Inception Screening Shut Down -- with Christopher Nolan in Attendance

chris-nolan-breakdown.jpgIf you're Christopher Nolan and your film Inception is about to gross a $21 million Friday, wouldn't you want to sneak into a theater to check out audience reaction? Unfortunately for Nolan, he chose the wrong screening last night.

According to one of our spies, the big show at Los Angeles's Arclight Cinemas was shut down at the 100-minute mark after the air conditioning malfunctioned, turning the theater into a sweltering hotbox:

Arclight Cinerama Dome. 8:15 show. At about 10 o'clock, the light suddenly went on and the projection cut out. After 5 more minutes of heckling, a lamentable usher came out and announced that due to air conditioning failure, they are stopping the movie. Which was odd, because it was warm inside, but nothing that would warrant pulling the plug on an sold-out show on opening night.

Bedlam ensued. Folks were dumping their soda on the floor. In the lobby, they were handing out free Arclight passes to furious attendees.

Spotted outside the theater were Chris Nolan and Dileep Rao looking really concerned about the whole situation. Both were working their phones furiously (while signing a few autographs) and appeared to head back towards the theater as we headed out to find another screen to watch the rest of the film.

Attendees had the option of watching the film again from the beginning in another screening room -- a mighty thing to ask of moviegoers who'd made it 100 minutes into a 148-minute film. Still, what seemed like a bad dream to them must have been even worse for Nolan himself. (Though maybe there's an upside, and the braintrust behind the Arclight -- supposedly LA's premiere movie multiplex -- will finally upgrade its A/C units and its circa-1996 website while they're at it).



Comments

  • newshmoo says:

    You and all the other flat earthers out there are not only dumb as nuts, your frightening dumb as nuts. You and rest of the crazies should be dumped on an island where you can freely build statues of Sarah Palin, and the invisible sky fairy out of beer cans. There you could wax lyrical all day about the constitution, god and church and state, the founding fathers, there you could go back to the gold standard and the bronze age, there you could be free to have your sister and no one would think any less of you.

  • Martini Shark says:

    For all of those commenters who failed to see the complete film I'll explain how things end for you: [Comment deleted for idiocy]

  • Andrew says:

    This sounds mild to when Phantom Menace came out. The film stock they used for the prints was supposed to be better than norm, but it was sticky for some reason and so it was constantly getting stuck to itself and causing brain wraps (when film gets wrapped around the mechanism that feeds the film to the projector and controls the platters so tightly that it causes the film to snap).
    So we had to hand out tons of free passes to angry angry people as well. Only because of Lucasfilm policy, we couldn't give them generic "good for anything" free passes, we could only give them passes specifically for Phantom Menace. Not too many people wanted those, especially when the print broke 10 minutes before the end of the movie.
    Then there was also the Lucasfilm rule that we have an usher stand guard outside every screening of Phantom Menace. The entire showing. That was a painfully boring summer, let me tell you.

  • Wil says:

    Didn't this exact same thing happen in Entourage? Like, almost word for word?

  • Jo Dean says:

    Wow thats just downright messed up dude. Seriously.
    Lou
    http://www.privacy-tools.be.tc

  • HOMMER says:

    SMALL BART!!! GOTA FIND SMALL BART

  • SunnydaZe says:

    WE THE AUDIENCE, ARE MAJOR NORED WITH YOU.

  • Casey says:

    What does the look of Arclight's website have to do with anything you are reporting on in this article? Is the Movieline website some sort of technical marvel? I'm able to buy tickets and look up showtimes on it. I call that a successful site. Stick to the story next time.

  • Kristofer says:

    Did you just mention sweltering hotbox? What was really going inside the cinema?

  • bonnar says:

    They gave everyone free bumpers.

  • HoJu says:

    Why am I getting the ending of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer in my head? The movie was good, but it wasn't euphoric, silly Arclight audience.

  • If their air conditioning units were serviced properly this would have never happened 🙂

  • Ben says:

    Pretty stupid to equate global warming skeptics with flat earthers and religious nuts. Yes, BORED WITH LEO's rant was an illegible, brain freezing mess, but there's nothing religious, anti science or Palin deferential about it. Sorry to nitpick, but as someone who finds much of the public discussion (not to mention, sadly, science) of climate change to be suspect (while at the same time having pragmatic concerns about the risks) I get annoyed when people use the flat earther shorthand to discredit any critique.

  • yourmom says:

    "Which was odd, because it was warm inside, but nothing that would warrant pulling the plug on an sold-out show on opening night."
    Grammar, it's important.

  • Neil says:

    Yep. If the cooling units fail for the projectors they shut down automatically to protect the unit from thermal failure/damage.

  • Wow, that sucks. That why I'll just wait for it on Netflix Streaming on my Wii.

  • S says:

    screening shut down opening night in NYC for me too, at Loews AMC 34th st. the sound all but cut out 20 minutes in (conversation was muted, but ambient sounds came through), and wasn't fixed. the film restarted with the same audio problems and was eventually stopped completely.

  • JT says:

    I'm a projectionist. Our booth(12 screens) is NOT air conditioned. We run movies perfectly fine(including our screening of Inception :)) in 90+ degree Midwest weather. Higher temps mean higher humidity, and humidity is good for prints. Booths should always be at %50-%60 humidity. There are very power fans on the roof that excaust air out of the lamphouse. Maybe this is what the usher meant to say. A blown up Xenon bulb is not a pleasant thing 🙂

  • Medisoft says:

    Yeah, it's great they dumped their drinks on the floor for someone else to clean up. Good move there movie-goers.

  • Joey says:

    Los Angeles is not known for its humidity. In fact, LA is usually very dry. I'm not sure if this weekend was humid, but I'm guessing it wasn't.

  • Zee says:

    Wha-? You mean to tell me the guy who mops the floors isn't ALSO responsible for AC maintenance and decisions like closing down a showing? Welp, learn something every day I guess...but really how was I to know I'm just a simple movie-goer herf derf.

  • nmdaughter says:

    I was at this particular showing of Inception. I must say that I was stunned with what happened that night. 2/3's of the way through the movie it just stopped. I don't remember hearing anyone say anything about the a/c what the attendent did say on the mic was that the show was canceled...that was it. We were run over by ticked off fans and had a hard time getting a ticket. What should have happened was that ArcLight should have let the movie finish and then have the ArcLight crew standing at the door to hand out tickets and apologize for the heat. Never ever stop a film especially when the director is in the house on opening day!!! I expected much more from ArcLight. They usually do things first class but missed the mark Friday evening. What is just as bad, ArcLight has yet to make a comment on their social media sites. They shoud apologize to North and to the audience that was there that night. Have a special showing with North and publically apologize to him. Never, ever do that to an artist. Come on ArcLight, pull it together, you are better than this!

  • Jatix says:

    Wasn't this an episode of Entourage?
    Seriously though, I saw this movie last night. By far the best movie of the year. Even the audience in the theater applauded at the end.

  • Jenix says:

    I hate when the minimum wage workers get punished, like the ones who had to clean up soda from the floor of the theater (without AC). They didn't make the decision.

  • Jenix says:

    I love the tradition, although it happens less and less these days. Why not clap for a truly great movie?