Funny or weird theater experiences

[CaptainJackSparrow]

For all you storytellers, tell us your funny or weird theater experiences!

[Hiccup]

Big sassy black woman in The Conjuring at midnight on the Ultra Screen ---> best midnight movie experiences ever. She was flipping shit and swearing up a storm when something startled her. 

[Walt Disney]

I went to the movie theater in NYC to buy 2 tickets for Memento in 2001. I was 20 at the time. My friend was 19. The guy in the ticket booth tells me that I'm not old enough to buy tickets because the movie is rated R. I show him my ID. He says I need to be 18 or older to buy tickets. I show him the birth year on my driver's license. He tells me that it doesn't say 1983 on it, so I am not old enough. I explain to him that it has a year before 1983, which means that I am OLDER than 18, so he can sell me a ticket. He still disagrees with me and we argue about it.

 

As I stand there arguing with him, a line is beginning to form behind me and the people are getting annoyed at waiting. Once they ask what is going on, the guy in the ticket booth finally sells me the 2 tickets.

 

I don't think that I will ever experience anything like that ever again.

[lilmac]

I will never forget.

 

 

It was the 2nd time I saw Phantom Menace.  I'm sitting waiting for the movie to start.  On my left was a dude apparently jerking off, at least that's what it looked like.  To my right was a mentally challenged individual who had a pile of napkins and was compulsively wiping his hands with each of them.  

 

It just occurred to me that what I should have done is let the guy on my left use some of those napkins.  

 

Fortunately both gentlemen stopped what they were doing before the movie got going.  

[Ozymandias]

When I saw The Count of Monte Cristo, some guy about 5 seats to my right said out loud "Ohho shit..." when Guy Pearce's character stabbed that guy through the chest with the sword.  The way he said it was just absolutely hilarious and there was no noise in the movie right after that scene happened so pretty much everyone heard it and were laughing.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Ozymandias

[CaptainJackSparrow]

So far Lilmac has the best response!

[Michael Gary Scott]

One time I was seeing 13 Going on 30 snd Man on Fire started playing add so we had to switch theaters

[Blankments]

Happened earlier this year and I posted it on the forums

 

 

 

Safe Haven

February 17, 8:15 PM, 50% full (small theater)
Showplace 14, Michigan City, IN

 

I'm going to write this in a different way than usual, since it was a bizarre experience that I'll never forget.

 

 

Before yesterday, I was on great terms with this movie theater. I've seen two Best-Picture-winning movies there (The Artist and The King's Speech,) and one Best-Picture-nominee from this year (Zero Dark Thirty). However, that all changed yesterday.

 

So my friend, let's call her Mary, texts me at 6:57 PM last night, asking me if I want to see a movie. She wanted to go to the IMAX theater in Portage like we always do, but the films she wanted to see were either of no interest to me (Identity Thief and Beautiful Creatures) or not worth seeing in theaters thanks to tight cash (Side Effects). I texted her this back, and she replied that it was okay, she was just sad she had nothing to do. I looked up to see if we could make a showing of Silver Linings Playbook, a movie we had both already seen and loved. Unfortunately, there was no times at Portage, the local Cinemark, or the AMC theater, but I did see that there was a showing of Argo, a movie I have seen and liked whereas Mary hadn't seen it, at 7:50 at the AMC, that we could make if we left immediately.

 

So, we were off to see Argo. We arrived at the theater slightly late, at 8:03, but we figured the film was still in trailers since Michigan City notoriously has long trailers. We go up to the cashier to buy our tickets, but she asks if we are seventeen. We were confused, since we've never been carded before. We understood the policy but the IMAX theater and Cinemark don't enforce it all, and in the past, I've seen R-rated movies at the AMC before and they never carded me. We show that we're juniors via letterman jacket, since most juniors are at least seventeen at this point in the year. She tells us both to pull out our IDs, but since I don't have a learner's permit (or license for that matter), we asked if we could just use Mary's driving license for both of us. We had a very confusing discussion with the cashier where she seemed to be saying that we had to be eighteen to see an R-rated movie, when in actuality it's seventeen. It turned out if we bought separate tickets, then seventeen is the limit, but if we were buying together, then eighteen is the limit.

 

Anyway, so Mary went out to her car to grab her license while I just waited inside, looking at the clock, seeing it was now 8:06. Worrying now that Argo had actually begun, I was alarmed when Mary came back inside without her license. She told me that she couldn't find her license. We ran out to her car to search for the license, but after five minutes of searching, it proved impossible. We went back inside and the cashier said it was too bad, and there are some R-movies that shouldn't even be rated R. We were hoping she would cut some slack, since Argo is barely rated R, only accounting for the around forty instances of f-bombs.

 

But no, she didn't. She suggested we see Safe Haven at 8:15, a suggestion I predicted from her nametag, which proudly stated "My favorite movie is The Notebook!" I definitely wasn't interested and Mary wasn't either. The cashier then suggested we see Beautiful Creatures, which I was against, but Mary asked when it was. The cashier says the next showing is at 10:30. Let me reiterate, the cashier suggested we see a movie that would begin two and a half hours after we arrived. I couldn't believe the suggestion. We said no way, and the cashier gave a final suggestion, Escape from Planet Earth (8:10), an animated movie that looks too kiddish even for me. I'd like to point out here that there was also a Warm Bodies show at 8:20. I gave up, and let Mary pick. She decided that least of the three poisons was Safe Haven. That's right, I, a man who prides himself on not seeing a minute of the Twilight Saga, a man who only sees romantic comedies if they're over 85% on RottenTomatoes, was seeing a Nicholas Sparks movie. This was bad enough, but then, then, they charged us ten dollars. Ten. Dollars. For a Nicholas Sparks movie. I've never spent ten dollars on a movie before. If I'm seeing a movie in IMAX or 3D, I split the cost of the surcharge with my parents. For a movie I love, like Toy Story 3 or The Muppets, I only spend the typical seven dollars. I was spending ten dollars on a Nicholas Sparks movie.

 

Anyway, we go inside the theater, which is right next to Argo's theater. Did I want salt with my wound? So we sit down near the front of this incredibly small theater, which is weird for a first-run movie. The trailers start and more salt in the wound happens as the trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness, which has nothing to do with the target audience of Safe Haven. This is a movie I'd happily spend ten dollars on, but no, I was spending ten dollars on a freaking Nicholas Sparks movie. The trailers continue with Admission, Monsters University, The Heat, The Call, and The Host all of which look better than Safe Haven (although some of them I would never see).

 

So the movie starts and about ten minutes into it, I go, "Forget this, I'm not going to watch a Nicholas Sparks movie without popcorn and a drink. This visit will not be in total vain." I leave the theater to get a small combo. However, the small combo is apparently even smaller than the actual small size. My drink is the size of a Chihuahua and the popcorn barely fits in the palm of my hand. Worst of all, there's. No. Freaking. Free. Refills. And they charged me eight dollars! So, to recap, I spent a grand total of eighteen dollars on a NICHOLAS FREAKING SPARKS MOVIE. The movie ended up being better than I expected, but still not that good, and definitely not worth eighteen dollars. The experience overall was terrible, and I never want to repeat that again. Argo fuck yourself AMC, Argo fuck yourself.

 

[CaptainJackSparrow]

You should have just snuck in.

[Blankments]

You should have just snuck in.

 

I couldn't, we were being so loud at the front of the theater in the whole affair that by the time we got our tickets, every employee was watching us closely. The theater for Argo was literally right next to the concession stand; we would've probably got kicked out

[CaptainJackSparrow]

Aww, stupid movie theater people.

[Kvikk Lunsj]

Working at a movie theater. I had a customer ask me about my sex life and what positions I liked. This custom was old like in there 60s. 

[Sam]

Working at a movie theater. I had a customer ask me about my sex life and what positions I liked. This custom was old like in there 60s. 

What was your answer? 

[Kvikk Lunsj]

What was your answer? 

I just stopped cleaning and walked out of theater. 

[Lordmandeep]

I remember watching SpiderMan 3 it was the Sunday of its release.

 

I was quite excited for it and had not heard anything about the bad word of mouth as well those were simple times.

 

Anyways I was sitting at home watching Godfather Part 2 and seeing some of the best acting ever and a grand story.

 

I gathered 4-5 of my little cousins and went to a sold out showing and had to sit on the front seat.

 

I watched the film and could not stop laughing in disbelief over how bad the film was.

The scene when the Butler says I love you to James Franco just made everyone laugh at the film. People in the audience were not liking it and even booed when Spider man appeared at the end.

 

My cousins who were younger were bored and I had a sore neck, I went back home and went on the forums and say Spidey fans defending the film and others blasting the film nevertheless it broke all the opening records so that was cool.

[grim22]

I remember watching SpiderMan 3 it was the Sunday of its release.

 

Spider-Man 3 reminds me of the most surreal movie watching experience I have ever had. I watched Spider-Man 3 in a nice multiplex in Uttar Pradesh where I was for my summer internship, I didn't like or dislike the movie (I have the review I wrote of it right after watching. i gave it 2.5 stars and complained that everyone cried too much and Venom was barely present - which seems to represent the fandom's opinion now)

 

Anyway, so SM3 was dubbed into Bhojpuri in India, it was the first movie dubbed in Bhojpuri and had got a lot of press because of that. Now, I have no idea about the Bhojpuri language but can understand it somewhat. Through pure coincidence, my summer internship dropped me in the middle of Bhojpuri country, so I decided to watch the dubbed version in a theater which didn't inspire much confidence in me. The theater looked like a haunted mansion from the 70s and was practically held together by spiderwebs (not as part of a promotion for the movie).

 

I paid the 10 rupees (20 cents) for Balcony seating and went in to watch the movie. Surprisingly, there was a huge turnout, but mainly in the 8 rupee and 5 rupee seats. They weren't seats, more like benches on the ground. 

 

The crowd was very very rowdy. The kissing scenes got a lot of hooting, Spiderman's entry got applause (like most hero entry scenes do), and at one point the audience started dancing to Spidey's dance (this is also normal, a lot of audience participation happens in India). But the crowd in Gorakhpur where I watched this was something else, they made the movie much much more entertaining than it was.

 

Watching movies in single screen theaters in India is just something else, and something everyone should experience at least once.

[Webslinger]

There are many, but let's go with this one for now: The Proposal.

 

It was Saturday, June 27, and it was my best high school friend's 18th birthday. The original plan for the day was just that a bunch of us were going to go bowling, and then call it a night. However, my buddy then wanted to see a movie, and almost everyone in the group was interested. Of course, this was the weekend after Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen had opened, and almost everyone in the group wanted to see it. The lone holdout was me, as I had seen it that Wednesday, was massively disappointed in it, and did not want to endure it for a second time. Luckily for me, our local theatres were still stuck in the dark ages back in 2009, so they only had it playing seven times a day on two screens. It was already past 5:00, so I told them that there was no way in hell tickets would still be available.

 

As such, we began to brainstorm potential options to see. "Land of the Lost," said one of the girls in our group. "Nah, I heard it sucked ass," I said. My buddy had heard the same, so he vetoed it. "Year One," said someone else, but it was shot down because someone else in the group had seen and hated it. "Dodged a bullet on that one," I thought to myself. Then, finally, I chimed in: "How about The Hangover?" I had seen it two weeks earlier, had laughed my ass off, and was not at all opposed to seeing it a second time. A few "yeahs" came up, and it seemed like we had a consensus - that is, until two of the girls in our group said "No fucking way, it's playing at the Uptown, and we don't want to get shot tonight." For context, the Uptown Plaza was a local theatre that was in one of the sketchier areas of town. It also had not been renovated since it opened in 1976, and it had been known locally since the late-'90s as the place that showed only horror comedies and gross-out comedies. My buddy, a few others, and I continued to suggest that we wouldn't get shot, stabbed, mugged, etc. in daylight, but these girls continued to steadfastly refuse. 

 

At that point, another of the girls said "What about The Proposal?" All eyes turned to me, as I was the movie buff (or at least the movie buff-iest in the group). I said I'd heard good things about it, and apparently that was all the motivation we needed to go.

 

We went to the 6:45 showing, but didn't show up to the theatre until 6:40 because we spent too much time dinking around at all the shitty mall stores across the street (if I never have to enter a Hot Topic or Spencer's again, I will die a happy man). We got tickets, but not by much, as it was darn near sold out when we walked in. Upon scanning, we realized that not all of us would be able to sit in the main section of the auditorium together, so my buddy's brother and I just said "fuck it" and went to sit in the second row. Unbeknownst to us at the time, we had made a huge mistake.

 

We had sat down in front of a group of six or seven girls who were probably about 13 or 14 years old. Now, even at 18, I didn't like to engage in stereotypes because not all people of the same age or gender are the same. After all, I was a polite and courteous moviegoer throughout my teenage years, even when I went with my more obnoxious friends. However, this was an occasion where the stereotype was right on the money.

 

First were the trailers, and they talked through the duration of those trailers. I don't remember much except that the airing of the teaser for New Moon had them debating about whether Kristen Stewart was pretty halfway into the next trailer, which was for Old Dogs (and if you've seen the trailer for Old Dogs, you'll know why shrill-voiced teenage girls debating the prettiness of Kristen Stewart was still somehow a vast improvement over what was on the screen). I held out some faint hope that their talking would stop after the trailers ended, but the fact that they just laughed at the auditorium "shh"ing them in the brief beat of silence between the final trailer and the beginning of the movie was a clear indicator that they were going to keep talking through the whole damn movie.

 

...and talk they did! They never shut up. Ever. Even when they were laughing, they continued to talk through their laughter. Because they debated about whether Kristen Stewart was pretty earlier, they had to also debate about whether Sandra Bullock was pretty. (Answer: yes. Even at more than twice the age, she smoked K-Stew then and still does now. But I digress.) They also spent several minutes trying to figure out what movie they had seen that they were reminded of when Bullock was, in their words, "a cranky bitch" at the beginning of the movie. They finally whittled it down to "Devil's Prada," which was close enough. Then, they proceeded to give their commentary through the remainder of the movie, which included bashing Bullock's wardrobe, squeeing at Ryan Reynolds' nude scene, and calling every male character a bastard at least twice.

 

But we still haven't what gotten to what made them legendary in my memory. The icing on the cake was during the climax, right before Reynolds lays a smooch on Bullock after confessing his love.

 

Girl 1: "Do you think he's gonna kiss her?" (audience "shh"es)

Girl 2: "Of course he's gonna do it. (Someone further back says "no shit, Sherlock.")

Girl 1: Yeah, but what I'm saying is, what if he doesn't?"

Girl 2: "KENDRA, YOU WHORE! SHUT THE FUCK UP! OF COURSE HE'S GONNA KISS HER!"

 

And the entire auditorium burst out laughing. It's like Patton Oswalt's routine about his brother yelling "Fuck you!" at Tom Cruise during the climax of Jerry Maguire: it was a whole lot of building up that led to the most hilarious climax possible.