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I have had some noteworthy experiences at the movie theatre. Sometimes in direct relationship to the movie I am going to see, sometimes unrelated. They can be funny experiences, wild experiences, whatever. I was thinking about one such experience and it inspired me to start a topic.

Growing up 30 minutes from Hollywood has it's advantages in terms of going to the movies.

When Martin Scorcese made The Last Temptation of Christ, it created quite an uproar, with Christian groups and free speech groups boycotting/supporting/demonstrating against and for/etc. It was pretty crazy at some venues. Going to see the movie in Hollywood made it a particularly special experience. I went to see it on opening weekend in L.A. and what a zoo that was. The hype over the controversy did what it always does, sell more tickets. My date and I had to wait in a considerably large line for the movie, and the anticipated media zoo meant that people showed up to stand in line even earlier than they normally would. There was a huge line, and probably twice the number of people across from the line who were either protesting or supporting the film. It being Hollywood, there were also performance artists in attendance, and it got pretty crazy. Amongst the performance artists was a guy dressed up as an altar boy covered in blood and reading aloud from William S. Burroughs works through a bullhorn directly at the chanting church groups, almost inciting a fight. It was wild. I think the funniest things I saw was a guy who didn't chant or say anything, just walked around with a sign that said "let he who is without sin stone the first cast."

Then we finally got into the quiet and serene movie theatre to watch the mediocre film.

On a side note, I met Warren Zevon who was waiting in line next to me. Gotta love Hollywood.

"Ahhh-woooo. Werewolves of London."

What are some of your more noteworthy experiences in the endeavor or going to the movie theatre?

I missed out on seeing it, but a friend of a friend got into a fight with (no joke) 7 or 8 people at once (who were apparently part of the same St. Louis gang) in the lobby of a local multiplex.  They started it, actually, but this guy loved fighting (apparently, since there's a number of stories of him getting in fights - dude was nuts) and had experience in various martial arts.  He got his face beat in pretty good, but most of the other guys were just as hurt and he managed to get away on his own two feet before the police showed up to arrest people. 

As for me personally, the strangest experience I can personally remember is being handed free tickets to Episode I by Boba Fett.  The whole multiplex was filled with people dressed as Star Wars characters when I went to see it opening day.  It was pretty cool.  Also, dunno if I'd call it crazy, but going to the 20th Anniversary screening of Evil Dead with the cast in tow was something.  A number of people were dressed as the characters too, and Bruce and the others riffed on the movie a few times to great effect.  Only downside was the douchebag in front of me who talked for most of the runtime and tried to riff the movie but was HORRIBLE at it - eventually his friends told him to shut up. 

When: 1980

Where: downtown Portland, Oregon

Who: myself and others in the film theater audience

Why: to see "Zulu Dawn" the prequel to "Zulu" and a film about the battle of Isandlwana, which is regarded as the greatest defeat ever suffered by British troops at the hands of native forces.

Whether it was the location of the theater or the subject matter of the film, I've never seen so many Native Americans, who made up about half of the audience for the film, in a film theater before or since.

Now, where it starts to get crazy, is that as soon as the first white character in the film was killed off by one of the black characters, all the Native Americans in the audience let out with a loud Indian war whoop.

The Indian war whoop is not something that the white man invented. It really exists among Native Americans. Few if any white men can recreate it, but almost every white man would recognize it if they heard it.

And this continued throughout the film everybody time a white character died in the film. And there were alot of white characters dieing in the film. Thus things just got crazier and crazier as the film progressed, as every time it happened, I started looking around, expecting the Native Americans in the audience to start charging toward the screen. But even thirty nears later, I still have fond memories of both the film and the audien ce's reaction to it.

Wow, that is a pretty awesome story.  I think that would be hard to forget.

Seeing BOYZ N THE HOOD in a theater in downtown Milwaukee in 1991.  We were three out of five white people in a theater packed with a young teenage African-American audience.  This was just after several fights between Bloods and Crips had broken out at screenings across the country.  The audience yelled at the screen and laughed at and applauded every act of violence.  It at the same time frightening, and sad that the audience was enjoying the violence that the movie was made to condemn.         

When me and my friend went to see Spawn, I burped really loud and almost cleared out the lobby.  She ran into the bathroom and pretended she didn't know me until after the movie.

Another time, I swear I saw a guy that looked exactly like Popeye at the theatre. 

Thats all I got.  I don't have any really crazy stories (yet).

Time: 1985

Place: local movie theatre

Movie: Re-Animator

I went to see the movie at the now defunct Strand Theatre, where seats were only $1.50.   The craziness came during the scene where the headless body took his head to new heights, as he began to use the head to make love to a strapped-down Barbara Crampton.

The trio of girls behind me began to squeal, and as the head came close to going between Crampton's legs, louder squealing. When he got there, the girls behind us started screaming and squealing like never before, one of them getting up and grabbing me by both shoulders and squeezing so hard that I thought she dislocated my ball-and-socket joints... :buggedout:

She apologized later, and told me she was caught up in the moment. She and her friends and I went to a local roadside pub, had a few drinks, talked for a while and called it a night.  I'd seen them a few more times afterward, and the theatre incident became the running joke until the day they disappeared, never to return to the bar. 

Jeffery Combs got a huge laugh out of it when I related to the story to him at Chiller Theatre.  :bouncegiggle:

My friend and I were at a second run theater to see Dante's Peak.  After about a half hour we realized how awful a movie it was.  So him and I led a charge amongst the 10 other people in the theater to make fun of it for the remaining time.  I'll never forget standing up and cheering when they saved the dog from the tree.  I loved that theater man, 4 dollar movies and many good memories. 

I remember seeing Halloween H20 and having this annoying woman behind me.  All she kept screaming was "get outta there girl..." whenever a chick was being chased.  The usher came in and didn't do much of anything.  I never understood why people talk to the screen nor why they applaud at the end of movies. 

I do have one other experience  that was a bit "crazy" so to say but won't share it here, sorry.   :wink:

When I went to Regal Cinemas to see the remake of Dawn Of The Dead in '04, this girl down in front went nuts, jumping in her seat and turning away almost every scene.

She screamed when the guy put the mop handle thru the zombie's head in the beginning, and her moment of glory was during the baby zombie scene..

She kept going, "no, no, no...omigod, no, not the baby"  and when they briefly showed the baby, followed by the gunshot, she started sobbing out loud that they killed the baby.  She was in hysterics for about a minute afterward.

On the way out, she cursed her boyfriend up and down and every direction in-between, and yelled at him to "never take her to another mother fu*kin' movie" ever again. 

Hell, a sailor would have blushed at some of the stuff she said as she cursed him out!

Fright Night

There was a bomb threat so they stopped the movie and we had to wait in the lobby for 30 minutes.

Alien: Resurrection

I watched this with a full bladder. Quite the painful experience.

Black Moon Rising

Somebody locked the buildings exit doors (not the theater exit doors). We were trapped for nearly 20 minutes.

Gremlins

There was a volume knob (!) near the exit door and some arse from the audience thought the movie was too loud so he turned down the volume. Which resulted in a annoying war between another guy who turned the volume up again. This went on for eternity until a usher stood guard at the knob.

Jackie Brown + Fallen

Went to the theater for a double feature with colleagues from work after work on a Friday night. I made it through Jackie Brown, but fell asleep during Fallen. Apparently I snored, which was told to me by grinning colleagues at work on Monday. Word sure did get around.

Species II

I tripped over my own feet and fell between the seats with my popcorn flying everywhere. Embarrassing indeed.

 :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle:

I was screening a film at an arts festival in 2008 and what I usually do before the screening is alert the other projectionist to drop the sound so that I can chat to the audience and tell them who I am, what I do and what my place of slavery work can do for them.   :wink: Audiences get quite a shock when someone suddenly stands up in their midst and starts talking to them so I had hardly opened my mouth before an audience member told me to sit the *&^% down as they wanted to see the film.  :buggedout: :buggedout:

Douglas Hickox's Zulu Dawn was a great film made here but it was a little controversial as it was in financial poo from its' start date: a tax break production that had serious money issues.

How about movies that malfunctioned?  I can't recall the movie but we got about five minutes in and the movie stopped.  We ended up getting vouchers for a future showing.

 :buggedout: :buggedout: :buggedout: Yikes, you had to go and remind me of the time in 1998 when I was screening the eerie film Jannie Totsiens and the print snapped. No big thing but the director was in the audience.  :buggedout: :buggedout: :buggedout:

This is a third-party story, but it's so good I have to post it anyway.

Back when my now-wife was in college, she and her roommate took a film class for an elective, to have some fun with it.  They showed Mulholland Drive, and I had already made my now-wife watch it so she knew that the Guy Behind Winkie's was coming.  And she knew that her roommate didn't.  So there they were, in a lecture hall with like 200 people, and my now-wife looks away right before The Scene, and happens to look over at her roommate.

When the Guy Behind Winkie's jumps out from behind the wall, the roommate jumps a foot out of her seat and lets out this bloodcurdling scream, like Ms. Scarlet from Clue.  She then had to sit there for the next 2 hours (because that's one of the first scenes in the movie) with the other 200 people all judging her and wondering when she was going to jump up and start screaming again.  I love this story.   :teddyr:

This happened to us when we went to see Halloween H20.  I was not excited about seeing it, and right at the beginning when the first person is about to get waxed, the projector breaks and the film starts melting.  They had to give us vouchers and send us out.  I was thrilled.

Superman Returns
A girl giving a blowjob to her boyfriend,I was on vacation in Kentucky.


Casino Royale
The f**king reel decided to break right as the house starts sinking near the end of movie...so I was missed out on a good bit of fighting and Bond trying to save Vesper. When the movie came back up she was dead and Bond is weeping like a little girl.

The Hangover
The dialogue was inaudible beyond belief then they cranked it up "WAY TOO f**kING LOUD!"

Charlie Wilson's War
my father kept griping about how boring it was and left the theater. He also complained about Paranormal Activity and The Informant.

Good Burger
At an old mom & pop movie theater that is now closed, during the trailers the power went out for awhile and the dumbass attendants waved flashlights around like they were having seizures.

Rocky IV broke down for about 30 minutes.  We sat and waited because my buddy's mom wasn't there yet to pick us up yet.  Eventually they got it going again and we still all cheered at the end when Rocky won.  And oh yeah, my buddy's mom was really p**sed because she had to wait 30 minutes for us to get out of the theatre.