On Saturday night, we went to go watch Raiders of the Lost Ark at Dolores Park. We love the idea of seeing movies in the park and couldn't think of a movie more perfect for such a showing. But as soon as we got there, we realized that in seeing the movie outside at the park, we were going to have to deal with our least favorite aspect of communal events, that being other people. We hate other people.
Behind us was Film Geek guy who spent the entire night dazzling his fawning girlfriend with his amazing ability to discover plot holes. In front of us was some woman who just couldn't get warm no matter how hard she tried. She'd shift around in her chair, lie down and then sit back up, and add layer after layer of clothes. The moment we'd adjust to her adjustment, she'd adjust herself once again. Then there were the gaggle of girls a little bit farther ahead of us. As far as we could tell, they didn't watch any part of the movie and spent the entire two hours having rather animated conversations and gossiping. Besides angering our inner cineaste ("this is the scene where all the faces melt, how could you not watch!?") we just couldn't get over the fact that it didn't occur to them that if all they wanted to do was talk and drink wine, doing so in a huge park full of maybe a thousand people watching a movie might not be the best place for it. It didn't help that one of the girls, the one directly in our line of view, would move back and forth between leaning in to share some particularly juicy insight or lean back to laugh in hysterics at her friend's bon mots every other minute. We had finally adjusted to the lady right in front of us for the umpteenth time only to have the girl move in and out of our line of sight.
And yes, we're cranky, bitter old men. If we were smart, we'd organize some sort of neighborhood group that would complain about all the increased traffic and noise into our neighborhood and how showing movies in Dolores Park just isn't Mission enough and might bring in people who don't live in the Mission. Maybe even people from Walnut Creek!
But we won't. Because it was still pretty darn cool and we still had a great time. In fact, we can't wait for October's showing of Young Frankenstein.
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Why don't you just tell them to shut the f**k up? Loudly and meanly. You'd be amazed how effective this is.
Well, damn, ya'll should have gone to the Paul Reubens' day festivities instead.
People in San Francisco complain and whine too much.
I have to agree with bluecanary on getting the girls to shut up. It's most effective coming from a man but I've used it with and without the swear words, depending on the situation. Using an angry/outraged tone is key.
I had the same experience at the Airplane screening a few months ago -- infuriating! The secret is to get there wicked early so you can sit close to the screen, amongst other polite folks who are there to watch rather than chat.
And I have a feeling that yelling "shut up" would have invited additional grief.
Shoot, I bungled the bit about the girls in front of me. I actually couldn't hear them as they weren't that close to me and they did make an effort to be not so loud. But what they did do is keep moving in and out of my line of vision and you know how something that shouldn't be that big of a deal increasingly becomes that big of a deal because you get fixated on it and fixated on it until it's all you could think about? That's how it was.
And just to be clear, I still had a great time and thank the people who put it together.
I agree -- tell 'em to shut up, sit down. Central to The American Way is that everything is permissible except that which is not, as opposed to nothing being permissible except that which is.
In other words, people will do anything they feel like, until someone tells them it's wrong. See: smoking, employing children, driving Hummmers, etc.
So tell 'em to "shut the f*** up" so they know their fellow human beings aren't havin' any of it.
it's so west coast to not confront people on this type of rude behavior. i'm from the northeast, and we tell people to shut up when they talk at an event like this. i was at the movie as well and was too far back and was stuck next to talky mctalkerson and his blanket-mates (who seemed to be getting a bit tired of his mouth as well) and sadly after a year+ here my natural inclination to get the talkersons to shaddap has vanished. but then i've seen raiders so many times that i didn't need the sound as much.
still, i think californians need to learn to be a bit more direct. it's one thing to be laid back, it's another to enable a jerk to continue in his jerkitude.