Confessions of a CinePlex Heckler

Several movies that I attended were heckler-proof properties. For example, despite my best efforts to annoy my fellow audience members by making politically incorrect remarks at a midnight screening of Joel Schumacher's loathsome Falling Down, everyone in the audience was busy making racist comments of their own. I had a similar experience throughout most of Indecent Proposal, when my remark, "Hey, you can have my wife for $3,000 and I'll take singles," actually elicited guffaws from other people in the theater. And they hadn't even seen my wife.

Another thing that surprised me about my experiences in all those movie houses was the general indifference of the ushers to my disruptive behavior. One afternoon, I accosted an usher halfway through Woody Allen's interminable Husbands and Wives and said in a voice that was loud enough to piss off just about everyone in the theater: "Can I have your written guarantee that this film actually ends? I mean, I'm a little bit concerned that this is going to be one of these Luis Bunuel-type jobs and I'm never going to get out of this theater." His response was positively laconic. "No, it ends. There's another show at 3:20."

"You're sure?" I asked. "You're sure this movie doesn't go on forever?"

"No, it ends around 2:55."

Meanwhile, just about everyone was staring back at us wondering, "Why don't you throw the asshole out?" Amazingly, I was ejected from only one theater. I'd gone to a 2:00 p.m. showing of El Mariachi, Robert Rodriguez's $7,000, award-winning, el cheapo project, and was regaling the sparse audience with remarks such as, "Boy is this a cheap-looking film!" Finally, an unattractive, fifty-ish woman sitting next to an unattractive seventy-ish man wearing a pitiful Greek fisherman's cap turned around.

"It's Robert Rodriguez."

I wasn't quite sure what she was driving at. I puzzled over this enigma for several moments. Then my vast network of neural fibers processed the information.

"Oh! Oh, I get it! It's Robert Rodriguez! So it's allowed to look cheap, right?" She didn't turn back to answer my question.

"Who the fuck is Robert Rodriguez, anyway?" I then asked no one in particular. There was no answer forthcoming, but at that very moment, I spotted a fresh pigeon sitting about four seats to my left in the row directly behind me. He was a fortyish Japanese gentleman, and he had "Affluent Tourist" written all over him. Leaning across, I said, "Excuse me, sir, but you're a foreigner, aren't you?"

He sort of winced, nervously.

"Could you tell me, in your society back in the mysterious Orient, would a film such as this be considered a high-quality cinematic offering with impeccable production values? Because it looks like a piece of shit to me ..." I badgered him with a few more questions such as this, none of which elicited any response. Suddenly, two ushers appeared at my side.

"You have to be quiet," said the taller one. "If you can't be quiet, you have to go."

"I spent more on my ticket than they spent on this film," I replied. The usher had had enough. He indicated that my patronage was no longer desired at the establishment where he worked. He also looked like somebody I didn't want to fuck with, so I didn't fuck with him.

I never figured out who it was who ratted on me--the guy in the fisherman's cap? The fat lady with the packet of Gauloises in her oversized Channel 13 tote bag?--but their bold actions did restore in me a measure of faith in the moviegoing public. Nobody should have to sit there and take a shitload of abuse from some heckler while they're trying to watch a grainy, $7,000 Tex-Mex film that looks worse than that Barbra Streisand look-alike porn flick that's been floating around all these years. So whoever it was who called the ushers had made the right decision. Contact the proper authorities. Throw the bum out on his ass. Then the grateful audience can get back to concentrating on a really, really important film.

My faith in audiences was also bolstered somewhat by my experiences at Indecent Proposal. As previously noted, the audience was initially quite amused by most of my loud, sarcastic remarks, in part because a lot of them were making loud, sarcastic remarks of their own, most of which had to do with Woody Harrelson's dick. But toward the end of the film, as my nonstop rant continued, I began to detect a certain frisson.

Finally, someone took action. My undoing occurred right after the unforgettable scene where Harrelson, who is supposed to be a brilliant but unemployed architect, shows a brick to the kids in his architecture class and tells them: "Even a brick wants to be something."

"IT WANTS TO BE WOODY HARRELSON!" I bellowed at the top of my lungs.

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I could feel a large, dark presence making its way toward me. "Shut the fuck up, motherfucker," the unhappy moviegoer urged me. "Shut the fuck up or I'll break your motherfucking face."

"Fine," I replied. This was precisely the kind of direct democracy that had been so sorely lacking in most of my other moviegoing experiences. Nobody had bothered to get right up in my face and say, "Shut the fuck up!" when I'd hollered, "It's a guy!" at the opening of The Crying Game. Nobody had bothered to get in my face and say, "Shut the fuck up!" when I'd screamed, "It's all Greek to me," during a particularly poignant moment in To Proxenio Tis Annas. Nobody had bothered to say, "Shut the fuck up!" when I'd screeched, "That's a woman!" the first time Forest Whitaker appeared on the screen in The Crying Game. Nobody had bothered to say, "Shut the fuck up!" when I'd sneered, "You'd better marinate him first!" halfway through Alive. Nobody had hollered, "Shut the fuck up!" when I'd cackled, "Eat him, just like they do in Alive" as soon as Vincent Spano appeared on the screen in Indian Summer. Nobody at any of these pictures had ever told me to shut the fuck up. So I never shut the fuck up.

What can we learn from all this? Sadly, the lessons are not as transparent as they might seem. While it is true that I did shut the fuck up after being instructed to shut the fuck up during the waning moments of Indecent Proposal, it is highly doubtful that I would have shut the fuck up had the request not been made by a man about five inches taller, forty pounds heavier and 15 years younger than me.

The upshot? The bottom line? The sine qua non? The truth? The truth is: I would probably not have shut the fuck up for just anybody. For instance, if you were a spindly, dorky, bespectacled Smurf carrying a copy of Aeschylus's Greatest Hits in your back pocket at the Museum of Modern Art, or anywhere else for that matter, it is extremely unlikely that I would have shut the fuck up had you asked me to. Ditto the lady with the Channel 13 tote bag, the Japanese tourist at El Mariachi, or any French person this side of Jean-Claude Van Damme, who's Belgian, anyway. The horrible truth that I have learned from my experiences is that unless you are a 25-year-old, muscular, 6'5" male with a very rugged demeanor, preferably wearing a black baseball cap with a large "X" sewn onto it, there is very little you can do about the asshole sitting two rows behind you in the movie theater.

Of course, there are always machine guns.

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Joe Queenan wrote about being eaten alive in the July Movieline.

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