completely fainted there in her chair. I guess she didn’t see that coming?!
The art cinema I worked at had 127 Hours for a few days and ended up having to deal with a girl fainting in the movie followed by directing the paramedics to the scene (we were located in the middle of the school campus) followed by me having to work crowd control so people wouldn’t rubberneck or freak out over a girl being carried out on a stretcher.
Just great reading all around. I think my closest experience was watching Shaft with Sam Jackson in Virginia beach. In case any one’s forgotten (haha) it’s all about Christian Bale murdering the shit out of a black kid and getting away with it because of society’s completely unreasonable amount of racism. Vigilantism and black power ensue.
Virginia Beach has a lot of black people. My dad and I were the only white guys walking out of that theater at midnight. I learned a lot about walking a mile in another man’s shoes that night.
True story. At Jackass: The Movie, there was a group of what appeared to be high school kids, my then girlfriend and I in the theater. It’s the scene where Steve-O and Pontius have tied a string to Pontius’ balls, the other end to a bottle rocket, which was in Steve-O’s ass.
As this is happening, two white-haired milkshakes come strolling up the aisle (theater seating) and sit down near the high schoolers. In a moment of perfect timing, the whole theater gets silent, one of the poor old ladies asks “is this White Oleander?”
While watching The Last Samurai, during the scene where the wife of the samurai Tom Cruise killed is dressing him in her late husband’s armor, a kid maybe 3-4 years old starts choking on some popcorn. He’s coughing a good whole minute, but the scene is fairly long and has everybody enthralled, until a guy yells out “lady, give that kid some water, for the love of God”, and the whole theater bursts out laughing.
Ugh, the Prospect Park Theater! It’s gotten a little better but the restaurant next door that had THE BEST CHICKEN FINGERS IN THE WOOOOORLD closed down so eff em.
Also, a dude in sweats whipped out his dong next to me at a showing of The Thirteenth Floor at the terrible $3 theater that used to be in midtown Manhattan. That was pretty traumatic but what do you expect at a $3 theater?
Shared this in a Drew Magary mailbag on Deadspin (Danger Guerrero coincidentally had the 1st question that day). Just going to copy and paste:
I live in Queens and have countless “black movie theater” stories. I am Ukrainian myself, if that’s relevant to the story. My most memorable one is watching Return of the King. There is a scene where Gandalf (Ian McKellen) smacks Denethor (John Noble) with his staff. At that point you heard a loud OOHHH from the audience, then a really big black guy at the front of the theater stood up and said very loudly “That nigga Gandalf is fuckin’ gangsta. You seen the way he smacked that other nigga?” to which his friend replied “That nigga Gandalf straight gangsta my nigga.” I found the whole exchange interesting especially considering the words Gandalf, gangsta, and nigga were all said in the same sentence.
My favourite movie-going anecdote was published in the letters section of Empire magazine. The writer was at a screening of Dead Poets Society and following the suicide and Robin Williams’ character subsequently being thrown to the wolves, just as the emotion builds and Ethan Hawke stands up on his desk to devotedly exclaim “O Captain, my captain.” someone in the audience launches into a drum solo on a full fucking drum kit.
I went to see the Bruno movie with a gang of good fellows. Beforehand a couple of us had noticed an extended brood of, well, pikeys. Ma, Pa and 6 or 7 brothers, sisters, cousins, arguing over the prices of the confectionary. Their accents as broad as anything Brad Pitt adopted in Snatch. A few minutes later our group was settled in the middle of the theatre and we couldn’t fail to notice the extended family arrive and sit themselves down right at the very front. Sacha Baron Cohen’s dong in all its glory appears about 20 minutes in and over the sound of the audience’s laughter can be heard “What da fuck is tis Mary? No fuckin way.” and the entire front row got up and left, chuntering away.
I am now going to attempt to incorporate “chuntering” wherever I can, though I have no idea how to use it.
Muttley, Dick Dastardly’s sidekick, is the master.
I’m just gonna use it as a collective noun for travellers from now on.
‘A Chuntering of Pikeys’
Also, my new favourite indie band name.
I think A Chuntering of Pikeys is Russell Crowe’s band.
That’s 30 Odd Foot of Chunts.
The makeup of my sold out theater to see Magic Mike was about the same: 295 women, 5 guys, of which maybe 1-2 were straight (myself included). During a lull in the middle of the film, some of the crowd was getting a little restless yelling out “TAKE OFF YOUR SHIRT,” or “STOP TALKING JUST GET FUCKING NAKED” and other shit along the same line. All of those outbursts only got minor chuckles until this one uber queen of a dude just screamed “Yah, he’s turning into a real CHATTY TATUM!” and the entire theater erupted into laughter. Now I exclusively think of C-tates as Chatty Tatum.
I’m so pissed I missed Magic Mike in the theaters now. I didn’t realize it was such an event picture.
I worked at a movie theater and there was indeed a group of women who chose seeing Magic Mike as their Bachelorette party. They were not happy that there wasn’t actually a whole lot of male nudity in the movie.
So I have a few hours to kill waiting for a hotel room in Laughlin, Nevada, and hey, an 11AM Mullholland Drive! I figure to watch it alone as you would if you knew Laughlin in those days.
Welp, two elderly couples settle in behind me and last until maybe probably Naomi Watts makes a playground of herself. As they climb all over themselves to get out, guy shouts Fuck you, Buddy!. At the screen? At the projectionist? At me? This is my fault now? Jesus, never again.
Kinda similar: I saw The Ten, David Wain’s great satire on bible stories, at a small indie theater where I was the only person except for this elderly couple. And I’m wondering if they know that this is a raunchy R rated alt comedy, not a real Passion of the Christ religious movie. Well, sure enough, as soon as the Justin Theroux as Jesus segment starts, they become agitiated. Right after the “I’ll be your second coming” joke, they walk out in a huff. The old lady looked like all her grandkids had just died, and the man was shaking his fist at nothign in particular.
When I went to see Gran Torino there was someone in the back of the theater that lost their shit every time Clint Eastwood said something racist. He had that infectious kind of laugh and pretty soon every time something racist was said the whole theater was cracking up, including all the old people who love Eastwood. I almost pissed my pants during the scene where Eastwood yells at the black kids picking on the white kid.
I was that guy when I saw it. This was in Manhattan and everyone was trying to be all PC feigning outrage in dead silence, but I can’t help it, racist old men make me giggle like a schoolgirl.
Yeaaaap.
My friend has a step father. African-American pastor. Fantastic guy. Great public speaker, very spiritual, great father to his kids, uber supportive, inspirational, and loves him some Lord.
Also, loves him some “Blazing Saddles.”
As a Caucasian, I had never been called a “shifty nigga” before. It’s even more jarring coming from a pastor.
Back in college my roommates and I went to see A Knight’s Tale. It was an early evening showing and the theater was maybe a third full. We sat close to the back and the only other person nearby was a lone man that must have been a critic since he had one of those light-up pens. The movie was OK but at one point this lady blacksmith is making Heath Ledger’s new suit of armor and she “puts her mark” on it by chiseling in an upside-down Nike Swoosh. The critic guy sees this and loudly says “COME THE FUCK ON!” and everyone just loses it.
I also went to a midnight showing of Ghostbusters on Halloween night and a Chinese guy I recognized from one of my physics discussion sections shouted “Jive-ass Motherfucker” when Walter Peck appeared on screen.
Theater is quiet after a preview for Snatch. Guy in front yells, “Yea I’ll see that after I watch Blow!”
Doesn’t even make sense but I LOL’d because I have the sense of humor of a 15 year old.
The only other ‘audience being better than the movie’ experiences I have are both midnight screenings of The Room. Up there with the best times of my life.
And strike that, reverse it. Preview was for Blow, comment for Snatch…
The party crowd vibes for both Snakes on a Plane and I Know Who Killed Me made for fun movie watching.
Also, I’ll never forget going to see A Civil Action (1998) because during a trailer for The Other Sister someone screamed “What’s this movie called? Retard Wedding?
SNakes on a PLane was fun. I don’t remember any specific comments, but everyone in the audience was really psyched to see it which was kind of infectious.
Same with “Grindhouse” which I saw opening night in a packed theater (and thus was kind of shocked when I found out it bombed so hard).
Not in a movie theatre but an in-flight showing of the first Mr Bean movie; a former colleague was on a long haul flight from the far east and his journey was enlivened by a showing of the movie because next to him was a Chinese guy who was in absolute hysterics throughout. Like Eddie Murphy’s Buddy Love at the comedy club before he goes on the attack in The Nutty Professor. So infectious was this guy’s enthusiasm, everyone around him was laughing their heads off too.
Great stories. Personally, I can think of two that are worth mentioning.
1. South side of Chicago, screening of “Dracula 2000″ and people got up and started praying LOUDLY. It’s a movie about vampires! Hello?!? I think you knew that when you bought the ticket, what the hell are you praying for? Although the film was so boring, it was a welcome distraction.
2. Universal City Walk, DreamWorks Animation employee screening of “Red Eye”. Clearly, CLEARLY, Cillian Murphy was hiding BEHIND THE DOOR. And when he popped out, the guy sitting next to me screamed and flailed his arms to each side groping whoever was nearby. His reaction scared me more than anything ever could on the screen.
Two seconds into the sex scene in “Avatar” someone in my theater started making hilariously accurate cat noises and the entire audience was laughing until about halfway into the the next scene. It was by far the most entertaining part of the movie, totally worth the $20 ticket price.
I sent this story in to the frotcast before, but it’s worth repeating.
I went to see Spiderman 3, and right after the part where Peter hits Mary-Jane, some guy loudly said “She had it coming”. The entire theatre cracked up.
I was seeing Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem on Christmas the year it came out, part of a longstanding tradition where my friends and I see shitty films to escape the good cheer and general smell of love that permeate the holidays. The theater was surprisingly full with likeminded people, I suppose. Right before the movie begins, though, a troubling thing happens: a young man and his wife walk in with a stroller. This is a 2:00pm showing, and it’s a hard R. It didn’t dawn on me that people might have been afraid to stop this fellow due to his overwhelming stature until much later, because I was talking to my friends going, “Look. Look at this asshole.”
The movie begins and there’s a set of teenagers behind me who are obnoxiously kicking my seat and they are somehow under the impression that they are creating a RiffTrax that the audience loves. I don’t know if they’d ever heard laughter before and just assumed that the uncomfortable squeaking of chairs and the annoyed whispers around them were sounds of pleasure, or if they just didn’t care, so I leaned back, and with my voice just barely audible above the den and roar of the film, said, “Shut the fuck up, you assholes.”
They may have wanted to continue, but the audience clapped and cheered at that point, which shut them up, and gave me an unearned sense of confidence. Because now I was the Sheriff of Theater Town, and I would Take No Prisoners.
Near the end of the film, the baby in the stroller started freaking the fuck out. It had slept this whole time and awoken to find a young woman pinned to a wall with a giant Space Shuriken. That’s how I wake up every day, but you have to grow into it. It’s a gradual thing.
I polished off my badge after the baby refused to quiet down – and when I saw it was getting no attention from its parents, who were too engrossed in the Aliens versing the Predator – and yelled, “GET THAT BABY OUTTA’ HERE!”
Which in retrospect probably wasn’t an awesome thing to do.
The father unfolds himself like an erector set, and I learned very quickly why no one stopped him or his baby from coming in – he was a giant. Against the screen, in the front row, the guy looked like Hagrid, minus the beard, I guess, and raincoat. So he was just huge. Anyway.
He starts screaming belligerently into the audience, “WHO SAID THAT! WHO SAID THAT! I’MMA WALLPAPER YOUR SHIT! WHO SAID THAT!”
There’s a scene in most westerns where the sheriff hands his badge over so he’s not lynched just outside of town. In this case, I didn’t so much as hand it over, as I wiped my prints off it and buried it in a lead-lined container.
But the guy keeps screaming. “WHO SAID THAT! YEAH! YEAH! I THOUGHT SO! I OUGHTTA SLAP YO’ MAMA!”
Barely a whisper, I say, “Well, she’s dead, so.”
“SAY THAT AGAIN! SAY IT AGAIN, MOTHERFUCKER!”
And I, of course, did not. In fact, I remained silent for the rest of the running time of the film. As my friends and I exited the theater, I saw him standing outside the door, trying to identify me by voice, but I was speaking with an Australian accent at this point. I had also donned a fake mustache and had shaved all my hair off with a broken bottle during the end credits, just to be sure.
At the end of the day, though, I won. Because the film ended, and he did, in fact, get that baby outta there.
Heh.
I remember I bitched out some twelve years olds running around and screaming during a showing of “Snow Falling ON Cedars.” I was actually in highschool at the time, so I couldn’t have been much older than them, but yeah.
Unsurprisingly, that’s actually the ONLY thing I remember about Snow Falling on Cedars. Otherwise, that movie is a complete fucking blank to me now.
The only thing I remember about Snow Falling on Cedars is that it’s the movie that got Motherfucker Jones put in jail.
Very funny, thanks.
I’ll never forget when I saw Jurassic Park 3 in theaters opening weekend. The theater was packed.
I can’t remember at what part exactly it happened, but at some ridiculous dino scene, someone in my row yelled out “OH COME ON!!!” in exasperation.
My teenage self shrank into my seat because I realized that the man yelling at the movie screen in a packed theater was none other than my father.
I was seeing Spider-Man 3 in LA and had the exact same thing happen at the exact same moment, only the person yelled out “that’s assault!” When Peter knocked down Mary Jane. Small word. Also, which is worse, Spider-man 3 or Transformers 2?
A friend and I went to see Timothy Olyphant and several other people who were not Timothy Olyphant in The Crazies. It was either that or Cop Out (the two new movies that week) and although The Crazies was by no means good, after seeing Cop Out on DVD, I can confidently say we made the right decision.
Early in the movie, a female character punches a male character on the shoulder out of frustration. I can’t remember the context. Somewhere near the back row, a guy yells out, “SOCK HER BACK!” This was met with surprised, stifled laughter mixed with groans from the female members of the audience. I’m no wifebeater, but that was the highlight of an otherwise boring movie.
When I was 15 I blatantly finger banged my girlfriend while I sat in an aisle mid level seat at a fairly crowded screening of It Takes Two, an Olsen twins movie with Kristie Alley and Steve Guttenberg.
The funniest occurrences in theaters have always and will always be the frantic awkward gropings of teenagers.
I was at a film festival, and they were showing Tony Jaa´s Tom Yung Goong. Since it´s a festival they´re showing it with the electronic subtitles and everyones reading them because no one speaks thai. So at some point in the movie you start to notice that the dialogs are really good, I mean, this movie kicks ass and tony jaa is a master, but the movie itself is a piece of shit, he wants to rescue his elefant for fuck sake, and after the great continuos shot fight scene at the end, he finds his elefant dead and you hear tony jaa just say “ahhhh” but the subtitles read “You fucking old bitch killed my baby elefant” everyone started clapping.
Myself and a gaggle of sheltered sorority girls once walked out of a midnight showing of Dear John into the tail end of a gang fight.
The little, little girl during The Lion King 3D who helpfully shouted “He’s dead!” at Simba around the second time he tried to wake his father up.
And of course, listening to the audience slowly turn on the midnight showing of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
At a packed screening of the Denzel/Travolta classic “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3″ there was a plethora of “Denzel Loyalists” (black folk). One of these “loyalists” happened to be a fan of the Wire. Thankfully for that guy, whoever the actor is who plays Chris Partlow happened to be one of the hostages in the movie.
Toward the end/middle of the movie, Denzel or the city or sumshit does something to piss off Travolta, so he figures that killing a hostage is the best way to make them pay. Travolta points a gun at this white woman with a kid and Chris Partlow stands in front of her and he gets himself killed, whatever. The aforementioned black dude stands up during the silence after Partlow is shot and says to his friend, “I knew they was gunna kill my mans Chris Partlow… Fuckin’ white bitches.” and tosses a cup of soda at the screen, which is gigantic and a size Michael Bloomberg would not approve.
The man and his friends left. There was a stain on the screen. I shit my pants laughing.
A) Leslie Small – did you go to the old Dublin Theater off 680 that got demolished?
B) At Alien Resurrection, a bunch of us were near the front of the theater when a girl’s head mysteriously disappeared into her boyfriend’s lap in front of us. We all took turns confirming that yes, she was doing the deed. We laughed quietly but didn’t want to blow up his spot. A few minutes later her head comes back up and a guy near the back yells “HEY YOU JUST SUCKED HIS DICK!” The whole crowd lost it. Then Ron Perlman did stuff.
I remember I saw Woody Allen’s “MAtch Point” with 2 boisterous black women in the audience who, at every plot twist, would say things like “Oh no he di’nt” and be really surprised and outraged at the stuff that was going on on screen. It was kind of hilarious because it’s a deathly serious Woody Allen movie (whose kind of the king of waspy white angst when he’s not doing comedies) and I saw it in Edina MN, which is like the WHITEST place in the world–but it actually made the movie way more fun just because they weren’t mocking the movie or trying to be disruptive, they were just really, really, into it.
I actually kind of wish more people would get that into movies.
Magic Mike. Opening night. Packed theater. I go with my girlfriend and her sister because I am a faithful filmdrunkard and C-Tates is our patron saint.
After getting through the previews, where the trailer to Pitch Perfect was received to raucous laughter, I find myself needing to piss. Now I hate leaving a movie to take a piss, It’s either my frugality, where I hate to miss a show I paid 12 dollars for, or lazyness, so I get up and try to side shuffle from my seat three in past the gf and her sister. I get about two steps when the theater darkens and the movie starts, so I make the executive decision to sit down and watch.
An hour in, the need changes to a bloated filling discomfort. I loosen the buttons and zipper of my jeans to attempt to relieve the pressure.
An hour and thirty in, the discomfort turns to pain. As The ladies of Tampa song comes on and McConaughey starts his strip tease, I reach into my pants and grab my dick to hold it. I psyche my self up by reminding myself that this movie is genuinely too good to leave during the climax. My girlfriend looks over at me and sees my hand down my pants and gives me a look that’s half disgust and half horror. I whisper “I have to piss.” in her ear.
She says: “Go.”
I say, “The movie is almost over, I’ll go after.”
As C-tates professes his love to the bad actress playing the sister, my mind shifts from psyching to screaming at the stupid breakfast cliches. We get it, breakfast is what you do after sex. In real life that happens maybe once your whole life.
The moment the credits begin to roll, I stand up and begin to do a bent knee side shuffle past the GF and the sister. I get to the aisle on the side, stand up, and, forgetting that I had unzipped, my pants fall down to my knees and show my under armours to the theater and to my gf’s sister. I catch the crotch of my pants and shimmy walk-run to the nearest bathroom. I proceed to rip a record breaking 66 second piss that I timed for posterity on my wristwatch.
She claims to this day that she did not enjoy Magic Mike and is one of the ten non-lesbians to say that. I have no way of knowing if she saw my spandex-clad rear without asking her outright. Either way, I loved the movie.
p.s. Under armour makes terrific underwear.
dude, you could have come up with a better story for holding your dick watching magic mike than that
Kips Bay Theatre here in NYC Is a hotbed of audience participation, be it rats scurrying past your feet, homeless people passing out (The Wolfman – film not said homeless guy’s nick name) , a dude snoring and farting in his sleep (Drive) or a hilarious comedy Jewish woman loudly proclaiming in a thick nu yoyik accent that she had “lorst mih hayit, have you seen my hayit, it was on moi head now it’s gorn. Have you seen my hayit? This mooovie is awwful” (Martha Marcy May Marlene)
Oh, also during Ghost Rider 2: Derp of Derpgence, a black guy shouted out “OH SHIT DATS MY NIGGA HIGHLANDER, CHRISTOPHER LAMBERRR, WHERE YOU BEEN SON”. His French pronunciation on the surname was magnifique.
During the first LOTR movie when Bilbo sees Frodo again at the elves’ house, he tries to take the ring back and turns into some kind of batboy for a second, one guy in the middle of the theater jumps up and yells,”Ah hell nah motherfucker!”.
I was sat in a screening of Open Water at the cinema I was working in one evening to kill some time. The staff had been enjoying watching the sullen faces of punters coming out of each performance, complaining about forking out to see two people tread water for 90 minutes then die. There was roughly 25 people watching this show and there was the same feeling in the auditorium as every other night.
Just after half way through, an usher comes in and stands near the front to make sure the audience is ok and the film is running. One overly disgruntled guy yells at the usher and for all else to hear “Does anything actually happen in this damn film?!” The usher yells back even louder “Nope!”
The guy is a little shocked by this and then follows with “Do they at least get out alive?”
Again the usher says “Nope!”
Guy – “So they just drown?”
Usher – “Yep!”
Guy – “Can we watch something else or get our money back?”
Usher – “Yep.”
And with that everyone but me gets up and leaves the auditorium. I don’t know what to say so I just sit there mostly baffled by the events when another usher, unaware of what’s just happened comes in to check nobody has been sneaking into other screens. He instantly notices the missing people and panics thinking he’s lost 25 guests. Something about the look of terror in his face just causes me to lose it. I’ve not seen anything like that since, possibly because I missed Open Water 2.
Strangest experience I had was going to see Thor a bit late in its run with my brother. We go in, and it is empty. Not only is it empty, it’s not even Thor playing, but Hangover 2 (The Saturday of its release). Really weird to see it in a completely empty theater.
My earliest movie memory. 1990, 6 years old. The first Ninja turtles movie. Me, being a very picky eater, did not enjoy pizza. Italian from Brooklyn here, btw. The scene comes up when April takes the turtles back to her house and say sadly that all she has is frozen pizza. Mikey gets all excited about pizza and April asks the turtles “You guys eat pizza?”. Mikey and Donny say in unison “Doesn’t everybody?”. My parents, also in unison, as if they had seen the movie already and had it planned out, shout “But Steven don’t!!”
it was the first time I can remember feeling embarrassed. And I still don’t like pizza.
I remember seeing Hannibal in 2001 around Valentines Day. Was out drinking with some of the guys and had a few too many whiskey sours which didn’t sit well with the fennel sausage I had for dinner. Totally lost it during the brain scene.
Thought for sure I was going to get my ass kicked but nobody seemed to care or was man enough to do anything. Good times.
Late to the party: Saw ‘The Raid’ last year in an ‘urban’ movieplex in South London. Black guy (who was on a date) stands up in the back row just before the three-man climatic brawl is about to kick off and loudly announces to the other nine strangers in the crowd ‘AIN’T NUTHIN’ BETTER THAN A FIGHT, AIN’T NUTHIN’ BETTER THAN A FIGHT.’
Perfect timing, unquestionably enhanced the theatrical experience.
So: 15 years old. I’ve caught a few R-rated movies at this point in my life, either Chuck Norris action movies from Cannon on VHS, or some naughty, late night HBO fare when staying the night at friends’ houses – but i’m about to see my very first R movie in the THEATER, and it’s a “horror” movie – Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors!!
and i’m a’scared, man: scared that the guy at the ticket counter is going to call the police to cart me off to underage-kid-trying-to-buy-R-rated-movie-ticket jail, scared that maybe i’ll run into somebody who knows my parents, scared that i’ll be COMPLETELY freaked out, like i was when i watched The Exorcist and Evil Speak through my fingers (because Ron Howard’s brother + demonic computer = sheer TERROR)
But then, the movie starts,. And it. is. AWESOME. The theater is splitting at the seams almost ENTIRELY with 15 year olds, which makes sense, because it’s like the greatest funhouse ride EVER, with all the thrills of a junior high creative writing assignment, people screaming at all of Freddy’s kills, laughing hilariously when a thick metal door materializes in mid-air, and one of the characters helpfully comments “It’s a DOOR…” – because the movie is practically designed for just that sort of commentary.
and then finally, right after Zsa Zsa Gabor turns into Freddy and reaches out from the TV and rams the crazy girl head first into the screen – down by the exit, screen-left, this kid jumps up from the first row – in a stunt that you just know his buddies thought would make some girl in the theater jump into their arms shrieking “Oh my God, I’m so scared!” or maybe just “That was so fucking awesome – here, have a blowjob!”. He’s standing there, waving around his store bought knife-glove, shouting… something (you couldn’t really hear him from behind his mask)
For just a beat, the audience goes perfectly silent… then, they let out the collective roar of a room full of sexually frusterated teenage white boys from the suburbs, pelting the kid with popcorn and half finished 32 oz soft drinks…
Yeah, you probably had to be there, but to this day, i tear up with laughter every time i think of it…
Oh oh oh… also. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, opening night, 70mm, Dolby Surroundaboom, etc. I’m watching the opening sequence with my mom and dad: the (admittedly beautiful) wide-shot of a lone figure climbing up El Capitan. As the credits go on, my mom begins to fidget, mumbling to herself.
We cut to William Shatner, pulling himself atop the sheer rock-face in all his bloated, touped glory, my mom BURSTS into laughter, offending a theater filled with dutiful, rapt Trekkies.
Get a life, indeed.
Opening night of Notorious, packed theater. My two teenage white boy friends and I are outnumbered by the intended demographic like a needle in a haystack. Two gigantic fat black ladies sit next to us, and they know all the words to every song in the movie, proudly singing along to all of them. This includes wiggling about in their seats jiving to the tunes, wagging their fingers and snapping in a Z formation. During Biggie’s funeral procession at the end, these two women were blubbering in tears. My friends and I had to stop ourselves from laughing hysterically, throughout the entirety of the film.
You’re monsters.