Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1963)

7ke Viet* tfwtt OutMde by ROLAND PENDARIS Pesty Patrons Just for a change of pace, and in hope of bringing a smile to your face. Having devoted this space most recently to a jaundiced look at obstreperous stockholders, I must now, in the interests of fairness, apply the same sort of look to those whose only stock in trade is a ticket. The great American moviegoer comes in all shapes and sizes, of course, and I herewith nominate the following categories for dubious immortality. 1. The head bobber: You settle down comfortably in your seat, having found a clear line of vision over the shoulder of the gent in front of you, and then he shifts in his seat. His head bobs to the other side and your view is completely blocked. So you, in turn, shift to the other side, only to have him reverse his field. Sometimes the head bobber just wants to talk to the people on either side of him. Sometimes he just can't sit still. In any case, he is a menace to moviegoing sanity, and I am absolutely at a loss to suggest a remedy. Maybe a discount should be offered, upon leaving the theater, to any patron who gets a note of commendation from the customer behind him. 2. The searcher: For some reason this particular category, in my experience, seems to attract more females than males. The searcher need not be sitting in front of you. She can also be sitting alongside of you. While she is somewhat interested in what is happening on the screen, she is infinitely more concerned with events or people elsewhere in the theater. She is looking for somebody or something. While you are concentrating on the screen action, she suddenly turns and looks past you — and she keeps looking. It is somewhat difficult to devote your full attention to the movie when a face practically on top of yours is busy looking through your line of sight. 3. The misplaced child: Any adult who goes to a children's movie deserves whatever sturm und drang he gets. After all, he is intruding on the youngsters. By the same token, any adult who brings a little child to an adult movie should be drawn and quartered. The punishment is not because of any injury to the feelings of the child, but rather because of the pain inflicted upon innocent adults. There is nothing more likely to destroy adult enjoyment of a serious drama than a four-year old child patrolling the water fountain, the rest room and the aisle. And I have seen many a fragile moment of high drama loused up by the piping voice of a kid two rows ahead of me saying something like "but you promised me I could have a lollipop." I realize that very often the youngsters are brought to the theater because there is simply no place to leave them, but that is no reason to give an entire audience the occupational hazards of the babysitter. 4. The hairdos: These are a comparatively recent phenomenon and it must be said that they do add a certain element of suspense to moviegoing. You are sitting quietly in your seat, with a vacant seat in front of you. Suddenly there appears in the aisle one (1) customer consisting of 51/2 feet of girl and II/2 feet of hardo, teased, puffed, ratted or otherwise distended. You sit petrified. Is this wall of hair going to land in the seat in front of you, completely blocking your view of the screen? And if she does sit there, what can you say to her?" "Would you kindly remove your head?" A few weeks ago I was in a theater when a lady with a Page 8 Film BULLETIN June 24, 1963 miraculously monumental coiffure arrived. You could hear the sucking in of breath on the part of everybody in the theater as they tensed up waiting to see where she would light. The show was on, but it could not compete with the dramatic suspense generated in the aisle. The lady finally sat down, and for three rows the people directly behind her changed their seats. Since many other types of difficult moviegoer are known and familiar, I refrain from detailed description of such as these: the sniffler, the loudmouthed explainer, the disinterested conversationalist who would rather talk about something else, the candy box rustler, the in-and-out-of-his-seat row disturber, and the arm rest jockey. I would like to say a few words about the groper who never really had a chance to perform until the usher shortage. The groper, as you may have guessed, is the customer who heads for his seat before his eyes have become accustomed to the dark. If you are sitting on the aisle, he mistakes your shoulder for the back of the chair, your toes for the floor and, occasionally, your lap for the seat. No account of the peculiarities of the paying customer would be complete without some attention to the idiosyncrasies of said customer while he is in the process of paying. For example, there is the man who calls his wife over for a long discussion with the cashier about whether they want to go in now and does she really want to see this picture, etc., while 12 impatient patrons are waiting behind him in line. There is the little old lady who fumbles around in an apparently bottomless purse and finally comes up with nothing smaller than a $20 bill. In recent years I have not noticed kids hanging around the box office waiting to find adults willing to take them in. Whether this is a nationwide trend I do not know. I am heartily in favor of it. On the whole, of course, most picture patrons, like most picture stockholders, are well behaved and all they want is their money's worth. The troublesome patrons, like the noisy nuts at stockholders' meetings, are a minority. They are one minority, however, on whom no sympathy need be wasted. P.S. After committing the foregoing paragraphs to paper I did some homework by venturing into the local neighborhood house with my wife for an evening of relaxation. We encountered two additional kinds of problem patron. One was the seat hogger. He had his raincoat rolled up one side next to him and his briefcase (he must have gone to the movies right from work) on another seat on his other side. When we asked him to move over so we could sit together he glared at us, but finally did us a great big personal favor. He reminded me of a number of occasions when I have seen people searching vainly for a place to sit down while some hog left his coat draped over a seat which everybody assumed was taken, until one patron, bolder than the rest, asked him to please remove the garment. On our latest trek to the movies, we also encountered the fusser — the lady who combed her hair once every five minutes, ( patted it — with her elbow obscuring my view — every second minute in between, and started putting on her make-up fifteen minutes before she rose to leave. I would write more on the subject but I get nervous. As a matter of fact, the man behind me asked me to stop moving my head so much. I guess it could happen to anybody, hm? I