The (nearly) indomitable Joe Queenan set out to annoy innocent moviegoers with rude outbursts, just to see what they'd do. Here he gives us his astonishing account of how nobody beat the crap out of him.
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The poignant film has reached an impossibly anguished moment. Marooned high in the Andes mountains, as winter curls its icy mantle around them, the two dozen famished survivors of the 1972 airplane crash come face-to-face with the most horrifying nutritional dilemma a human being will ever confront. Completely out of food, the shivering group of seemingly doomed young rugby players must decide whether to eat the frozen flesh of their fallen--or starve to death. The audience sits transfixed as the emaciated young men gaze into the yawning abyss of cannibalism. Then, just when it seems that neither the actors on the screen nor the audience in the theater can stand another moment of primal human horror, a voice rings out from the back of the theater:
"Eat Vincent Spano first."
It is a tasteless comment, and, in some ways, a stupid comment, since the character played by Vincent Spano is still very much alive. Several movie patrons turn to look at the disruptive, albeit good-looking, fortyish man in the darkest recesses of the theater, murmuring, "Shhh!" and "Asshole!"
The patrons turn back to the screen, weary of such gauche, unsolicited comments. For the past hour, the garrulous asshole in the last row of the theater has been taunting the characters on the screen, making it all but impossible for the two dozen people in the audience to concentrate on the ponderous moral and philosophical issues posed by the film. When Ethan Hawke, very convincingly cast as a college-aged Uruguayan rugby player, had announced his decision to go and look for the missing tail of the ruined airplane, the heckler had giggled, "Whose tail?" In between such comments, the maddening jerk-off had regaled the hapless audience with remarks like, "Could somebody please pass the A.I. sauce?"
Now, as the sensitive, life-affirming film races towards its conclusion, Ethan Hawke and two friends at last find the missing airplane tail, containing the all-important radio. But they also stumble upon something else. Frozen corpses.
"Great," cackles the heckler from the eerie bowels of the cinema. "Dessert!"
Finally, a patron can stand it no longer. "You got some fuckin' attitude on you," the man opines in a heavy Spanish accent. As he speaks, his wife and two teenaged sons turn to catch a glimpse of the heckler.
"I got some fuckin' attitude?" the heckler fires back. "You take your family to see a movie about cannibal rugby players and I got some fuckin' attitude?"
The man turns back to the motion picture.
"You got some fuckin' attitude," he reiterates.
He is right. I do.
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As the savvy, prescient reader will have suspected from the very outset, it was indeed I who was sitting in the last row of the Hawthorne, NY, 10-plex making all those tasteless, insensitive comments that glum Thursday evening this past February. But I was not being a complete asshole merely for the fun of being a complete asshole. Far from it. I was being a complete asshole for lofty, professional, journalistic reasons. I had been sent out to the cinema in my greater metropolitan region by this very magazine to find out what it is like to stand in the shoes, and sit in the seat, of the talkative asshole who always seems to be sitting two rows behind you in the movie theater, making an endless series of idiotic comments about a movie that you're trying to enjoy.
My purpose in tackling this assignment was twofold: one, to find out how far movie audiences would allow themselves to be pushed before they complained to the usher, confronted the heckler, or drew a switchblade; and two, to find out whether being a complete asshole is any fun. I will supply the answer to the second question right away.
Generally speaking, it is not a whole lot of fun being the asshole who always seems to be sitting two rows behind every movie viewer who is trying to enjoy himself at the pictures. Tormenting helpless human beings is not really my idea of entertainment; with one or two exceptions, I would never do it just for the hell of it. I'd have to get paid.
On the other hand, I would be lying if I didn't admit that there were certain moments during my 10-film odyssey through the world of the remorseless heckler that were absolutely sublime. It's always fun to taunt people who have premeditatedly paid good money to see Vincent Spano movies. It's fun to holler out, "You're overpaying!" when Robert Redford writes a check for a million dollars in exchange for the right to sleep with Demi Moore, who looks like she should come a lot cheaper. Finally, it's always fun--exhilarating, breathtaking fun--to torment French people when they're trying to concentrate on a pretentious, art-house movie like The Lover. What kind of red-blooded Yank wouldn't accept a job where he gets to torment French people? This is the kind of stuff I would do for free.
Over a three-month period that began early this year, I made life miserable for viewers at 10 widely divergent films. The films, accompanied by genre description, were:
Indian Summer
Nostalgic, Ontario-based horseshit
The Lover
High-class kiddie porn
The Dark Half
The usual Stephen King crap
El Mariachi
The finest $7,000 Tex-Mex film' ever made
Falling Down
Racist bullshit
Husbands and Wives
Interiors III: First Blood
The Crying Game
Formulaic Irish Republican Army cross-dresser melodrama
Alive
Triumph-of-the-spirit crap
To Proxenio Tis Annas
Typical, rollicking Greek fun
Indecent Proposal
Fresh slime from Adrian Lyne
The venues for the films ranged from generic, suburban multiplex human abattoirs, to snooty, midtown Manhattan art houses such as The Paris, to the lower depths of the Museum of Modern Art, where you can always find plenty of empty seats at a festival with a title like "Cine-Mythology: A Retrospective of Greek Film." The most important thing that I learned while mercilessly tormenting my fellow audience members at these 10 movies is that by and large the public seems fully prepared to take a huge load of shit from annoying people like me. I estimate that I must have colossally pissed off approximately 1,000 people, yet on only one occasion was I ever thrown out of the movie theater, and on only one occasion was I physically confronted by an audience member and told to shut up or I could expect to get my teeth kicked in.
This was the most valuable lesson that I learned, and by far the most important lesson that I have to impart to Movieline's long-suffering readers. Based on my journey to the bottom of the cineplex, it's safe to say that the average person takes way too much unnecessary abuse from hecklers when he goes to see a movie, and really has to toughen up his attitudes if he ever expects to enjoy a motion picture in a serene, tasteful environment.
The basic problem lies in the movie-going public's excessive dependence on the word "Shhh!" I'm six feet tall, I weigh 180 pounds, I exercise regularly, and I'm widely perceived to be a bit of a prick. Although I am, in reality, the kind of person who can be fucked with, I do not look like the kind of person who can be fucked with, and I neither look like nor am the kind of person who can be fucked with by people who look like they can be fucked with. So if you're a short, thin French tourist and you think that hissing the word "Shhhh!" at me after I've screeched "Child molester!!!" at the 32-year-old Chinese playboy who seduces the fetching little French schoolgirl in The Lover is going to get me to shut up, think again. Fuck you, frog face.
The word "Shhh!" is also a completely useless form of cinematic retribution against a person determined to munch his way through a big, noisy bag of potato chips while everyone else in the theater is trying to enjoy a vastly underrated 1972 Greek film directed by Pantelis Voulgaris (the name literally means "unsophisticated trousers" in Greek).
Yes, before attending a screening of Mr. Voulgaris's unforgettable film at the Roy and Nuita Titus Theater at the Museum of Modern Art back in May, I deliberately went out and bought the noisiest bag of potato chips I could find--a bag made of really crinkly plastic--and also went out of my way to sit behind the dorkiest, lamest, most pretentious cinephile in the auditorium. It didn't take me long to find him. My prey not only had thick glasses and a lumberjack shirt just like Woody Allen, but he also had a copy of the fifth century-B.C. Greek tragedian Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy sticking out of his back pocket.
"Dead meat," I said to myself as I sat down directly behind him. Then, as soon as the Athenian skyline came into view during the opening credits of To Proxenio Tis Annas, I began to pry open the potato chip bag in the most excruciatingly annoying manner possible.
"Shhh!" a short, comparably dorky man seated a few seats ahead of me, hissed. To no avail.
"Crunch ..." came the first grating sound of potato chip against molar.
"There's no eating in this theater," snapped a woman a few yards to my left.
"Yes there is," I countered. "Listen."
"Crunch," came another collision of chip and canine, as I methodically began to work my way through the bag. Periodically, other people in the theater would hiss, "Shhhh" or "Be quiet," to which I would reply, "But I'm hungry."
All the while, I noticed that the man sitting in front of me had not reacted in any way at all. While people in other parts of the darkened theater would intermittently express their verbal displeasure, my actual target had no reaction whatsoever. This really pissed me off, so I gradually began to hunch forward, munching on my chips just a few inches from his ears. Still no reaction. Finally, the man who had originally cried, "Shhh" turned around and said, "Nobody can hear."
"The movie's in Greek, pal," I reminded him. "Potato chips can't interfere with subtitles."
I went back to eating my chips, and kept eating them until the bag was done. People kept saying "Shhh" to me, but the man sitting in front of me never said a word. Disgusted, I stormed out of the theater. It revolted me to discover that it was possible for one boorish middle-aged man armed only with a bag of potato chips to make life miserable for a roomful of 300 people. It made me believe for the first time in my life that we as a people have really gone soft, and are prepared to be browbeaten by ne'er-do-wells. People who would rather suffer in silence while a complete asshole munches an entire bag of potato chips while they're trying to watch a movie like To Proxenio Tis Annas probably don't deserve to have any civil rights. Or maybe they deserve to watch a lot more movies like To Proxenio Tis Annas.
The most awesome feeling of power that I experienced during my experiment was the afternoon I went to see the moose-honoring bomb Indian Summer at a midtown Manhattan theater. There was only one other person in the audience, a middle-aged woman, and she was sitting a dozen rows ahead of me, so in order to get out of the tiny theater she would have had to run the gauntlet right past me, and from her body language I could tell that she thought I had a hacksaw or machete on my person. Wishing to avoid a confrontation, and hellbent on watching this foolish movie, she chose to gut it out for almost two hours as I blistered her ears with withering remarks about this lame-brained 18th remake of The Big Chill.
"This movie is the 18th remake of The Big Chill," I would cackle. She pretended not to hear.
"This movie is the 17th remake of Peter's Friends," I hooted. Again, she pretended not to notice.
"This movie is the 19th remake of The Return of the Secaucus 7." She changed seats, moving to the other side of the theater.
"What, does Vincent Spano act better on that side of the theater, lady?"
This went on for about two hours. Finally, as the credits came up, she gathered up her coat and whipped past me.
"Don't you have anything better to do with your time on a beautiful spring afternoon than to watch Vincent Spano movies, lady?" I inquired.
She said nothing, but I could see from the look in her eyes that she didn't. On the other hand, neither did I.
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.