When it comes to people texting in movie theatres,
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When a couple of young women sitting near me started texting at a screening the other night, sending bright shafts of light from their phones into my eye line,
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My 13 year old son has heard so many anti texting sermons that when I was recently touting Clint Eastwood’s performance as a take the law in his own hands cop in Dirty Harry,
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So I wasn’t exactly a disinterested observer when I read about a panel at last week’s CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas that was highlighted by a noisy debate over, yes, texting in theatres. Several prominent industry figures seemed to endorse the idea that, at a time when teenagers are going to the movies less and less, it might be time to relax our prohibitions against texting in theatres.
Regal chief Amy Miles, who oversees the largest theatres chain in the US, said that while her company discourages mobile phone use,
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"You’re trying to figure out if there’s something you can offer in the theatre that I would not find appealing but my 18 year old son might," she said.
IMAX Filmed chief Greg Foster also seemed to endorse a relaxation of standards,
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He noted that his 17 year old son "constantly has his phone with him,
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Tim League,
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League said cinemas were a "sacred place" that should be free of distractions,
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The response in the blogosphere was equally blunt. Dripping with sarcasm, Jonah Gardner at Filmology said that when it came to allowing texting: "Why stop there? Encourage people to come to the movies to make important phone calls. Have them bring their laptops and do some work. Invite businesses to hold meetings during Saturday night screenings of The Hunger Games".
Before I launched into a full on anti texting rant, I decided to hear what Miles and Foster had to say firsthand. I was in for a big surprise. Contending that their remarks had been misconstrued, they said, ahem,
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Miles was very clear. "Customer etiquette is a big deal with us," she told me. "We strongly discourage any cellphone usage in our theatres. So we weren’t trying to convey to the world that we had a new policy on texting we do not."
Miles acknowledged that theatre officials had discussed trying ways to create a more interactive environment in certain auditoriums,
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"Even if kids’ habits are different, we’re never going to bring that generational issue into our theatres," she said.
Foster was just as insistent. "There is no way we would ever allow texting at Imax theatres. We are the last bastion of showmanship for filmmakers who make great works of art and we would never encourage anything that interferes with the audience being allowed to enjoy the immersiveness of that experience,
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I wish I could say that these no wiggle room clarifications mark the end of the texting in theatres squabble. But it’s just the end of the beginning. When I did an informal survey of my adult moviegoing friends, they were just as aggravated as me, happily volunteering stories about how they’d snapped at younger patrons who were texting in the middle of a movie.
But history proves Americans almost never resist technological change. Robots replaced factory workers. Napster and file sharing decimated the recording industry. Newspapers are now being delivered on e readers. There’s no easy way to fight consumers’ desire for convenience and access to information,
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As Richard Verrier reported recently, consumers are using app equipped phones to find nearby cinemas, share moviegoing plans with friends,
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But having tethered moviegoers even more tightly to their mobile phones, will exhibitors really continue to draw the line when these customers nestle into their seats and the lights go out? I doubt it. Having already adopted policies allowing, for example, reserved seating and alcohol imbibing, it’s hard to imagine that exhibitors won’t try similar experiments allowing mobile phone usage in certain auditoriums.
Maybe it won’t be the worst thing to happen to Western civilization since baseball adopted the designated hitter rule.
"It enabled us both to see movies we wouldn’t have otherwise seen, since she couldn’t afford a baby sitter," he recalls.
On the other hand, he remembers being unnerved seeing 300 with his teenage son,
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"I’d like to hold back the tide,
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It might be intriguing if the kids were texting each other probing analyses of the cinematography or production design. But judging from the teens I know, that’s hardly the case; the texts are usually idle chatter, extensions of conversations that began at school or on the baseball field. And no matter how thoughtful the comments might possibly be, I’m still being blinded by the light of their phones.
I remain a purist. The whole idea of going to the movies is about leaving all your other baggage behind. It’s why we call it escapist entertainment. If you’re checking your text messages, you’re missing out on the feeling of awe and exhilaration you can get only in a darkened cinema. Film is a communal experience. The only screen you should be watching is the big one in the front of the theatre, not the tiny one in your lap.
One screen might tell you where your pals are going to dinner. The other one can make you laugh,
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