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Cinema Etiquette

Or 12 Things I Hate About The Audience

Contributed by: J Vickers

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, seeing a film with an audience cannot be beaten…unless it’s the audience that needs to be beaten. These are a few of my least favourite things.

	1. The Late Arrival The start time of the film has been advertised for weeks. There may even be 20 minutes of trailers and adverts to give this person a chance to slip in unnoticed, but no, they have left it until the last minute and now want to squeeze past the whole row to get to their seats.
	2. The Title Talker The Director put a lot of effort in setting the tone and back-story of the film in the scenes behind the front titles – give the rest of us a chance to enjoy them without having to listen to your inane chatter.
	3. The Scruncher Also known as The Diner or Muncher, this is the person who hasn’t eaten before coming out and not content with eating noisily throughout the entire film, has made sure they brought their provisions in the noisiest plastic bag they could find.
	4. The Star-Spotter ‘Ooh, isn’t that Robert de Niro?!’ Yes, actually it is, but those of us who hadn’t already spotted him really didn’t need to be told.
	5. The Head Bobber Can’t…quite…see…the…screen. Good, he’s settled down. No…he’s…off…again. OK, so WHO shot the hero?!
	6. The Arm-Wrestler I have elbows too.
	7. The Conversationalist Talk on your own time – I came to experience the film not hear about what a bad day you had at work.
	8. The Expositionalist The person who gives us all a running commentary on what we can see quite well enough for ourselves, thank you. That’s what the big screen’s for.
	9. The Idiot Often the person sitting next to the Expositionalist – they NEED the running commentary and may have provoked it by asking some fool question in the first place.
	10. The Alarmist Watch alarms. Can’t they be turned off?
	11. The Fiddler Pieces of paper, tickets, hankies, articles of clothing. You name it, they’ll be rustling it. Completely oblivious to the irritation they’re causing.
	12. The Mobile Phone Relatively recent addition this and worthy of capital punishment. Trouble is, I just know that one day I’m going to forget to turn mine off….