Theater Mishaps

[balmakboor]

What are the oddest things that have happened either with the movie, the theater, or the audience while you've been watching a movie?

At Seattle Film Festival screenings if seen:

-A war film from Finland entirely subtitled in French.
-A projector went out and we watched Alan Rudolph's The Moderns one reel at a time with about a five minute break for each reel change. (Rudolph was there and gave talked a bit during each intermission. He seemed pretty embarrassed.)
-A screening of something that I barely remember with the reels in the wrong order. I don't think many people noticed because they had already sat through plenty of weird shit during the prior couple of weeks.
-A screening of something else that I again barely remember where the same scene happened twice in a row due to reels from two different prints getting switched. Again, I think a lot of people just thought it was a cool bit of repetition on the filmmaker's part.

And as I mentioned elsewhere with our film society:

-Last season, the projectionist screwed up during a screening and hit pause somehow. We had like 150 people sitting there looking at a freeze frame with the tell-tale pause symbol in the upper left corner for almost two minutes.
-The prior season, you could see him cycling through the subtitle options trying to find English during the screening.

Then of course our local Carmike is always up for a good laugh:

-One time, their canned, sweeping the floor music continued to play through the commercials, trailers, and part of the movie before someone could be bothered to go to the booth and fix it.
-Or the time where I was alone in the theater and kept checking my watch and once the movie was 15 minutes late getting underway I went and found the manager and he said, "Sorry sir. We didn't know anyone was in there."

[number8]

When I went to see the Toy Story 3D Double Feature, they forgot to turn off the automatic pre-movie screens and no one was in the booth, so for the entire Buzz Lightyear opening sequence of Toy Story 2, the shitty AMC trivia screens were projected on top of the film. Needless to say, I was P-I-S-S-E-D.

[[ETM]]

I was watching Blade 2 in an outdoor theater, and at about half way in, it started raining. We ran for cover, hoping it would stop. It did, and they played it from where we left off. Then there was a power outage... we all got free passes for the indoor screening the next day.

[Dukefrukem]

Independence Day, during the locker room scene, when Will Smith is talking about wanting to fly the space shuttle, the fire alarms went off, everyone evacuated the theater, when we returned and the movie came back on, it was a scene where Fox is dancing on a stripper poll. The whole theater thought they turned on Strip Tease (which was playing during the same time) instead of ID4.

Right before the final boss battle in Spider-man 3, a kid had a seizure sitting next to me, I had to run and get someone from security. Missed the ending fight.

[Qrazy]

I've never understood the concept of getting a free pass for the movie you didn't get to see. The only time this happened to me my dad and I went and saw Spawn in theaters. The film stopped working about halfway through and so the theater gave everyone a free pass for the inconvenience. That is to say they gave us a store credit for the product they hadn't delivered. Needless to say we thought to ourselves this is fucking ridiculous and both got two free passes... one for the movie we didn't get to see and one for the inconvenience. Of course none of those passes were used to see the rest of Spawn because that movie kind of sucked.

[EyesWideOpen]

During From Dusk till Dawn (the scene where the vampires start tearing through the bar) the lady sitting right behind me threw up and I had to jump out of the way. Another lady sitting closer to the screen started throwing up during that scene also.

[Sven]

I've never understood the concept of getting a free pass for the movie you didn't get to see. The only time this happened to me my dad and I went and saw Spawn in theaters. The film stopped working about halfway through and so the theater gave everyone a free pass for the inconvenience. That is to say they gave us a store credit for the product they hadn't delivered. Needless to say we thought to ourselves this is fucking ridiculous and both got two free passes... one for the movie we didn't get to see and one for the inconvenience. Of course none of those passes were used to see the rest of Spawn because that movie kind of sucked.

I don't get it... what's confusing? You paid to see a movie. Because you didn't, they gave you tickets to go see two movies. Seems like fine customer service to me.

Oh, and John Leguizamo rules.

[Spun Lepton]

When I went to see Poltergeist III (shut up), there was a power outage in the theater at the exact same time there was one in the movie. Slightly freaky. Waited a moment, and the power came back, movie continued on. Unfortunately. :D

[number8]

I don't get it... what's confusing? You paid to see a movie. Because you didn't, they gave you tickets to go see two movies. Seems like fine customer service to me.

Oh, and John Leguizamo rules.

Yeah that post made me scratch my head.

[Derek]

I don't get it... what's confusing? You paid to see a movie. Because you didn't, they gave you tickets to go see two movies. Seems like fine customer service to me.

He's saying it's ridiculous that they only give one "free pass" to most people since you already paid once to see the film. Giving one pass ignores the inconvenience of having to come back a second time, so he bitched and got an extra ticket for himself and his dad.

[Qrazy]

Edit: Yes, Derek is correct.

[Qrazy]

Oh, and John Leguizamo rules.

Yeah he's fun in it and the movie has it's moments but it just doesn't come together (I saw the rest of it on dvd at a later date).

[Sven]

Edit: Yes, Derek is correct.

Ahhhhh... yes, I see. It is clear now, and we are all in agreement.

I need to see Spawn again. I've got the itch, for some reason. I don't really remember being all that into it.

[Spaceman Spiff]

In the middle of El Topo, the celluloid actually caught fire, and burned through for a good 5 or so seconds. It was totally awesome.

[Ezee E]

A friend of mine saw Pulp Fiction, and the reel caught fire. They restarted it, and people thought they messed up the reels. heh.

[number8]

Man, I can't even remember which movie it was, but there was a press screening where the projectionist switched the second and third reel, and nobody noticed. The movie was that bad.

[balmakboor]

I attended a festival screening of Heaven's Gate where every cut was accompanied by a flash of light as if there was a single clear frame due to something at the lab being out of adjustment. Anyone know what would have caused that? Or how in the world it made it past even minimal quality control at the lab?

On a different note, I was at a Dennis Hopper retrospective at SIFF and one of the clips he chose to play during the night he was honored was the "Baby wants to fuck!" scene from Blue Velvet. I remember how weird it felt sitting in almost the first row and looking up at the scene and then over at his proudly smiling face about ten feet away from me and then back at the screen...

[number8]

I attended a festival screening of Heaven's Gate where every cut was accompanied by a flash of light as if there was a single clear frame due to something at the lab being out of adjustment. Anyone know what would have caused that? Or how in the world it made it past even minimal quality control at the lab?

Every cut? Must have been an incompetent neg cutter.

[balmakboor]

Every cut? Must have been an incompetent neg cutter.

Every friggin cut. Until I left and got something to eat at the pizza place next door after about 30 minutes.

[balmakboor]

I went to opening night of Lost World: Jurassic Park at the Carmike and there was already a scratch running and wiggling down the center of the whole movie. I bet that projector gate was filthier than their floor.

[Barty]

I went to opening night of Lost World: Jurassic Park at the Carmike and there was already a scratch running and wiggling down the center of the whole movie. I bet that projector gate was filthier than their floor.

A film gate wouldn't cause that, a bad roller, or more likely someone built it up incorrectly would have. ;)

[BuffaloWilder]

Went to go see The Hulk and the screen blanked out for five minutes. They gave everybody free passes, etc.

X-Men was sold out when we went to go see it. I schmoozed the theater-manager into getting us four seats, near the bottom, because I'm fly like that.

Army badass snatched some guy's phone out of his hand and broke it, and handed it back to him.

[Adam]

One time I went to the movies and they showed Transformers 2

[BuffaloWilder]

holy shit

[megladon8]

The weirdest thing I can think of is one time I went to a movie and the last reel wouldn't play.

They gave everyone a free ticket as compensation.

I don't even remember what movie it was. I think it may have been Wedding Crashers or something.

[MadMan]

When I went to see Robots back in 2005, near the ending of the movie the actual print reel caught on fire, so my friend and I got to watch it explode and burn onscreen (of course it happened in the booth). Which was cool. My friend had already seen it, so I just asked him how it ended, and we both got free movie passes. I used mine to go see Revenge of the Sith for free.

Since I now work at a movie theater, that same thing I just described happened to a print of Couples Retreat during the end credits when I was cleaning the theater by myself. Freaked me out a bit, actually. I've also witnessed dirt on the print, print scratches, prints where the bottom half of the movie is on the top, and other annoying problems.

[StanleyK]

In Quantum of Solace, the projector broke five minutes in. I was pretty bummed because I went to see it with my dad, and Bond movies are the only movies he watches in theaters.

Only one I can remember really. I've been pretty lucky with this stuff, I never even had an audience with poor theater behavior.

[Skitch]

- midnight screening of Swingers, film caught fire in the diner scene near the end.

- Dark Knight Imax entire first scene had no sound. I raised unholy hell and they preety much told me "tough".

- multiple times I've gotten free tickets because of failing bulbs, causing the film to flicker.

[Skitch]

I never even had an audience with poor theater behavior.
Whaaa? I'd say 95% of my theater trips involves an asshat in the crowd, no joke.

[soitgoes...]

- multiple times I've gotten free tickets because of failing bulbs, causing the film to flicker.
Best part about my movie theater job, well besides loads of free movies, was changing the projector's bulb. It was like for a few minutes I was in the bomb squad. I'm not sure if they're the same today, but back in my day they were evil, fragile bastards, where one slip up would get you a face full of glass dust.

[balmakboor]

The weirdest thing I can think of is one time I went to a movie and the last reel wouldn't play.

They gave everyone a free ticket as compensation.

I don't even remember what movie it was. I think it may have been Wedding Crashers or something.

I would've begged them to substitute a different last reel, any other last reel.

Btw, I'm jealous. I've never had a movie catch fire. Not even once. Not unless Inglourious Basterds counts.

[balmakboor]

A film gate wouldn't cause that, a bad roller, or more likely someone built it up incorrectly would have. ;)

Oh. Yeah, I guess the film isn't moving when it's in the gate. Or at least hopefully not.

[Dukefrukem]

Oh, and John Leguizamo rules.

*pulls a piece of pizza out of the garbage*

Leguizamo: "ewwwww... Anchovies"

LOVE IT!

[Dukefrukem]

Whaaa? I'd say 95% of my theater trips involves an asshat in the crowd, no joke.

This.

[number8]

The only time I had a reel caught fire was at Gremlins: The Ride.

[Ezee E]

The only time I had a reel caught fire was at Gremlins: The Ride.
D'oh. I read this as Gremlins 2 in which it was intentional, and thought it was funny.

[number8]

(It's the same thing. The concept of the ride is that you're watching an old movie in a theater when 5 minutes in Gremlins attack the projection booth and you have to escape on a ride.)

[Ezee E]

(It's the same thing. The concept of the ride is that you're watching an old movie in a theater when 5 minutes in Gremlins attack the projection booth and you have to escape on a ride.)
Ah. But now it's not funny. I just wish I got to ride a Gremlins ride.