Be careful who you "shush"!

[Hot Rod]

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local-beat/Moviegoer-Tells-Woman-to-Stop-Talking-On-Cell-Phone-Gets-Stabbed-in-the-Neck-87144462.html



The stabbing occurred last Saturday at the Cinemark 22

A woman talking on a cell phone during a movie didn't take kindly to being "shushed" by another moviegoer. Or at least her boyfriend didn't.

In a drama that turned more lively than the one on screen -- "Shutter Island" -- the boyfriend allegedly attacked and stabbed the "shusher" in the neck with a meat thermometer. Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said the stabbing occured Saturday during a screening of the Martin Scorsese film.

According to KTLA:

Deputies say that while the movie was playing, a woman was talking on her phone and the victim asked her to turn it off.

The victim was attacked by the woman's boyfriend and another man. Deputies say he was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer.

The stabbing victim is expected to survive and is recovering at a hospital. Two others who tried to help the victim also were injured, according to Whitmore.

According to sheriff's officials, the suspects were described as black males. One man was wearing an orange hat with an orange jersey and the other man was dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt.

There was no word on why the man had a meat thermometer in a movie theater.

[XingTheRubicon]

I wish he would have stabbed the stupid ***** with the cell phone.

meat thermometer?

[Crucifax Autumn]

I woulda got stabbed by the lunatic, but I'd have made sure she got worse.

[C&CDean]

This is why you concealed carry. What kind of a dumbass brings a thermometer to a gun fight?

[XingTheRubicon]

same kind of dumbass that brings a pistol to the movies..

< runs away >

[yermom]

no comment on the orange hat and jersey? :D

[Crucifax Autumn]

same kind of dumbass that brings a pistol to the movies..

< runs away >

The kinda dumb*ss that's sick of idiots ruining the movie that these days cost 12 bucks plus snacks?

There's a reason I have sources to just snag new movies (not cams/telesyncs) and watch them comfortably at home in 1080p with THX certified surround sound. As soon as I hear of a 3D movie worth seeing I'm packing heat.

[Crucifax Autumn]

And before you say Avatar I already saw Ferngully and Avatar sucked without the 3D.


And before you say Alice I already saw Tim Burton flicks and know they are all the same apart from Big Fish, Nightmare Before Christmas, and The Fisher King. When he comes up with another movie with Fish in the title or "The Dude" in a prominent role I'll blow my cash on another of his films.

By the time anything comes out in 3D worth seeing "the right way" I'll have one of those fancy 3D sets. The only other option IMO is finding a 3AM showing and waiting until the last minute to buy a ticket when they can tell me no one else is in there yet.

People who talk during movies should be required to reimburse everyone else in the theater or report to the firing squad unless it's a midnight showing of Rocky Horror or any similar cult "play along" event.

[Crucifax Autumn]

Besides...If they were decked out in orange they shoulda been executed long before arriving at the theater.

[delhalew]

I rarely go to the theatre after I snatched a dudes cellphone after his third call and threw it across the theatre. I guess I should get a script for xanax.

[Crucifax Autumn]

Heh...Can you tell I take movies AND my hatred of orange seriously?

[Crucifax Autumn]

I rarely go to the theatre after I snatched a dudes cellphone after his third call and threw it across the theatre. I guess I should get a script for xanax.

You, sir, are a god and should receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

[Boarder]

I don't know what nuthouse theaters you people go to. I have had no problems at all at Warren. Of course, I tend to go when there's not a crowd of deranged teenagers.

You know the real problem, these people's parents did not teach them proper movie etiquette. My 4 and 6 year olds can sit through a long movie (i.e., Avatar) and not disturb anyone. They have been instructed from a very early age how to act in a theater, though.

Little punks these days.... :mad:

[yermom]

i have a former friend that would answer the phone (ringer on) in the theater and have a conversation

he also loves Nickelback

i don't call him anymore

and yeah Boarder, i think people take movies seriously at the Warren. i love that place.

[olevetonahill]

Can ya say " Gang bangers "?

[yermom]

i was thinking "wh0rns"

[C&CDean]

Can ya say " Gang bangers "?

So meat thermometers are the new gang banger weapon of choice? Or maybe they're in a chef's gang...

[delhalew]

Can ya say " Gang bangers "?

Can gang bangers cook a turkey?

[NormanPride]

This is why you concealed carry. What kind of a dumbass brings a thermometer to a gun fight?

You think those thugs don't have guns too? They see you reaching, and you're dead. Not only you, but anyone else around who gets in the way of their **** poor shooting.

[Boarder]

Maybe he had a fever and couldn't find his normal rectal thermometer.

[salth2o]

You think those thugs don't have guns too? They see you reaching, and you're dead. Not only you, but anyone else around who gets in the way of their **** poor shooting.


Not if you get them first. CC'ers should practice their draw.

Z9AJzv8gb2A

[C&CDean]

You think those thugs don't have guns too? They see you reaching, and you're dead. Not only you, but anyone else around who gets in the way of their **** poor shooting.

You think those punks are Jesse ****in' James or Billy the Kid?

Dark theater. Check. People are being *******s. Check. Before any altercation begins, I'm gonna have Mr. Glock in my hand. Check. Now tell the dumb bitch to hang up the phone. Check. She either hangs up, or doesn't. Check. If she hangs up, no problem. If she doesn't, you tell her you're gonna go get security. If her POS boyfriend goes all Emeril on you with a meat thermometer you drill him deader than dead. Check.

Besides, when you plunk a hole in the center of their chest they're too busy bleeding to go all Scarface anyhow.

[NormanPride]

Yeah, the first one. What about all his friends that have guns? You gonna Rambo all them? :rolleyes:

[Crucifax Autumn]

I actually just read an article that was linked on IMDB yesterday about talking in movie theaters:


I very rarely shush at the movies. I hate the confrontation, I hate the sense that I'm intruding, and I hate the feeling of being a hated killjoy.

Nevertheless, I shushed twice this weekend. Well, not shushed, exactly -- I find shushing moderately passive-aggressive and often inefficient. But twice this weekend, I asked people to shut up and stop talking.

The first time was at a Friday afternoon showing of Crazy Heart. There was a group of women there who were loud in the lobby, loud in the restroom, and then, to my eye-rolling dismay, they walked into the same theater I was in. Gales of laughter at nothing, preposterously loud carrying-on in a way that simply serves to broadcast that you're having a better time than anyone else -- it's nothing particularly malicious, but it didn't seem like a good sign. (I suspected they might have been drinking -- a sort of Girls Night Out on a Friday afternoon -- but I reserve judgment, because I honestly don't know whether they were ... whatever, just high on life.) Nevertheless, trying to be optimistic, as I sat there, I thought, "Surely, they will stop when the movie actually starts."

We sat through the previews; they were still at it. Loudly carrying on like they were in their own living room. Okay, some people don't apply the rules of etiquette to the previews; that's a gray area. I waited. But when the movie started -- the actual movie -- and they were still at it, I leaned down the row. Naturally, they had chosen to sit a few seats down from me (that's how these things go), so I leaned over and said, "Okay, the movie's starting, so."

You would think, from the look that was shot at me, that I had leaned over and said, "I just stole your purse, so." Or possibly "Women really shouldn't wear pants in public, so." For some reason, the shushed often believe they can shame the shusher, which I suppose plays on those same feelings I talked about at the beginning -- you are a killjoy, you nerd -- but honestly, once I'm at the point where you need shushing? I'm not susceptible to shaming. Because I'm not shushing unless you're being so rude that I cannot take it, and I am not a stickler. (There was an older couple talking beside me during A Single Man when I saw that later the same day, but they were at least making an effort to talk quietly, so they were spared shushing.)

The second time was at the Best Picture Showcase on Saturday, where a young woman and her friends sat down in front of me. They fancied themselves the Greek chorus of the room, and wanted all their punch lines heard by everyone. Everyone tolerated it pretty patiently -- they were clearly pop-culture enthusiasts, talking between movies about Battlestar Galactica, their rooms for (I believe) Comic-Con, and the shirt Wil Wheaton wore on The Guild. They were trying to have fun. They were having an event, making a day of it. But here's where it went wrong.

Oh, so wrong. After the jump.

In A Serious Man -- and I think I can do this without spoiling too much -- there is a moment when a character is faced with a high-pressure situation and finds that he freezes, because he's been enjoying some marijuana and is addled. He stops. The tension builds. It's not clear that he has any way out. It's not clear what will happen if he doesn't pull it together. It's comedic tension, but it's tension nevertheless. The screw is being turned, on the character and on the audience.

Suddenly, Battlestar Wheaton Shirt yells out, "Don't do drugs, kids!"

Really?

I know exactly how she feels. She feels as you might when in a large group of people at a late-night showing of Fighting or Step Up 2 The Streets or something else very frivolous, where the entire crowd is yelling at the screen, because it's that kind of show. There are shows where you can do that. There are shows you can't ruin.

But this was not that kind of show. This was an audience of people who had chosen to spend all day watching Best Picture nominees. Nobody else was talking. Nobody in the entire theater was providing commentary, with the exception of Battlestar Wheaton Shirt.

It ruined the entire sequence utterly. When this happens, all of a sudden, the string of tension that has been tightening and tightening just goes slack, because you're reminded of your surroundings -- the theater, the people around you, the double reality of physical you in the theater and invisible you eavesdropping on the scene. Now, distractions happen off and on. You shift in your seat, the person beside you coughs; you can't stay in suspended animation all day, in a sensory deprivation tank except for what's on the screen.

But those things are not demands for attention. "Don't do drugs, kids!" in that setting is a demand for attention. She is asking you to stop thinking about the movie you are watching, and pause to congratulate her on the wit of, of all things, "Don't do drugs, kids." Putting aside the fact that this, as a sarcastic joke, is older than Carl in Up, it breaks the contract with everyone else in the theater.

Don't act like you don't know the contract. There are rules. You don't get mad at kids making kid-noises in the middle of The Princess And The Frog, but you do in the middle of Inglourious Basterds. Everybody's got expectations, and in some movies, in some theaters, in some moments, you're not going to bother anybody by pulling focus from the movie, because you're at a crowd-participation movie.

But you must, must, must know your moments, and if you don't, then you can't go to the movies.

If I'm remembering the sequence correctly, I still didn't say anything to her after "Don't do drugs, kids." I believe it wasn't until she started talking during The Hurt Locker -- yes, chatting to one of her friends during one of the painful, agonizing, nerve-knotting silences in The Hurt Locker -- that I leaned down and said, "Could you not talk?" (She didn't stop immediately, so I can't remember which was the time I finally asked her to be quiet.)

Here's the thing: If I'm at the movies, I'm not there to think about you. You are there to think about you (apparently), and the difference in our level of absorption in the film is a little like the difference between deep sleep and light sleep -- by the time you talk, you've already pulled away from the movie; you're prepared to hear yourself talk; only your light sleep is disturbed. But for me, you talk out of nowhere; you yank on my attention like you've suddenly got a fishhook in my mouth. And once you do it, I know you might do it again, and in reality, I can never get back into that deep sleep again. You know when you're about to talk. I don't.

I don't want to be a bad sport. I've talked back to the screen at Honey. You're not a bad person for wanting to goof around with your friends. But please, seriously: choose your moments. Because when you pick the wrong one, you take something away from everybody else in the room. This isn't a stodgy etiquette rule run amok; it's got a purpose. And if you're there to sit through Best Picture nominees and Best Actor nominees, take a moment and think about what that purpose is.

And if you're headed to Crazy Heart on a Friday afternoon with your girlfriends? Drink water with lunch

[C&CDean]

Dude, you watch way too many movies and video games.

The first cap that gets popped and you'll see all kinds of muh****ahs diving for the flo.

[Crucifax Autumn]

Maybe he had a fever and couldn't find his normal rectal thermometer.

When dumb*sses talk during the movie, or answer the phone, or even let the damned thing ring I turn my FOOT into a rectal thermometer.

[Crucifax Autumn]

Dude, you watch way too many movies and video games.

The first cap that gets popped and you'll see all kinds of muh****ahs diving for the flo.

You're going soft...You take all thos motherf*ckers out too in a shootout that looks like something out of Desperado! :D

[StoopTroup]

Just get the Theater Management. If they don't do something about them...ask for free passes and food.

[AggieTool]

Some people just don't know how to behave in a movie theater.

Must be a cultural thing....

[Veritas]

This is why if I go to a movie it's a Monday matinee. I hate having to tell someone to STFU; by the time it gets to that point my experience has already been ruined.

[lexsooner]

Years ago here in Kentucky, a cook working at a prison attacked and stabbed a prisoner in the chest with a meat thermometer. The prisoner survived and the cook was fired and convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. It might be the first instance of a staff on inmate assault with a meat thermometer.

Of course that was not as strange as the murder in the hills of Eastern Kentucky involving a love triangle between two guys and a pit bull. It's a true story which happened in the early 90s outside Manchester, Kentucky. The two guys had been drinking in a trailer all night and the guest decided to bugger the owner's pit bull. The owner caught his buddy in the act with his lover, and in a jealous rage took out a gun and done shot and kilt his friend. The pit bull was not called to testify at trial.