Irish cinemas have been struck by an epidemic of attention deficit disorder, and cinema ushers are increasingly patrolling the aisles in an attempt to control restless movie-goers. But their efforts are often in vain, writes Derek O'Connor
Avid moviegoers out there - and Ireland still boasts the highest average of regular cinema attendance per person in Europe - may have noticed that basic "pictures" etiquette isn't what it used to be.
An average night at the movies these days can often feel like being trapped at a matinée screening of Herbie Goes Bananas with a packed house of hyperactive six-year olds. Previously understood rituals - such as sitting down and watching the movie you've paid to see - are rapidly being abandoned in a flurry of frenetic babble, to-ing and fro-ing, all offset to a constant flurry of text messaging. Frayed ushers have once again taken to patrolling the aisles, torches at the ready, to quell the next gaggle of braying punters: quite often, the grief received in kind isn't worth the effort.
Poor old Barry Norman might have appeared a tad curmudgeonly a few years back, when he expressed his utter dread at the thought of ever having to sit through a film with a paying audience again, but, in retrospect, Bazza might have had a point.
From his lofty perch in a bustling Dublin multiplex, one projectionist, who didn't want to be named, says he regularly bears witness to the human zoo at its most bizarre. "I remember one time a fistfight broke out in the middle of the cinema," he muses, "over what I have no idea. I switched off the film and turned on the lights - and, as one, you could see the audience literally changing angle, turning around and watching the fight instead of the film. I think they were disappointed when security finally broke it up, nobody complained, anyhow. I suppose they got their money's worth, for once," he laughs.
Whereas the main sources of distraction might once have been the noisy unwrapping of sweets, the big, bright and shiny 21st century multiplex experience has brought with it a whole new series of problems. "Attention deficit disorder has definitely set in," says the projectionist. "I think that kids today are so used to being cooped up watching videos, as soon as they hit the cinema, especially the bigger ones, they're just running all over the place. This isn't little kids I'm talking about - the teenagers are far, far worse. It's terrifying."
"Predominantly, that crowd comes out on a Friday night," says a manager of a newly opened west coast multiplex, "that's their big night out. It's a social thing, entirely. They're out in groups of six and more, you have a group of five or six girls on one side of the cinema, a group of fellas on the other. It's 'who fancies who, who's looking at who, who's that you have with you tonight?' All that stuff. In fairness, if there's a film that the group are interested in, they might actually watch it. But if they're only half-interested, well, good luck. They're all over the place."
While it must be stressed, for fear of scaremongering, that it's still possible to have a pleasant night out at the cinema, the attention-impaired moviegoer has certainly taken its toll on the more discerning customer:
"It's frustrating for a lot of people," says the multiplex manager, "and you'll find that, up and down the country, the eight o'clock shows have become largely filled with teeny-boppers. The adults are falling into two camps; either they try to pick a film that they know isn't going to get that crowd, or they just stop going to the cinema at that time."
While cinema prices generally make for a relatively thrifty evening's entertainment, the accumulated cost of any night out these days - throw in babysitting, parking and a bite to eat, for example - means that Irish audiences are more demanding than ever.
"People generally won't complain if a movie is crap," says the projectionist, "but they'll channel that anger and complain about pretty much everything else. The Irish are gold medallists when it comes to anything about complaining; the seats, the drinks, the popcorn, the sound, the picture, too many ads, too few trailers, that they didn't get to see the trailers, too many trailers. Some guy complained that he didn't get the sense that he was being shot at, and insisted that our speakers weren't working, he couldn't hear machine gun fire behind him - what can you say to that?"
The big question, then: are you better off sparing yourself the grief and popping down to the local video store instead? "Ultimately, I don't necessarily think that audiences today are truly worse than we were," says the multiplex cinema manager.
"The level of behaviour that you expect from people in a cinema (as compared to that in, say, a pub or a disco) [is that\] you're expected to sit in your seat, quietly, for an hour and a half without chatting to your friends or talking on your mobile. It takes time to get that through to a younger age group. They're just not used any more to moderating their behaviour at all. It's a bit of a shock for them to be told to be quiet, for once, basically."
"Make better films," suggests the projectionist.
"That might help to keep their attentions on the screen. I remember with Tomb Raider, we had at least two screens destroyed with that film, people just threw entire cups of cola at the end credits. God help us when the sequel comes out."
