One of this year's TIFF Midnight Madness selections, God Bless America, features a modern-day Bonnie & Clyde shooting someone for talking in a cinema. As the festival draws to a close, festival programmer Colin Geddes dreads the return to regular movie screens. “The worst experience is after you have to go back to regular cinemas and see a movie with the general public,” says Geddes, who has been the Midnight Madness programmer since 1997. “The talking, the cell phones, the disrespect. It's awful.”
“Things are different during TIFF. Festival audiences are here to celebrate cinema. There's no tolerance for talking or whispering," adds Geddes.
In the autumn of 1980, one of the 21 auditoriums of the Eaton Centre Cineplex was packed at capacity. The late Elwy Yost, then host of TV Ontario's Saturday Night at the Movies, appeared on screen to politely remind the audience not to talk throughout the film. They listened.
The three-minute public service announcement, titled Shhh, produced by the Toronto Film Society and
directed by Ron Mann, could serve the public well in these days of lax movie-going etiquette.
Earlier this year, the Alamo Drafthouse cinemas in Austin, Texas ran a “Don't talk and text” PSA using
a nonsensical voicemail left by an irate patron who was kicked out of the theatre for texting. Here in
Toronto, NFB producer Gerry Flahive recounts a recent theatre experience where a noisy neighbour
commented on how quiet everything became once the lights went down. "Yeah, people stop talking
during a movie. Who knew?" joked Flahive, who tolerated the unsolicited DVD commentary for five
minutes before asking, in his most Yost-like manner, to keep quiet.
Flahive, whose teenage job in the mid-1970s was as an usher at the Imperial 6 Cinema on Yonge St.
thinks the sense of ceremony once common in movie-going is long gone. "I don't remember that in
the '70s. There was more formality and I think movie-going was more of a habit. People would line up
outside the Imperial at 1 p.m. and ask what was playing."
Still, ushering was a serious job, one that required wearing a bow-tie while dealing with delinquents. "It
was the early days of the multi-plex, so essentially the first time people could sneak into other films. But
we kept our eyes open. We even kicked Hell's Angels members out once."
The incessant droning from fellow movie-goers, however, is as old as the medium itself and the mass
audience it created. During the silent era, projectionists would place title cards proclaiming “Ladies!
Kindly remove your hats!” or “Please read the titles to yourself—loud reading annoys the neighbours”
before a screening.
Although some chains like AMC offer modern-day disclaimers, Geddes—whose genre-crossing
programming often attracts the most raucous audiences at TIFF—offers his own advice: "Don't talk
loudly during the film. During the trailers, ok, but as soon as the film starts, shut up: Put the cellphones
away. Do not text, check messages on a device that emits light. It blinds whoever is sitting behind you:
Be on time."