Worst Screening Ever

The worst screening of a film I ever sat through was thirteen years ago in early 2000. I was attending a public university that shall remain nameless, but like many schools they had a second-run film screening program that played recent-but-not-too-recently-released movies in one of the lecture halls every weekend at discounted prices. One of the screenings was for "American Beauty," which I had already seen a few months earlier in theaters, and enjoyed. So, I happily went along to see it again with some friends, not suspecting that I was about to sit through one of the most uncomfortable screening experiences of my life. Mild spoilers ahead.

"American Beauty," which won the Best Picture Oscar in one of the best years of American filmmaking in ages, can be considered a very dark and twisted comedy about a family in crisis. However, it's treatment of difficult topics like child abuse, homosexuality, and death are fairly mature and serious. The first time I saw the film was at a local neighborhood theater, mostly surrounded by adult moviegoers, who were quiet but appreciative of the film. The university screening, packed with students, responded completely differently. They laughed constantly, like we were watching an Adam Sandler comedy. There were catcalls during the sequences where Kevin Spacey's suburban father in midlife crises mode fantasizes about one of his teenage daughter's attractive schoolmates. As we got further into the film, and the material got more dramatic and emotionally fraught, the responses were the same. They laughed at the scenes where Chris Cooper, playing a homophobic, abusive neighbor, thinks he sees his teenage son and Spacey's character in a compromising position. They laughed at the horrifying confrontations that followed.

I was mortified. I couldn't enjoy the film at all as I listened to that audience and the way they were responding. And afterwards, when we had left the screening, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Why had people laughed? Sure, there were parts of the movie that were funny and laughter was appropriate, but why did they keep laughing during the most dramatic, nail-biting moments? Did they not understand the story? Did they react with laughter because they didn't know how else to react to the dramatic scenes? If this had been my first screening of "American Beauty," it might have completely altered my opinion of the film, probably for the worse. My friends seemed far more blasé about the situation, though they agreed the raucous behavior was annoying. One of them suggested that it was because it was the weekend and people were out looking for a good time, and they would have acted exactly the same way at any movie. They had probably just come to "American Beauty" because of the cheap tickets. The idea that you went to a movie to goof off together instead of for the movie, was such an alien concept to me that I started wondering if maybe I was the crazy one.

After all, I didn't have much experience with the notorious jackassery of young adult moviegoers. I have loved movies for as long as I can remember, but trips to the theater were special. They were few and far between for most of my childhood, and when I was a teenager I had a tendency to go for the less popular, oddball, artsy films that people my age avoided. I dragged friends to see "Eyes Wide Shut" and "American Beauty," but to date I've never seen an "American Pie" movie. When people complained about rowdy teenagers spoiling screenings, I always pictured a row or two of rude brats who the ushers were too lazy to kick out. I'd never seen a whole crowd grabbed by this kind of mob mentality that somehow makes everything funnier and sillier and more mockable. It's still a phenomenon that I've only seen occur in crowds with a lot of teenagers or young adults. I learned quickly this is a great audience to see a comedy like "Borat" with, and awful for anything else.

That "American Beauty" screening was a fluke to an extent. I saw preview screenings of "Mulholland Dr." and "Requiem for a Dream" in that same lecture hall and the audiences behaved. However, those were screenings that people had to go through considerably more effort to access, and they were scheduled on weeknights, so there was a higher percentage of serious film lovers in attendance. I waited more than a year to go to another weekend screening, this time for "Amelie." It went perfectly well, though I couldn't help thinking that maybe it was because it was a French-language film. The average college-age American moviegoer doesn't like foreign films if they don't contain martial arts or gunplay.

I still can't help being wary of the mob, all these years later, which I've come to identify as the natural enemy of the pretentious cinema fan. I'm being unfair, I know, but to a movie fan, spoiling a cinematic experience is serious business, and disrespecting a great movie is unforgivable.

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