My movie hero

It was a moviegoing miracle. I was watching...well, I'm a little too embarrassed to admit to the dreck I was watching...but an usher actually came into the theater on Friday night, walked down the aisle and walked back out. I haven't seen that in years. He didn't come in because some audience member complained about something; he just decided to walk down the aisle to see how things were going (and he did seem to take some pleasure in telling a gaggle of teenagers to get their stinking feet off the seat in front of them).

Imagine how much quieter and more polite the moviegoing experience would be if theaters regularly had the staff to do this. Or if an usher stopped by the theater when a movie started to make sure the lights went out, the film was started (and in focus) and no kids were runninng up and down the aisle shrieking. The usher doesn't have any particular power, but people seem to want to behave for them.

Movies are so much better when you have other people laughing with you or sucking in their breath when Ethan Hawke gets shot. But audiences make me batty most of the time. Too many people talk their way through DVDs at home and don't understand the basic pleasure of following a plot and all of the dialogue. One out of every 4 movies has some audience disturbance that ruins part of the movie for me. The last one was a guy who kept announcing loudly to his date what he thought was going to happen next. He didn't get it right very often and didn't entertainment me (or I bet, her) with his narrative theories.

And it's not just the rudeness of the audiences that are making moviegoing an annoyance. Theaters are a mess. I have been in a theater without any heat this winter. There's one popular artsy theater in town that you pretty much can't go to with a friend; finding 2 seats next to one another that aren't broken is impossible. And the big up-to-date stadium seating places are not much better; they are so automated and understaffed that things go wrong and no one who works there notices. Movies are out of focus or the lights stay on until an audience member gets up to find an employee. I went to see "Beyond the Sea", and during the big drunken bust up, the movie's sound stopped, pop music started playing and it took us (there were only 3 of us in the audience) ten minutes to find an employee who could fix the movie. No one even apologized for it.

There are some benefits; I suppose if you sneak from theater to theater it is easier these days. No usher will stop you. Unfortunately, I've always been too much of a rule follower to do that.

So, in short, whatever your motivations...thank you Mr. Usher for showing up during (okay, I'll admit it) "The Wedding Date." A hush came over the mainly septuagenarian audience after he passed through. The ladies stopped stopped commenting about how cute Dermot Mulroney was every time he came on screen and I even took my feet down from the seat in front me. I'm kind of scared of ushers.

They were not making sure everything was ok. well maybe a little but what they are mostly
looking for are movie pirates. people with vidio cameras who will film the movie and then post it online.