By Lee Pfeiffer
There's plenty of speculation that the traditional experience of movie-going (i.e. people enjoying a film in a collective environment) will go the way of the dinosaur. The encroachment of on-demand entertainment coupled with the younger generation's willingness to watch widescreen movies on mobile phones is causing theater chains to take drastic action to keep audiences flocking to hardtop venues. The New York Times reports that one major 2,000 movie theater in Seattle that is set to open in 2014 will boast a policy of encouraging audience members to utilize cameras, mobile phones and other portable devices while the movie is playing. The clueless soul involved in this war on culture is the theater's executive director John Haynes who feels that sleeping with the enemy is preferable than maintaining any standards. Haynes' theater will welcome the kind of nincompoop who confuses watching a film in a theater with laying back on his living room couch. Haynes may be right: there are enough classless, stupid people who will jump at the chance to disrupt their fellow movie-goers. Meanwhile, Haynes might want to consider that any person with an I.Q. higher than their shirt size will take pains to stay away from his venue. Among those criticizing the policy is the programming director of Lincoln Center, who does not appear eager jump on Haynes' bandwagon. She appropriately says that she still finds it unfathomable that people can't sit through any type of entertainment without the urgent need to check their mobile device for messages.Click here for more
Don't look for Cinema Retro readers at the Seattle theater- and you can probably leave out CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, as well. Cooper did an entire segment on rude moviegoers and backed up the Alamo Drafthouse theater's policy of expelling people who use mobile devices while the film is unspooling. (Click here for archived article)