Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Movie Theater Etiquette

[migrated from myspace blog]

My first mistake is that I went to the cheap theater at all. I know better. The sound is sub-par, and too quiet. The screen image isn't as sharp as it should be, although sometimes it's in one part of the frame. I'm pretty sure the projectors need some work, and the lenses are probably dusty, and they probably never clean the projection booth window. So why even bother? Because it's $1.75.

I'm aware of the theater rules, both spoken and unspoken. Turn off your cell phone. No talking. No kicking the backs of seats. Don't sit right next to someone if a theater isn't full. However, in all my movie-going experiences, I've never run into the one where you apparently can't sit in front of someone. I like to be as close to the middle of the theater as possible (which was an issue for me at Batman Begins IMAX when I had to sit all the way to the left in a full house.) When I walk into a theater that only has one aisle right down the middle, and I'm alone, I'm only looking at the aisle seats.

There's a guy sitting 6 rows back on the aisle. I take row 4 aisle, but it's too close to the screen. So I move back to row 5 aisle. The old man in row 6 huffs, grabs his popcorn, stands up, walks to row 4, stares me down, and sits down in row 4 about 5 seats in. I know I'm tall, but it's a theater. It's not like he can't see over me. So I figure, great, even better. Now I get to sit in row 6 aisle, and I take his previous seat. So I enjoy my muffled, not-quite-focused movie.

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