Listen, you f—ers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum. —Travis Bickle
As you may have heard, Kevin Williamson made the leap from "National Review writer" to "Great American Hero" last night when he decided that enough was enough, that he could no longer idly stand by and watch the shameful state of affairs in our nation's theaters go unchallenged, that he had to take matters into his own hands. From his account:
The lady seated to my immediate right (very close quarters on bench seating) was fairly insistent about using her phone. I asked her to turn it off. She answered: "So don’t look." I asked her whether I had missed something during the very pointed announcements to please turn off your phones, perhaps a special exemption granted for her. She suggested that I should mind my own business.
So I minded my own business by utilizing my famously feline agility to deftly snatch the phone out of her hand and toss it across the room, where it would do no more damage. She slapped me and stormed away to seek managerial succor.
Was he rewarded for his exemplary behavior? Was he brought on stage after the proceedings to take a bow with the actors? Of course not. He was escorted from the premises. There is talk of criminal proceedings.
Have we gone mad? Have we forgotten how to treat our heroes with respect and dignity? Where are his garlands, his rewards?
As a film critic, I have to go to a lot of movies. The best are those that take place with only my fellow critics in attendance. The worst are those in which I sit with average audiences. These audiences are often plucked from radio station and newspaper giveaways. They are, and I am not exaggerating here, the worst people in the entire world.
They talk to each other. They send text messages. They check their emails. They yell at the screen. They try to guess the actions of the characters before they happen. They scream F-bombs at the screen as they sit mere feet away from children. They act like degraded animals who don't understand basic norms of decency. And I'm not even talking about movie theater etiquette; I'm talking about basic, human, societal norms. It's insane. The whole world has gone crazy.
All of this is to say: I sympathize with Williamson. Deeply. People who use cell phones in a darkened theater might as well pull out flashlights and shine them into the eyes of their fellow patrons of the arts. I had a Williamson-lite reaction the other day during the preview screening of Iron Man 3: a no-account scumbag sitting in front of me pulled his cell phone out and started texting someone. I thought he took the hint when I gently tapped the back of his chair and he turned the device off.
I was wrong.
He pulled it out again minutes later and, I swear to God, started taking photos of the action on the screen. This aggression would not stand. I kicked the back of his seat ... well, not as hard as I could, but pretty hard. Hard enough that whatever picture he was taking probably ended up blurry. Hard enough that he certainly took the hint that time.
His phone did not reappear.
Theaters need to do a better job of keeping the savages in line. But theatergoers need to understand that management won't do it all for us. Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands.