Barry Melrose? Although he cut it off after all this time..

this plus five

they start for a reason

There is a sociological/psychological reason. The reason is that the human brain gets overloaded with information.  Its impossible for us to take in all the information and process it all in at a time. Therefore, we start making shortcuts; looking at something and then without actually going through the entire brain process, we take that brain shortcut and immediately go to the conclusion.

We do this all the time and for the most part, it benefits us. We look for cues to tell us things. I.e. if someone is making a sad face, we can assume that they're sad, or if they're smiling, we can assume that they're happy. There are countless cues and brain shortcuts that we notice and process in order to make the world a simplier place for us to comprehend.

Unfortunately, there is a dark side to it and it shows up in racism and stereotypes. For example, the show COPS portrayed lots of black people as criminals, and so many people jump to the conclusion and make the stereotype that all black people are criminals.

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I just have horrible luck at theaters I guess...

So I went and saw Friday the 13th today and going into the movie I knew it wasn't going to be completely quiet.  I accept that there will be people that react to the scary/jump parts and that's fine.  To combat this a little, I decide to go to the 2:15PM show hoping it would be a little less crowded.

I get to the theater at about 2:05 and there's one other guy in the theater and I thought I lucked out.  Soon after I sat down people started trickling in but not many people.

And then at about 2:13 this family of about 7 comes in and I could tell it was going to be trouble.

1. There was 7 of them: a mother, father, and 5 kids.
2. Two of these kids looked like they were in their low teens, the other had to be about 8, 6, and 4.
3. This was a black family, and I know, this sounds horrible and I feel horrible for thinking this, but I thought of the above Scrubs clip (which made me remember this thread).

Anyways, they sit down in the same row as me and are already loud and bothering me.  The little kids are jumping around in their seats and one of the older kids is stomping his feet on the ground.  What are the parents doing?  Just sitting there completely oblivious.

BUT it's only the previews and they must at least have the basic respect for the other people to quiet down when the movies starts, right?  ...Right?

Wrong.

The damn little 4 year old is just babbling and talking about everything on screen.  The 6 and 8 year old are jumping around their seats and the damn kid is still stomping his foot on the ground and of course the parents are still completely oblivious.

About 20-ish minutes into the move one of the little kids walks down to go to the bathroom.  She gets to the front of the theater, stops, turns around and starts talking to her family from across the theater.  She eventually gets the other two small kids to leave the theater with her.

I'm getting pretty pissed off at this point but then I see an older couple leaving the theater because of the family (they had all their stuff and snacks with them and gave the family an evil glare as they left) so I stay in my seat.

A few minutes later I see the three kids come in the theater and then go back to their seats and be loud again.  A few minutes after that I see two theater workers come in and stand there for a few minutes.  They eventually walk over to the family and ask them to make their kids stay in their seats and please be quiet.  The father gets angry and loudly cusses them out, telling them he paid $150 dollars to be there, and that his kids are perfectly fine. 

After that, the theater worker left and a few minutes later what had to be the manager came in.  He went over and asked to speak to the father, the father started yelling again, and the manager asked the father to step out to talk and started walking towards the exit.  The father walked with him but stopped at the front of the theater.

Here he started yelling, cussing the manager out, and demanded his $150 back for the manager ruining his movie.  The manager continued to try to get the guy to talk outside of the theater but then the guy started pulling the race card.

He started yelling how the manager was a racist because they followed his kids in because they were black and they would not have given them a 2nd thought if they were white.

...

Lets stop the story for a second.  First, I know the people came in because the first couple complained and I'm pretty sure other people even went and complained too because I had seen other people leave and glare at the family but they actually came back.

Second, common sense would tell you that if you're working at a theater and you see a 4, 6, and 8 year old walk alone into a rated R movie, a Friday the 13th movie even, you follow them.    It doesn't matter if they're black or white, there's something wrong there.

...

Anyways, the manager eventually convinces the father to leave the theater and I never saw him come back in for the rest of the movie.  About 30 or so minutes later, I see the mother come in (never saw her leave actually) and round up her children and they all leave.  Thank God.

Luckily when I left the theater they actually gave everyone that was left a free pass.

Just curious, how do people become so fucking inconsiderate of other people?  If you have kids, you just have to accept that you either find someone to unload them on if you want to see something like Friday the 13th or you don't see the movie.  What kind of fuck up brings their young family to a movie like that?

If you have kids and you want to go out to see a movie as a family, you have to see a movie like Coraline.  At 2 on a Saturday at a movie like that, I expect there to be children up and running around.  You don't expect that or tolerate that at a rated R movie.

How shitty of a parent and person can you be?  Not only are you showing your 4 year old a movie that is full of language, violence, gory death scenes, and nudity, you also have no objections about being an ass to people in front of your kid, and you just don't give a fuck about anyone else.

How do people become such inconsiderate assholes?  Anytime the ice in my drink even moves and makes a noise I get paranoid that everyone hears it and gets bothered by it, but I can't imagine how people can possible talk, bring their loud kids, text, or just be loud in movie theaters.

I hate them just as much, and I've been in plenty of theaters with loud obnoxious white people too.  When I went to see Iron Man there were these two little twats making fart noises and running around in the very front row.  I wanted to shove a Milk Dud through their eye.

@ TWesterm

You should expect that the movie-staff would not even allow the parents to buy tickets for the show.

On sterotypes... I have yet to see a Marrocan speak slowly and in an articulate manner. Even my boss sometiems starts to rattle so much I can't follow him!

I really, really hate this. It usually works too, because even if the establishment is in the right they are afraid of a media scandal that would damage their reputation if they took it further.

I am in no way biased against minorities, but they shouldn't get special treatment negatively or positively.

Yeah, I had always assumed kids weren't allowed to go into rated R movies regardless if they were with their parents or not.  Of course there were two middle school kinds in front of on what I was guessing a date so I'm guessing they didn't care.  At least they were quiet.

Never go see a movie within a few weeks of the premiere. NEVER.
I can't remember the last time I saw a popular movie in a theater. I wait for the DVD, thank you. If the theater is full, I can pretty much count on there being at least 10 obnoxious pricks making loud noises and not letting me enjoy the damn movie. I went to see a movie with some friends once (I think it was Iron Man), and almost got into a fight. I hate people.

That's my general rule, for some odd reason I had thought the movie had been out for three weeks instead of only starting its second week.  Still though, I've seen movies on their final weekend and still have had pricks come in and make noise.