28 June 2011

LOS ANGELES, California: It seems like such a quaint notion: Folks would go to the movie theater, buy their tickets at the box office, then sit down, shut up and pay attention for two hours to what was on the screen.

Now, the piercing glow of cell phones lights up the darkness like so many pesky fireflies, and people talk to each other in a packed auditorium as if they were sitting in their living rooms.

When the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas, kicked out a patron who broke the theater’s rule against talking or texting, they turned the ranting, profane voice message she left into a hilarious public service announcement. It’s got over 1.75 million hits on YouTube in just a couple of weeks.

What’s happened to our attention spans? Why must we talk, text and tweet in the middle of a movie? What, if anything, can theaters do to stop this erosion of cinema civility?

Matt Atchity, editor-in-chief of the Rotten Tomatoes film review website, crafted “10 Commandments for Movie Audiences” – including “Thou shalt not text” – but the ubiquity of cellphones makes such suggestions hard to enforce.

“Even 10 years ago, not everyone had a phone, not everyone was text messaging,” Atchity said. “The younger generation grew up and the kids who were texting in class are now … texting in movies.”

Hollywood’s focus on the 18-24 demographic is also a factor.

Adults may believe that what’s on screen deserves their full attention, said Bill Goodykoontz, film critic for The Arizona Republic and father of four, but kids nowadays view the movie-going experience as interactive.

“They can’t imagine seeing anything, including a movie, without immediately supplying their reactions,” said Goodykoontz, the chief film critic for Gannett.

Barry Mendel, a twice-Oscar nominated film producer, believes the reliance on social media and 24/7 information has bled into every part of our lives – even places that are meant to provide an escape.

“It’s very rare in our society to sit and stare at something intensely, without distraction for two hours,” he said.

“It makes me worry for my profession, for making movies,” he continued. “In order for a movie to be good, someone needs to sit down and read a screenplay and help the writer make it better. Instead they start reading a script, then they stop reading it and pick it up later.”

Actor Rachael Harris said a guy recently walked into a private screening of the new independent film she stars in, “Natural Selection,” sat down next to her and immediately checked his BlackBerry.

“You do have a sense of, ‘How dare I not be riveting enough that you have to check your email?’ You react personally but then you realize it’s not personal,” she said. “It’s just bad manners.”

Many young people who behave this way don’t think it’s a problem because everyone does it.

Thirteen-year-old Will Barnes of Frisco, Texas, says he texts sometimes during movies, but tries to be courteous.

“I didn’t really like ‘Thor,’ so I just pulled out my phone and texted a little bit,” Barnes said. “But you see adults doing it and I think it’s a little immature for their age.”

“It annoys my kids,” said Tracy Tofte, a 40-year-old real estate agent and mother of two in Santa Clarita, California “If it’s a slow part of the movie I can’t help looking at my phone and going, ‘Oh, I have an email.’”

Theater owners have tried a variety of methods to get folks to keep quiet and stay off their phones, from showing amusing messages beforehand to having ushers sweep through the auditorium during the show, said John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners.

Some have experimented with dividing moviegoers into over-21 and under-21 auditoriums, but that can be tricky.

“We and our members and the people who write about our industry know that the beauty of cinema, first of all, is that it’s a shared experience,” said Fithian, and added: “That means there are shared responsibilities.”

With the expansion of the international movie market, cellphone etiquette has also become an issue in overseas theaters.

Before a movie starts in India, warnings flash on the screen asking people to switch off their phones or put them on silent, yet some folks continue to chat anyway and theater workers don’t kick them out.

Compliance is far better in Hong Kong, where patrons generally heed a message urging them to silence their phones and in the U.K., peer pressure usually keeps theaters quiet.

Around 2004, NATO investigated technology that would block cell phone signals in U.S. theaters. When word of that got out, responses came flooding in, said NATO president Fithian.

Sixty percent were in favor of the idea, with 40 percent against it, “but the 40 percent was violent,” he said. “Parents have to stay in touch with their babysitters.

“People are so focused on how important their jobs are that they had to be in touch 24/7. I felt like asking these people, ‘What did you do 15 years ago?’”

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.