Let’s just get this out there right away: I have seen a LOT of movies in theaters. Growing up in the ’80s, my family (which didn’t have cable) went to three to four movies a week. This made me want to be a filmmaker (doh!), so I went to film school where I saw even more movies. After graduating, I kept grabbing my soda and box of popcorn on a weekly basis. I dunno, I just like movies!
Do anything enough times, though, and you’re bound to have some out-of-the-norm experiences, which I’ve definitely had in movie theaters! So, here are 13 of the most unexpected, memorable, and frankly batshit things that have happened to me as the projector rolled:
1.
My mom would often pick me up from school at 2:45 and say, “Want to see a movie?” Screenings generally started around three, so if we booked it to the theater we could usually catch something. On this day, we drove over to the Meridian Quad in San Jose, California, which was kind of a crappy theater in a crappy area, but we liked it. We got tickets to see Hard to Kill — a Steven Seagal movie — and raced inside just as the movie started. Soon there was action on the screen…but the real action that day happened IN the theater.
Halfway through the movie, two guys in front of us started arguing. At first, it was just yelling and seemed like a couple of macho knuckleheads having a disagreement. It kept escalating, though: Louder. Angrier. More aggressive. Finally, both men stood up, screaming at each other, and it looked like this was about to turn into a fistfight. But then one of the guys pulled out a gun and pointed it at the other guy’s head.
2.
In 2004, my friends and I decided to go see I Heart Huckabees on its opening night in Santa Monica. We went to Tower Records beforehand, where I spotted the movie’s soundtrack. Since it featured new songs by one of my favorite musicians, Jon Brion, I bought it without even having seen the movie. We then strolled over to the AMC and took our seats. Soon the movie started, and that’s when things got weird. There was no sound. It was like we were watching a silent film. After about a minute, this guy sitting in the back stood up and started loudly narrating what was supposed to be happening on screen. He’s going, “Okay, now Lily Tomlin is saying, ‘Blah blah blah’ and now there’s a big swell of orchestral music here, etc.” He described the dialogue, the music cues, you name it. He did this for about a minute while everyone in the theater turned around to stare at him.
Suddenly it hit me: holy shit — that’s the director of the movie, David O. Russell. Eventually, he stormed out into the lobby to tell the theater staff what was going on. Since I had the soundtrack CD in hand, I followed him out and asked if he’d sign it. He looked completely thrown off and asked, almost accusatorially, “Where did you get this?” I told him I’d just bought it at Tower Records before the show. He kind of shook his head, laughed, and signed it. They eventually fixed the sound and showed the movie. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it might’ve been better without the sound.
3.
In 1995, Empire Records was coming out starring Liv Tyler. I was 19 at the time — basically the exact target demographic — and thought Liv Tyler was maybe the most beautiful human being on earth, so I obviously wanted to see it. The movie was only playing in one theater in LA when it opened, so three friends and I went to check out the first screening of its opening day. There was only one other person at the screening: a middle-aged guy sitting by himself with a pad of paper and a pen. We thought his presence was a tad strange — an older dude, alone, watching a movie about teenagers with Liv Tyler strutting around in a short plaid skirt. But whatever.
The next day I was reading the Los Angeles Times which had a review of Empire Records. Turns out the guy with the notebook wasn’t just some random dude. He was the LA Times movie critic. Like us, he hated the movie. But the kicker came at the end of the review, where he wrote: “The biggest laugh at a recent showing came when a guy deadpanned, ‘This movie speaks for our generation.’ The sun can’t set too soon on this ‘Empire.'” Yup, I was quoted in a major newspaper review — mocking a movie I didn’t like — without realizing it at the time.
4.
In 1995, my buddy and I went to see Se7en — starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman — in one of those giant single-screen theaters that no longer exist. It had around a thousand seats, and that night, every one of them was filled. Se7en was classic David Fincher — very unsettling and scary, and the crowd was hooked from the opening credits. At one point, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman’s characters, Detectives Somerset and Mills, stumble upon a ‘dead’ guy in bed who suddenly coughs. A classic jump scare. The guy in front of me shrieked and launched his massive tub of popcorn into the air. Popcorn rained down on people as they screamed their lungs out. It was incredible. And the ending where the killer cuts off Gwyneth Paltrow’s head and puts it in a box? It had people shuffling out of the theater in a daze.
A few days later I was walking in Westwood with a friend when I glanced into a trash can and saw a box. It was addressed to Detectives Somerset and Mills, and had red liquid oozing out of the bottom. We started freaking out and pointing it out to strangers, who also freaked out. Within minutes, there were like 30 or 40 people gathered around this trash can, debating whether this was a copycat crime…or possibly even a bomb. Nobody had a cellphone — it was 1995 — so we couldn’t even call the cops. Finally, some college kid said, “Fuck it,” pulled out the box and opened it. He slowly peered inside — and started laughing. He reached into the box and pulled out…a watermelon.
5.
My friends and I knew this guy who worked for a company that rounded up people to attend test screenings. One day in Dec., 2001, he called us and said, “You guys want to go see The Royal Tenenbaums tonight?” This got my attention, because this was Wes Anderson’s follow-up to Rushmore, which I’d loved. I asked, “Is it a test screening?” He goes, “No, the movie comes out in like a week. We just need to fill seats.” So, we drove down to the theater — the El Capitan on Hollywood Boulevard — and immediately something felt…off. There were lights everywhere. Photographers. Press barricades. People in nice clothes. A red freaking carpet. And we slowly realized: Oh my God. This isn’t just a screening. This is the premiere. Somehow, we’d scored tickets to the actual red-carpet premiere of The Royal Tenenbaums.
Next thing we knew, we were walking the red carpet in T-shirts with pit stains. We literally squeezed past Anjelica Huston, who was in the movie, as she talked to reporters. Casual. We got inside and our seats were way up in the top balcony — clearly the cheap seats for nobodies. Down below, though, we could see all the movie’s stars in the good section. Gwyneth Paltrow. Owen Wilson. Gene Hackman. Ben Stiller.
6.
In 1999, there was a movie coming out about the legendary comedian Andy Kaufman called Man on the Moon. It was directed by Academy Award winner Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus) and starred Jim Carrey as Andy. I had gone deep into Andy Kaufman lore in college, so I HAD to see this movie. Through USC film school connections, I managed to secure a seat at a test screening. This was months ahead of the film’s actual release. I was stoked!
I walked into the theater, found my seat, and noticed there was an open chair next to me on the aisle. Just as the lights dimmed, someone slid in beside me. Because I was a film nerd, I immediately knew who it was: Miloš Forman, the director of the movie I was about to watch. And let me tell you — sitting next to the director of the movie you’re watching can totally ruin your ability to just sit back and enjoy a film. Every time something funny happened on screen, I felt like I had to laugh. Every sad moment came with this weird pressure to look moved. Whenever he glanced over at me, I worried that he was sizing up my reactions. I was basically in a self-conscious panic the whole time. Was it how I wanted to watch the movie? God no. But getting stuck watching the movie next to the director actually feels strangely appropriate — like a Kaufman-esque prank he might’ve pulled himself.
7.
One year on my birthday, my wife was pregnant with our son. She was in her first trimester, because she was feeling awful — throwing up, exhausted, the whole deal. So instead of doing something big, I ended up spending my birthday with my little buddy: my daughter, who was three and a half years old at the time. We went out for breakfast, and in a moment of pure birthday impulsiveness, we decided to order four items off the menu: pancakes, French toast, an omelet, and biscuits and gravy (to make it healthy). Soon, there were four full plates of breakfast sitting in front of me and a three-year-old. Somehow, we ate way more of it than logic would suggest was possible. Just an absolutely irresponsible amount of syrup and carbs. Then we went to the movies — because I always go to a movie on my birthday. That year, since I was with a toddler, we went to see Big Hero 6.
Here’s where things got unique: We walked into the theater in the middle of the day…and there was nobody there. Not one person. Now I’ve been to thousands of movies in my life, but I can count on one hand how many times I’ve truly had a theater to myself. Usually, you think you’re alone, and then right as the lights go down, some random straggler wanders in and ruins it. But this time? No stragglers. The entire screening was just for me and my kid. It was a legitimate private showing.
8.
Back in ’95, when I was a freshman in college and Harmony Korine’s Kids came out, my friends and I headed to the Sunset Five to see it. We were in our seats, waiting for the movie to start, when my buddy elbowed me: “Psst, check it out.” I followed his gaze to this stunning young woman walking down the aisle. She had long dark hair, a curvy figure, and was about our age. Naturally, we all turned into awkward seventh graders, giggling and whispering about how gorgeous she was. Meanwhile, the one girl in our group just rolled her eyes like, “You morons.” Finally, she leaned in and whispered, “Look who she’s with.”
We turned around, and there he was: Jerry Seinfeld. He was about 40 at the time. The girl? Shoshanna Lonstein, his 19-year-old girlfriend. She probably would have had more fun hanging with my crew than with a man twice her age. Or maybe not. We were kind of obnoxious, looking back, as we definitely entertained ourselves by joking about the situation with bad, sing-songy Seinfeld impressions: “What’s the deal with grown men, taking kids…to see Kids?” And “What’s the deal with movie concessions not selling cereal? Would it be too loud and crunchy?” We thought we were being quiet enough so he wouldn’t hear, but now that I have a teenager myself, I wouldn’t bet on it.
9.
One Saturday afternoon in 1992, my parents and I went to see the horror movie Candyman, starring Tony Todd and Virginia Madsen. Normally, this would’ve just been another perfectly average family trip to the movies. But on this day, things went a little differently for little old me, then a 16-year-old. I remember I usually looked pretty put together, but that day I hadn’t shaved and had a baseball cap pulled down low. Dare I say I looked a little tough, maybe even slightly cool? Anyhoo, as the previews rolled, suddenly a teenage girl about my age taps me on the shoulder. She’s kneeling in the aisle next to my seat and whispers, “Psst… My friend over there thinks you’re cute. Do you want to come watch the movie with us?”
10.
In the late ’90s my friends and I went to see Boogie Nights in Westwood. We showed up way too early, because we were losers, and ended up sitting outside the theater waiting for it to open. Weirdly enough, there was just one other person also waiting: Crispin Glover. That’s right — George McFly from Back to the Future. So there we were — a bunch of dorky college kids sitting against the wall — and two feet away sat the co-star of my all-time favorite movie. We tried to carry on a normal conversation, but you try acting casual when Crispin Glover is silently hanging out right next to you.
The weirdest part of this story, though, came when the doors finally opened. Crispin wandered into the theater and chose a seat marked with a giant “Out of Order – Do Not Sit Here” sign. We stood back and watched him like we were primatologists in the wild examining a silverback. “The fuck is he doing?” one of my friends said, summing up our thoughts. Crispin ripped the sign off, tossed it aside, and plopped right down in the broken chair like nothing was weird about it.
11.
My family and I were watching Kurt Russell in 1996’s Escape from L.A. — the sequel to Escape from New York — when there was a moment where the bad guy is on a global satellite broadcast or something, talking about how he’s going to flip the switch and cut off all the world’s power. He bellowed something like, “Prepare to be plunged into darkness!” And then — at the very moment — the power in our theater went out! Totally confused, we sat there in the dark for a few seconds, thinking, “Is this some kind of immersive part of the movie?” For a minute, I really did wonder if this was a practical effect that the theater had synced to the film. But then, when nothing turned back on, it became clear it wasn’t part of the show — just a million-to-one coincidence.
12.
In 1998, I’d just graduated from college and moved to Los Feliz, California — the hipster heart of Los Angeles. One random weekday, when neither my buddy nor I had work, we decided to go see a matinee. The movie was Velvet Goldmine, a stylized imagining of the glam rock era starring Christian Bale and Ewan McGregor. We walked over to the Vista Theater — a beloved local movie house — and took our seats among only a handful of people in a house that seated hundreds.
Not long after, two strangers trickled in and sat directly in front of us: a long-haired blonde woman and an Indian dude. At first we didn’t think anything of it, but the two seemed really interested in the musical elements of the movie. That’s when it hit me: It was Gwen Stefani and Tony Kanal from No Doubt. As the movie played, they were super into it, talking animatedly about the musical moments and leaning into each other’s reactions. For the rest of the film, I couldn’t really pay attention to Velvet Goldmine because it was more interesting to watch Gwen and Tony (ok, mostly Gwen, lol) watch it. We didn’t bother them or anything. We just let them enjoy the movie. But watching a movie about rock stars with actual rock stars a row in front of you was pretty surreal!
13.
Finally, one day in the late ’90s, my film-school buddy and I had what felt like a perfectly reasonable question: What was the most movies you could see in theaters in a single day? This was the late ’90s, which meant we didn’t have apps or movie websites to help us figure out the schedule that would get us to the most movies. We just had a newspaper, and sat over it, analyzing the showtimes like detectives trying to crack a case. The earliest screening we could find anywhere was a 10:00 a.m. showing of The Thin Red Line — Terrence Malick’s three-hour World War II epic. Not exactly the ideal way to maximize volume if your goal was “most movies,” but it was the earliest start time available, so we committed. We stumbled out of that theater in the early afternoon, emotionally shell-shocked and already exhausted — and this was just movie number one.
If you were wondering, I had a hot dog and nachos for “breakfast” while watching The Thin Red Line, another hot dog for lunch at the New Beverly, and finally, two hot dogs for dinner during Meet Joe Black. Thankfully for me, I had no issue using the bathroom at movie theaters (having seen so many movies), so I was able to take care of my business that way too. By this point it was 10 p.m., we were exhausted and a little sick from hot dogs, but we could see the finish line. So we hustled to yet another movie theater to cap off the marathon with The Hi-Lo Country, the modern western starring Billy Crudup.
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