Texting at the movies
Posted in This Just In... on July 2nd, 2009 by gkrakow
Tried to watch the latest Johnny Depp movie, “Public Enemies”, last night. Whether or not I liked the film is of little consequence compared to what I thought about the actions of the people sitting next to me in the theater.
They were a father-daughter team. Dad was middle-aged. The daughter in her mid-to-late teens. Both seemed polite at the outset: the young woman asked if I minded that she placed her giant vat of soda in the arm rest we shared. I didn’t. The lights dimmed. The movie started.
So did her texting. Every 2-3 minutes the red light on her BlackBerry Flip phone would begin to blink and she would instinctively open the phone and spend the next 5 minutes typing out messages. In addition to the rapid clicking sounds she was producing the bright light from the handset’s displays (there are two on the Flip) rapidly became very annoying – to say the least.
30 minutes or so into the movie I politely asked if she could check her messages a little less frequently. She snapped closed her phone. Her father ordered her to put the phone away. A few seconds later she got up and stormed out.
I was almost sorry I upset her — until dad took out his larger BlackBerry (it looked like a Storm from two seats away) and began checking/reading his messages!… less than 30 seconds after he yelled at his daughter for doing the exact same thing.
Who knows? Maybe they were texting each other.
The daughter sat back down 20 minutes later. She was able to control herself and not open her phone again for the duration of the (very, very long) movie. Dad, on the other hand, continued to check his messages every 20 minutes for the next 100+ minutes.
I understand that e-mail and IMs are an integral part of modern day communications. But just like you wouldn’t/shouldn’t talk on your cell phone during a movie — you shouldn’t open brightly-lit cell phone screens in darkened movie theaters. It’s just, plain rude.
A few years ago there was a movement by movie and music theater owners to install indoor cell phone blocking devices to keep rude phone users from annoying other patrons. That idea was rejected because it would have also blocked emergency phone calls.
You complain when a movie’s sound disappeared – or if the overhead lights suddenly come on (like during last night’s feature). As paying movie-goers we all need to ask theater management to do something about this. We shouldn’t let others ruin our movie experience.