Movies are full of crap

Went to the movies on Friday night.  My first visit to the movie theatre in my new town.  The theatre is called The Starlight.  Nice little theatre.  I'm unsure how many actual viewing theatres are inside the complex, but the movie I went to was screened in a very small theatre. 

It is insignificant which movie I went to see (it was Hamstead) as this story has nothing to do with a movie review, this story is an audience review.

I'm a keen movie goer.  When Tony and I were both working we found going to a 6 p.m. movie on a Friday night was both a romantic date-night thing to do and a wonderful way to unwind at the end of our busy weeks.  He would come straight from his corporate job, and me from whatever work I was doing.  He'd be in his work suit, still thinking work thoughts so we would meet at the theatre, buy the tickets then have a pre-movie glass of wine.  The perfect way to begin unwinding from the week's busyness. 

All of this preamble is mere digression to my story, which I frequently do.

In the last year of Tony's life the movie visits became less and less often, to zero, and once he passed away the idea of heading to the movies by myself, without my darling man seemed unnatural, almost dishonorable. 

A year or so passed with me sitting in front of the television on Friday nights and mourning not having my mate and not spending the week looking forward to heading off with him to the movies. I eventually came to realise that if I did not get a bit of self motivation and take myself out, I'd become all the more morose about being alone, particularly on Friday nights.  So one Spring Friday evening I returned to our local theatre to watch a Friday movie, by myself. 

Initially it was disconcerting, almost perverse; but after a few weeks I became used to being the one solo movie goer in a theatre of people with their husbands, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, family or friends.  Besides, I enjoyed the people watching as fellow patrons came to the foyers to purchase tickets, ice creams, wine and nibbles.  I did not purchase the glass of wine, it did not feel right to sip the juice of the grape without my mate alongside me.  I tried it once, but the wine tasted off.  I am sure it wasn't, it was just that the situation without Mr J was 'off'.  Perhaps I should have persevered, it could have made the people watching all the more interesting.

I then become a fairly regular Friday night movie attendee once more.  I was fortunate as living in Mt Albert meant we lived a short distance away from my three favourite movie theatres, the ones that screen 'adult movies'.  And by that I do not mean the 'adult' movie of the offensive, pornographic kind, but the movies that entertained adults with interesting, intriguing and often real, grown up stories;  stories that did not have monsters, aliens, creatures taking over the world, the returning of the dead, the killings, garrotting,  pillaging, raping and explosions and noise, noise, noise and nonsense.  The three theatres I frequented screened the grown up movies of the 'Spotlight',  'The King's Speech', 'Wild',  'Best Exotic Marigold Hotel', 'Philomena', 'The Queen', 'Being 17', 'The Innocents', 'Boyhood', 'The Theory of Everything'..... kind of movie;  you get my drift.  Movies where having an IQ made a difference.

Then I moved to Taupo.  One movie theatre in the whole town.  Guess that is better than no movie theatre.  In the initial two months I lived here those movies screening did not give me confidence that I could re-enact my Friday night movie habit in my new surroundings.  'The Lego Batman Movie', 'Stray Bullets', 'American Violence', 'War on Everything', 'Train Spotting 2'.   Nah.... not my style of movie entertainment.   I knew there would be some downsides of moving from a city to a town, so presumed the Friday night movie void would be one.

But I strolled past The Starlight Theatre a few weeks ago and ran my eyes over the advertising posters amateurishly cellotaped to the theatre's doors.  Imm, there were two movies being screened that could almost be considered 'adult' movies.  Perhaps this is the lull between the school holidays when they need the grownups to frequent the theatre to fill the seats.  Whatever the reasoning, there were movies I considered comparable to those which would be shown in my favourite Auckland theatres.

So last Friday, after a small meal at home,  I walked myself the fifteen minutes up to the theatre house.  Walking to and from the theatre in the early evening was rather gratifying, something I certainly could not, or would not, have been able to do in Auckland.  Purchased my ticket and declined the attendants suggestion of ice cream or sweets to take in with me, after all the movie was only 120 minutes long, I didn't consider I'd become famished in its duration.

The theatre was tiny.  Really tiny.  Only 10 seats.  3 in the front row.  4 in the middle row and 3 in the back row.  'This is cool,' thinks I.  Really quaint and intimate with cozy chairs. No wonder it has designated seating - mine was back row, far corner.  It was fifteen minutes to screening and I was the only patron in the theatre. That is, until four or five minutes to start time when the other nine seats began to fill.

A mother of around forty came in with her two teenage children - a girl aged about 15 and a boy aged about 17 - they sat in the front row of 3 seats.  I know it was mother and children as opposed to boyfriend and girlfriend as neither the girl or the boy wanted to sit next to one another and made that patently clear so mother sat in between them.  They all held enormous great ice creams and were licking lusciously at them.  One presumed they too would have had their evening meal and the ice creams were a treated desert.

As they settled into their seats two middle-to-well-past-middle-aged couples came in and sat in the row in front of me, all four of them also licking very large, luscious coned ice creams.  Immm... methinks .... the ticket man is scoring well on the side orders tonight.  My observation was that none of the four middle-to-well-past-middle-aged couples looked remotely like an athletic foursome, or even a mildly energetic foursome - but that was the perverse coach-come-once-upon-a-time-gym-bunny thoughts processing in the mind ...  not healthy ... my thoughts that is  ... at least in this politically correct era ... so I mentally slapped my hand and began to watch the pre-movie advertisements, whilst mildly envious of the seven, ice cream licking fellow patrons for their sweet treats. 

Those four people were soon followed by another middle-to-well-past-middle-aged couple (of greater BMI as those in front - stop it Verna!) who  sat in the last two seats next to me - and guess what?  They too were both clutching two ginormous luscious ice creams.   Husband sat closest to me, his wife beside him.

The theatre was very small and very intimate which meant the tongues swishings over the ice cream knobs did create an added sound effect to the theatre.  After all, there were nine people slurping on the sweet treats. 

I realised that of all ten people in the theatre there was only one person who had not come in without a giant ice cream in their hand.  And that was me.  They were all happy - by now I was the only patron that was wishing I had one too.  So who was the silly one...??     

The treats looked so divine that I briefly contemplated quickly zipping out to purchase one myself and return so that I was not the odd one out. But refrained.  I had had my evening meal, knew I was replete and I knew there was ample at home for me to enjoy if the yearning was still there later in the evening.

I was happy for them all and their ice cream consumption and ignored the muted noises of ice cream licking. 

The opening scenes of the movie begins - delightful views of Hamstead Common in London, serene-type scenes, pleasant orchestral music to accompany it,  then teenage son in the front row picks up a  large cellophane bag of potato chips, loudly rustles and crinkles it to get it open, thrusts his fit into the bag whilst making it crinkle all the more,  grabs a handful of the contents and begins to loudly crunch them in his gob.  Sister leans across, loudly and snottily demands the packet, to which is passed and her hand dives into the ten decibel cellophane bag and grabs out her handful of the crisps and crunches on them with the loudness of giant pines falling in a forest.

Simultaneously, husband and wife next to me were nearing the end of their large, very large, ice cream cones - the ice cream had been devoured  and they were now left to munch on the very crunchy, crispy cones to complete the total absorption of their treat.  The amount of loud cone crunching had me conclude those cones must have been the largest, longest cones in the world.

Ice creams finally finished by the couple next to me when she begins rattling around in her handbag of nick knacks and pulls out a tissue packet to wipe her sticky hands.  Pity the packet has not already been opened as then there was the crinkling of the plastic in her fiddling with it to tear it open.  The unzipping of the handbag, the rustling through its contents to find the tissues, the ripping of the tissue packet was now becoming hugely irritating - I felt like reaching into my pocket and pulling out my own soiled, snotty tissue and handing it to her in an attempt to let her know how annoying her antics were.  I restrained, barely.

Meanwhile, those potato crisp crunchers down in the front row were continuously passing their large bag of crisps between one another and enjoying their salty repast without remembering the golden rule when eating - close your mouth!

Irritation started to become agitation.

Then, yes then,  one of the ladies in the two well-past-middle-aged couples directly in front of me picked up her own cellephone bag of sweets and attempted to noisily open them. She couldn't so passed them to husband next to her who put the bag into his mouth and noisily ripped the bag open with his teeth.  This crinkly bag was then passed along to the end person of the four, who poured out a handful of whatever sweets they were, then handed it to the next person who did the same, and so on and so on.  Now we had the crunching of the three chip eaters in the front row, the sucking of the sweets by the four in the middle row ... and now ... Mrs Tissue-Wiper next to me picks up off the floor by her feet an ENORMOUS container of salted popcorn, grabs and handful and passes the said container to husband next to me.  He grabs his own hand full and both are now munching on crunchy popcorn.

I am now perplexed.  Have all these people come to the movie theatre to have their picnic and find that the actual movie is a side issue to their entire plan of coming out to eat crap for a couple of hours?!

I have the three potato-crisp-eating family in the front row, the four noisy sweet-sucking-and-constantly-passing-the-sweet-bag-people in the middle row, and now the two-cholesterol-high-did-not-need-it couple next to me devouring the largest container of pop corn the theatre had every sold.

All this went on for the next hour of the movie.

No other one among them seemed the slightest bit perturbed by the fact that there were times the movie dialogue was not able to be heard due to slurping, sucking, crunching, munching, licking noises.  Not only irritating and aggravating to this now jaw gnashing fellow patron but much of what continued was downright rude.  There was no apparent signs from any of the nine to attempt to quietly pass the packets or buckets to one another; on one occasion there was a loud and irritated request from one of the teenagers to the other for their shared chip packet yet no one else in the theatre seemed to mind, so absorbed were they in the guzzling of their own aperitifs.   

Aggravating, annoying, exasperating, disturbing  .... all of the adjectives that test my patience.

It made the pleasure of pleasurably relaxing and watching a gorgeous, mind releasing piece of quaint and soothing movie reel become a tortuous, endurance test of nerves, patience and mental fortitude, that only I could possibly possess.

Had these people starved themselves all day for this special 'Friday night treat'? 

Finally, finally, some hour into the movie all the consumable garbage had been devoured, there was a noticeable and enjoyable quiet from the seats and all the movie could be enjoyed without the added sound effects of the pre-starved populace in the theatre.

Then, she does it.  Well-past-middle-aged lady along from me picks her handbag back up off the floor, rummages around in it again and pulls something very small out.  With dexterous fingers she held a little something in the thumbs and forefingers of each hand and began to pull.  The cellophane wrapping of a sweet uncoiled with it's muffled crinkle, she extracts it's contents, pops it in her mouth then screws the small piece of cellophane up and delicately drops it to the floor. 

Has this woman got worms?!

                              

The movie eventually ended.  I cannot review the movie, I did not see it.  I was just very glad the personal torture was over.  I sat and watched the fulfilled ones file out of the theatre.  There were only nine of them so that did not take long. 

Heaving a great sigh, I collect my personal things and follow the last ones out, the man and woman who had sat next to me.

As I waddled out behind the waddling two in front of me she turned to him and said, "Shall we hit Pizza Hut or go Indian?"