I have come to the firm conclusion that we need to introduce licences for people who wish to watch movies in public.
This follows yet another fraught experience at the cinema. The movie was Despicable Me 4 so I wasn’t expecting to be joined by an audience of young chin-strokers, all sitting in reverential silence. But it was the older members of the audience who caused the most trouble.
It all started when a woman and a boy claimed the seats next to me. She was carrying a bag that could have comfortably concealed a small child, and when she swung around to examine her seat number, the bag almost took my eye out. The reason for the enormous sack soon became apparent as she proceeded to remove copious amounts of snacks from what seemed to be a bottomless pit.
She rustled and rattled her way through the trailers, munching a bag of crisps designed to feed a family of six, while noisily chatting to her young companion. When the movie began and silence descended, she didn’t seem to notice. Every scene was loudly discussed as though she was sitting on her sofa in her pyjamas.
Conflict of many colours – Frank McNally on a finely illustrated atlas of the Civil War
Lunar quest – Frank McNally on moon missions, misinformed quiz questions, and mountweazels
The Dromcollogher cinema fire disaster – Frank McNally on a fateful day in 1926
The spirit of 1965 – Kevin Rafter on Ireland’s first television election
When she wasn’t providing a running commentary, or raucously laughing at mildly humorous scenes, she used the time to catch up with her notifications on Facebook. Thanks to the unavoidable bright white glow from her phone, I learned that Lorraine’s birthday party was a raging success and generated several thumbs-ups and a scatter of heart emojis.
Finally, the crisp bag was tossed to the floor. Then, like a magician, she triumphantly produced an overflowing box of popcorn. As the excitement ratcheted up for the Despicable Me crew, she excitedly toppled half the box of popcorn onto my lap and under my feet. I would have moved, but the rest of the cinema offered no respite. A battalion of phone screens were lit up in front of us, like little lighthouses in a sea of existential despair.
Now surely you can see the need for a licensing system to protect innocent cinema-goers? The test would involve sitting through a three-hour arthouse movie with confusing flashbacks, elongated dream sequences and three actors who look identical. Of course you would be allowed to discreetly react to dramatic events, and even provide a whispered clarification to your companion, but you would be limited to eight such interventions. Crawling under the seats after your toddler, or spilling cheesy nachos over the heads of the people in front of you would ensure an instant fail.
But while cinema etiquette may have deteriorated, it’s still not as bad as the behaviour of some concert goers. Oh, to be back in the days of composer and pianist Franz Liszt when audience members daintily threw their handkerchiefs and flowers at him and fainted in an elegant fashion. Today’s audiences hurtle all sorts of missiles at performers, ranging from mobile phones to dead fish. And the occasional prosthetic limb.
Earlier this year, PinkPantheress was doing a gig in Dublin’s Olympia theatre when a prosthetic leg unexpectedly arrived on the stage for her to sign.
A fan of the singer Pink brought a bag of their mother’s ashes to her concert in London and lobbed them at the confused singer. And Lady Gaga, who delighted meat processors everywhere when she once donned a raw meat dress, was showered with sausages at a concert in Barcelona.
Yes, it’s clear that my licensing scheme must be extended to concert goers. It reminds me of a proposal I made in this column in 2001, seeking strict rules for people carrying golf umbrellas. In those halcyon days, my main worry was the lack of etiquette displayed by people toting those giant canvases down narrow footpaths and nearly impaling innocent passersby on their umbrella tips.
The Celtic Tiger was roaring and the umbrellas were advertising companies such as Anglo Irish Bank, construction companies, and dot.com start-ups. I had proposed that every wannabe corporate umbrella owner undergo a test of their skills before being let loose. They would have to walk down a narrow city street encountering obstacles such as a big man with a small dog; a double buggy accompanied by three screaming toddlers, and a group of teenagers all biologically incapable of walking in single file. But then the matter resolved itself when the financial crash came and the companies being advertised folded like a range of cheap umbrellas.
Ah, innocent days indeed.
Nowadays, if you had to choose between being repeatedly poked in the eye with a giant umbrella or spending two hours in the cinema beside a crisp-munching, cola-slurping loud talker, you’d have to think twice.