Thought I'd add something more light tonight.

Did you ever have an accidental or botched or unexpected or otherwise oddball movie watching experience that you could share?

Here are a couple of mine to give you some idea of what I mean:

The first time I saw Psycho was when I was in college. I wasn't a film major (undergraduate at least), but I hung out with film school types and found out when they were watching movies. The general rule was that 16mm prints that came in for classes could be borrowed to show in a couple of the classrooms that had screening facilities.

So anyway, Psycho is set up for one afternoon. We start around 3:15, but around 3:50, students start arriving for the 4:00 class that we were told wasn't to be held.

So 35 minutes into Psycho, the screening stopped, rescheduled for the next day.

Yes, Psycho. I'd never seen it. I was on the edge of my seat. I wanted to kill someone.

I also watched movies like crazy on TV. That meant a lot of late night viewing on regular channels, with commercials of course. I followed TV Guide, marking it off the week before for what I wanted to watch.

I lived near Lake Michigan in a Chicago suburb, on the third flood facing east. On some nights, if wind conditions were right, a station from across the lake in Muskegon, Michigan would reach my tv (this is all way before cable). So I would always check this channel, see if the signal got through, and then wait to see what was on.

They showed rarities. It's still the only time I've ever had a chance anywhere to see an early Otto Preminger comedy, Danger! Love at Work (his 2nd film if I recall).

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Well not so much that the expierence of watching the film was odd, but i recall after seeing "Zodiac" on the big screen late at night going home to a house i was in ALONE for the weekend and being very paranoid that somebody wanted to kill me and hearing all sorts of odd noises.

My friend and i also had an odd expierence watching "Glitter", we had to watch it THREE times before we got through the whole movie because we kept falling asleep, we found the movie that boring...


Also as a child, my cousin tried taking me to see the movie "Dick Tracey" three times before we finally saw the entire movie. The first time i got so sick in the theater that i threw up all over the bathroom, the second time i think the movie theater had a unexpected fire in the concession stand or the projection room so we couldn't see the whole thing and the third time our car broke down so we didn't make it! WE finally saw the whole thing our fourth trip! and honestly i recall not enjoying it that much.

I guess Madonna singing "Sooner or Later" was based on when you were going to finally see the full film...

I was in attendance at the world premiere of River Queen (it was filmed in my hometown) and the director, Vincent Ward, left halfway through the screening and didn't come back.

Other than that, not really any interesting experiences. Although I did give someone a handjob during a cinema screening of "21".

Speaking of seeing films at a movie theater, when I went to see The Departed, the theater lost its power for a few minutes. There were no storms in that area of Washington that night, so it was very strange. By freak chance I learned that the owner had died and that his wife had called in to report the news at the same time that the theater lost its power.

Wait - while I was watching "Watchmen" with friends, we were cracking up hysterically at some of the film's unintentionally funny moments ("Wow, I can't believe I'm on Mars!") and the guy behind us said "Hey, sorry, but could you guys shut up? I'm really sorry.", but he was tactful about it, so we did. At the end of the film he apologized again and he was actually super cute. Anyway, during that film it was raining heavily outside and there was a huge leak in the ceiling right in front of us. It was funny.

Not about a movie, but a funny story about a trailer: when I watched "Australia" around Christmas Time, they were playing Christmas Songs in the theatre until they started with the trailers. So, the first trailer was for "Valkyrie", but they forgot to change the sound and so we had Tom Cruise and Nazis on the screen while listening to "Rudolph, The red-nosed reindeer"...that was funny!

G’Day,
Not sure how weird or interesting they are.

It was probably one of my first films in a cinema. But when I went to see The Lion King I didn’t want to go in. I loved the other Disney films I had seen but was scared of the “scary lion” I had seen in the trailers. I also had sensitive ears as a child so was also worried about it hurting my ears. I was pretty scared so the girl working at the cinema let me sit on the side aisle near the exit. I simply loved the film so as it turns out one of my earliest films that helped kick off my love for the cinema was seen sitting on the steps of the side aisle of a movie theatre.

Another happened a few years ago. I was on my way home from College and thought I would quickly grab a cheeseburger from nearby mall. This happens to be a shopping centre with an ice skating rink and on my way out of McDonald’s I saw a press conference on the rink. I went over to investigate and it just happened to be with Will Arnett promoting Blades of Glory. I headed up to the cinema to see if anything was happening and I bumped into Will about 10 minutes later and said how much of a fan I was. I stuck round for the red carpet (where I saw Will Arnett again) and won a ticket to see the Australian Premiere. The movie wasn’t great but it was quite the experience for me (who doesn’t ever get to go to red carpets or anything) especially since it was in a pretty low key mall in Sydney and was just on my way home.

Last year I got to see WALL-E at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood which was a pretty cool experience.

I was also in Chicago the night Dark Knight opened and the people I was with really wanted to see it. It was, of course, sold out. One of the people I was with was pretty upset about it so I went up and gave a sob story to the lady selling tickets as to how we were from Australia and really wanted to see Heath Ledger’s performance. There was obviously nothing she could do, but my friend at least felt like we tried. We went to Navy Pier instead and caught the film when we were back in Indianapolis.

This year I also took my old church group to see Doubt, which was interesting.

That’s all I can think of now.

Seeing "The Blair Witch Project" in the theater when it first came out is one of my most memorable movie watching experiences.

Though it is a pretty divisive film now, when it first came it, it was truly one of the more frightening films to hit theaters in quite some time.

The last 10 minutes of the film were surreal, as the theater was packed and nobody made a peep. People were literally on the edge of their seats and terrified, and after the final scene, some people literally screamed, and others just sat silently in their chairs. Such a raw, real reaction to a horror film that accomplished everything it set out to do. I doubt I will ever have that experience with a film in a theater again.

once when I saw The Green Mile in the cinema, in the scene of the rehearsal of the executing with the french guy, just right after that guy fake being electrocuted the film copy burn up, so we saw the image of the film burning on the screen.

I've had very few "weird" experiences, but I guess some of the annoying ones were kinda weird.

- During "Dreamgirls," the sound cut out for a few minutes. It resumed without any further incident, but we all got free movie passes for our trouble.

- During "Sphere," a man was snoring so loudly that it's probably the only reason I still remember having seen "Sphere." This was an otherworldly kind of snoring; a fog horn would have been less intrusive.

- During "The Others," someone brought his or her children, and they were literally rolling through the aisles.

- A man sitting a few rows ahead during a screening of "The Bourne Identity" was calling things out at the screen like he was attending a sporting event.

All of those happened at my local Bronx theater. I don't go there anymore. Now if I want to see a movie in theaters, I now go instead to the Regal New Roc theater at New Rochelle or one of the AMC theaters in the city that have weekend morning screenings for $6; I'm especially fond of the Empire 25 in Times Square and the Lincoln Square theater. It's a commute, but you only get one chance to see a film for the first time, and that's very important to me.

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Nothing too extreme, but...

- When I saw 'In The Bedroom', I was the only person in the room. Which was more weird was that I was watching it in AMC Empire 25 in Times Square.

- After getting out of 'Minority Report', there were heavy traffic on 5th Avenue and all the cars stopped. It was eerily similar to what happened in the movie.

- About a week or two after 'Mamma Mia!' came out, I went to see it. To my terror, it was a sing-along screening. I wanted to shoot myself.

- The most embarrassing thing ever... me and my friend decided to dress up for the first time to see 'Attack of the Clones', except we went to the wrong theater- and everyone stared at my lightsaber.

Francis Ford Coppola had two screenings for exhibitors in 1977 in San Francisco and New York for what he thought was close to his final cut of Apocalypse Now. I was sent to the NY screening.

The San Francisco screening did not go well, and there was negative reaction. But he decided, since people had travelled from some distance already, to go ahead with the New York one.

He introduced the film, explained it was a work in progress, but said he was going to stop the film 2/3s of the way through.

The film played, and then did stop at a strange point. Most people lingered for a moment, but then got up and left.

A few of us stayed behind - and one, Don Rugoff, owner of Cinema V distribution and theatres (the Harvey Weinstein of his time) started agitating for Coppola to show the rest of the film.

After a few minutes, he did - with only a handful of us remaining.

I don't remember what was different between what was in the first two thirds and the final film, but what was in the final third included two very memorable moments, neither of which was ever seen again.

The first was a haunting, ethereal scene in which Sam Bottoms, having deserted and gone totally stoned, leads a group of Montagnard tribesman in chanting "Light My Fire." It was about my favorite scene in the film, yet has never been seen again.

Then the ending of this version had Martin Sheen, naked, crouched like a baby in his office, totally overwrought and crazed (having his lead character alone at the end of the film was a common thread of several Coppola films of the 1970s).

I saw Coppola after the screening, and thanked him for letting me see these, without realizing that they would disappear for ever and I had been truly privileged.

I've had several, but one made me glad the lights were turned out.

I was on a date, and the dirty devil snuck in a bottle of wine in the days of tight corks. He popped it open, but during a moment of screen silence. The thing made a most loud pop that got the audience chuckling. To avoid getting himself in trouble, he yelled "Ethel Charles, you lush". I was mortified.

quote:

Originally posted by Troy:
Seeing "The Blair Witch Project" in the theater when it first came out is one of my most memorable movie watching experiences.

Though it is a pretty divisive film now, when it first came it, it was truly one of the more frightening films to hit theaters in quite some time.

The last 10 minutes of the film were surreal, as the theater was packed and nobody made a peep. People were literally on the edge of their seats and terrified, and after the final scene, some people literally screamed, and others just sat silently in their chairs. Such a raw, real reaction to a horror film that accomplished everything it set out to do. I doubt I will ever have that experience with a film in a theater again.

Yeah, i remember people in movie theaters getting sick from the motion of the cameras moving around and stuff. I saw it in a theater too and it was dead silence the entire movie, until the last few seconds when people were literally gasping.

quote:

the dirty devil snuck in a bottle of wine in the days of tight corks. He popped it open,

Reading that I had the experience of thinking I was reading a bad Harlequin romance with an overloading of metaphor....

Last year my partner and I planned a mid-week date-night. We decided to go see "Enchanted" (this is well after it opened). We were the only 2 in the theatre, and at first it seemed so romantic- they're showing the movie just for us, etc.. Then the movie starts and there's no sound. I go to the front of the theatre and no one will help me (literally one told me his job was to take tickets). Then I get a manager who argues that it's impossible for the sound to not work, so I have to make him come into the theater with me, and he's like "Oh". So they fix the sound, and we're happy again, and then, about 15 minutes before the end of the movie, the fire alarm goes off, the theater is evacuated, and we have to stand outside for about 20 minutes before they decide that they should just give us movie passes for another day. To top it off, there are people smoking right outside the door of the theatre where a FIRE ALARM has gone off!
We found a nice restaurant, had a good laugh and it was certainly a memorable date night!

The Blair Witch Project, I watched it with my dad and we're the only people in the theater. My dad was getting nauseous so we decided to leave in the middle of the movie. The weird thing is while we were leaving, the movie suddenly stopped and the person in charge of the screen projector came out and started to leave as well.

When I went to see A Beautifull mind, in the intermedium (the movie was showed in two screens with only one copy), the lady from the theater invite us to go to the next room to see the second part of the movie. That was weird, and ofcourse it was a huge mistake from the lady. we went back to the original room butthe film has already started like a five minutes ago.

This one happened to my friend.
When my firend went to see Alien Resurection withher little brothers and sisters, there was a couple. And after 30min the movie started they start to having sex. They try to make it silently but the belt from the man start making noise cling cling cling....