Movie theaters have, as everyone knows, grown more and more desperate to lure people back to theaters in recent years. Attendance has particularly dropped as home theaters have grown more sophisticated and less full of awful people who won’t shut up and oh my god seriously you’re going to answer your phone? During the finale? (Truly, I was at a movie a while back and the hero was in the back of a truck and had to jump onto a speeding train, even though his ankle was wrenched, and this is their last option, if he doesn’t make it a lot of people are going to die, and his implausibly pretty wife is watching the whole thing, you know, the one he let down before so they split up, and he gets ready to jump and RING RING. “’Sup. I’m at the movie. I’M AT THE MOVIE.”)
"Yeah! Sixth Sense! Pretty sure Willis has been dead the whole time! Yeah!"
Anyway, movie theaters have tried everything to get audience numbers back up, from turning up the volume on the movies, to increasing the level of sound, to making movies louder. Yet none of it worked.
Still kickin'!
Several theaters are now trying, instead – this according to a USA Today article – to start creating a special section for Tweeters. Because that will get us back. More tweeting during the movie. Ah, but this time they’ll all be clumped together in one giant glowing, clicking, chiming, blue pod! It seems to operate on the same thinking as the “smoking section” of the restaurant. “Hey, waiter, can we have a different table? There’s, like 30 people smoking in here. It looks like the fog rolled in, and it smells like Keith Richards’ corpse.” “Yes, sir, but they’re about 8 feet away from you, so you shouldn’t be able to smell a thing. Also, sir, Keith Richards isn’t dead, and cavalier jokes like that are how rumors get started.”
If they’re going to start segregating movie theaters, though, the Tweeters are only a start. I would also like to see special sections for the following:
The parent who brought very young children to an extremely violent, disturbing movie.
The teen-agers who snuck in and seem to think they’re Ocean’s 11 because of it.
I’d say the people making out, but I guess we already have a section for them, called the back row.
The friends who will only sit next to each other with an empty seat between them, because they think that a guy sitting right next to another guy? Gay.
The people who saw MSTK 3000 and decided that everyone would enjoy their jokes during the movie, too!
The predictors, obviously. You know, the “Oh, he’s going in to the shed!” people.
Yes, sir, your seat's right down here.
A deep, dark pit for the guy who answered his phone.
The Byronic Man 
December 6, 2011 at 8:07 am
Keith Richards will never die. He’ll be the last man on the planet, de-tuning the last guitar down to that 5-string open-tuning thing he does.
Whereupon he will play “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
December 6, 2011 at 10:57 am
Pretty soon someone’s going to have to do a “How is this man still alive?” study like those scientists did on Ozzy Osbourne.
December 6, 2011 at 8:22 am
Honestly most of that doesn’t bother me, just make a movie that I actually WANT to watch as opposed to remakes on remakes.
They’re aiming for the youth market which is interesting because if you look at the demographic data for the U.S. one factor sticks out. We’re becoming a gray nation. We in the 30’s and 40’s outnumber those in their teens and twenties. So why are they still making movies catering to the latter?
December 6, 2011 at 8:35 am
Because the older demographic would rather stay home, so they don’t bother. Catch, meet 22.
December 6, 2011 at 10:58 am
Also, young people are dumb enough to believe that The Immortals is going to be amazing and awesome and worth lining up for at midnight and maybe there’ll be boobs!
December 6, 2011 at 8:46 am
Keith Richards is still alive. Wow.
I would love to see a tweeting section. But they must tweet ONLY about the movie, otherwise oust those disruptive losers. Please make sure this is strictly enforced. I don’t want to know the score of the game until I get home and watch it on Tivo.
December 6, 2011 at 10:59 am
Maybe there could be a section for people who want to text about the Tweeters.
December 6, 2011 at 9:39 am
What about the people who bring their own snacks. Not like a bottle of water or bag of Cheez-Its–totally guilty), but like people who bring a separate bag and start pulling out a turkey sandwich, bag of chips with salsa, whole pot roast, spaghetti and meatballs, lamb over an open flame. I know the last one’s a bit hard to believe, but there are some real crazies out there.
December 6, 2011 at 11:01 am
I forgot about them! Probably because I tend to be guilty of that one. Usually modest things, though, like water, a peanut-butter sandwich, a popcorn popper, coffee grinder and battery-powered espresso-maker, etc.
December 7, 2011 at 6:43 pm
Are you talking to me? Apologies. I didn’t think anyone could actually hear my the mini-chopper I use to create individual milkshake specialities.
December 6, 2011 at 9:41 am
A tweeting section. In a movie. What have you got to tweet about in a movie, except the movie? If the movies were better, there’d be something to tweet about, except you’d forget about tweeting til the end (good plan, anyway). Unless you’re in the back row, but I think the same logic applies….
December 6, 2011 at 11:02 am
Critics rave, “So good I forgot to Tweet through the whole thing!”
December 6, 2011 at 10:58 am
Oh holy crap. I really, really want you to be kidding about this Tweeting section business! That is just… so… everything that’s wrong with… ahhh.
(Don’t let this reaction lead you to believe this post was less than hysterical! You always get me laughing out loud!)
December 6, 2011 at 11:02 am
I seek to infuriate as well as entertain!
December 6, 2011 at 11:22 am
The last movie I saw was “The Deathly Hallows Part 2” and that was only because my daughter wanted to go . . . um that’s my story and I’m sticking to it . . . but seriously other than something I take my child to see I don’t go to the movies anymore. I’m just glad she wanted to see the Hangover 2.
December 6, 2011 at 1:27 pm
You probably just have to find a way to make her think she wants to see what you want to see. “Hey, honey, didn’t you say you were excited to see this movie about Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud? It’s the psychology movie that your favorite pop star was going on and on about.”
December 6, 2011 at 11:42 am
Your post reads like a list of reasons I’d rather not go to the movies at all….but I’m addicted to the popcorn.
December 6, 2011 at 1:28 pm
I once got the “healthy” popcorn at the theater. Big mistake. I didn’t even like the movie because I was so consumed with disappointment at my popcorn.
December 6, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I know where the special section for Tweeters and Texters should be: their couches.
December 6, 2011 at 1:29 pm
It’s weird how people don’t seem to understand the difference between couch and a movie theater seat.
December 6, 2011 at 12:14 pm
You’ve addressed many of my pet peeves. Another one I have are the people who saunter into the film 30 minutes late and stand in front of me searching for their friends…Now the film starts at 9…there are 20 minutes of commercials ( I hate that too) then there are coming attractions…Do these people time their entrance to the theater to coincide with the films beginning?
There needs to be an asshole section of theaters where you can bring your badly behaved children, make comments, cell phone calls etc…Just make it a 350 seat soundproof glass box and then reserve 50 seats for the people who arrive on time, shut off their phones and don’t make commentary.
There is a time and place to ruin films, and that is online with the endings of Star Trek or Harry Potter films
December 6, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Wait just a minute–Keith Richards isn’t dead? But Bruce Willis is? Damn!
And what are these ‘theater’ places you speak of? Oh yeah, I think I remember them. Since having kids I haven’t set foot in one since Cars came out and my son threw an entire tub of popcorn on me during the previews and ran down the aisle screaming “I gotta go pee!” Now that tweeting/texting will have its own section, well there’s yet another place I am too old to go to anymore…
December 6, 2011 at 7:37 pm
I’ve always tended to think that if Hollywood actually made movies that were worth the ticket price, folks might consider peeling their asses off the sofa and going. Call me crazy.
December 6, 2011 at 7:57 pm
I’m a little afraid that if they put ALL the predictors into one little pod, the predictions will carry volume instead of just being muttered here and there. Then again, I haven’t been to an actual movie theater in a year, and it was a year and a half before that. So maybe they’ve changed the whole culture of movie-going and I missed it.
December 6, 2011 at 8:30 pm
That might be worth the price of admission, though – listening to that conversation? “Oh, he’s going to get the snow plow!” “He is!” “Totally!” “He’s going to ram the house with it!” “That’s what I think, too!” “With the snow plow!” “Yeah, with the snow plow!”
December 7, 2011 at 6:45 am
Maybe “they” are working up to releasing a Twitter film…you know, like Facebook? Except it won’t even quality for a “short” film or a “brief” movie. More like a “thong.”
December 7, 2011 at 11:08 am
Well, there’s a Rubik’s Cube movie being made, so I think pretty much anything’s possible at this point.
December 7, 2011 at 6:46 pm
Oh sure. I bet you’re going to expect other people to wear PANTS to the theater next. Has anyone ever called you Picky McPickerson?
December 7, 2011 at 8:15 pm
I’d prefer knickers or bloomers, but regular pants will do in a pinch.
December 9, 2011 at 11:06 am
I want to especially second that last one, with a kick to the guy’s junk, first.
Most of the movies I’ve gone to since Li’l D was born have been aggro horror movies. Which have been attended by children between a couple of months and a couple of years of age. Yikes.
December 10, 2011 at 2:09 pm
Yeah, sometimes the most horrifying part of the movie is in the theater.