Don’t stop reading this until I’m finished!
There are times when, after a movie has finished, I sit in the theater while the credits are rolling, watch the mass exodus of people, and wonder to myself: Why are you cretins leaving?
The movie isn’t over yet, and it’s not as if you’re going to be fighting 20,000 Grateful Dead to get out of the parking lot. Do the blood, sweat and tears of all these hundreds of people mean nothing to you? Is your time so precious that you can’t spend a few more minutes recognizing the people who made the movie? Are you afraid that your head will explode if you stay in the theater until the very moment the film starts flipping over?
There’s something about sitting through an entire performance of a movie, play or concert that demonstrates a level of respect. It says, I appreciate the fact that you have put forth so much effort and heart and soul to keep me entertained. I wish to express my thanks to you by recognizing you for your work. It transcends the rush of daily life for a few moments. It demonstrates that you have come to see a movie not for a few minutes of things blowing up or bad guys getting shot, but for the straight-forward experience of seeing a movie.
To me, leaving before the credits have ended is a form of disapproval I reserve for only the most odious of movies – “Novocaine,” “L.A. Confidential” and “Panic Room” come immediately to mind.
Sadly, this disregard for other people’s creative work is nothing new. In the first chapter of “The Age Of Innocence,” a novel set among early 20th century elite, we are presented with characters who attend an opera simply so that they can scan the audience and comment on who other have come with, or what other people are wearing. Even in the time of Shakespeare, a playwright now so highly regarded to the point of being ludicrous, plays were not so much an excuse for an evening out as they were an excuse for people to get together, drink beer, talk loudly and eat giant legs of turkey -kind of the way people act today at rodeos.
Historically, nobody has ever really given the performing arts the respect they deserve. But that’s no excuse for some of the behaviors exhibited by people today. And I’m not just talking about those random groups of people that go to movies and comment about everything happening on screen. I’m talking about those behaviors that significant percentages of the population exhibit.
For example, what about those people that up and leave right at the end of a play, when the cast is assembling and the audience is supposed to be applauding? That kind of behavior makes me want to stretch my arm out across the aisle and clothesline those people. It’s almost as rude as walking into the performance 15 minutes late. What makes it worse is that fact that leaving a few seconds before everybody else does won’t get you out of the parking lot any faster, and because the actors can see you, it probably makes them feel bad.
Concert-going is a touchy subject with me, as the reason I go to see a band is for the music, not for the beer drinking. I made my first trip to the Gypsy Tea Room last Thursday to see Richard Thompson, and was amazed at the setup – a huge bar in the middle, only enough chairs to seat about 100 people, standing room for about 200 more. Doors open at 8 p.m., but you have to wait about an hour and a half for anything to happen, at which point everybody had so many drinks that they couldn’t even remember who was supposed to be performing that night. People quite flagrantly smoked, despite management warnings about not doing so. The concert itself didn’t start until 10 p.m. – a fact which was, inconveniently, left off my ticket.
And the sad thing is, most people probably wouldn’t find a thing wrong with the way the Gypsy Tea Room works.
The problem gets worse in larger concerts. People refuse to sit down and watch the damn show, insisting instead on walking back and forth in front of you and usually breaking your concentration during your favorite song. About half of the audience shows up 45 minutes late, usually sitting next to you and insisting you tell them what songs the performer has already done. People feel free to shout out comments or song titles, as if the person on stage is supposed to listen to their every whim and perform on command.
If you’re lucky, you don’t have to sit next to somebody who has come to the concert with the sole purpose of getting completely wasted. Otherwise you get to enjoy beer spilling, pot smoking and the unwelcome conversation of somebody who didn’t come to the concert to listen to the music – and considering how much it costs to go to a concert nowadays, you have to wonder why they bothered coming in the first place. What huge rock do these jerks crawl out from under? Are they hired by the companies that own the concession stands, trying to force you to leave your seat and have a lengthy pretzel-eating break?
And of course, just like with movies and plays, people always leave before the concert is over. Half the audience leaves even before the performing artist has started doing encores. The excuse is usually that they want to get out of the parking lot before the crowd hits, but I have to wonder why. After all, most concerts I’ve been to end around midnight. Where are these people going? Do they have an important meeting with the boss at 1 a.m.? Do they have to get home before their parking-space hogging vehicles turn into pumpkins?
Where do people learn this kind of behavior, anyway? Hell’s Finishing School?
I hope that having read this column of complaining and bickering that you will take some of my advice to heart. I hope that next time you attend a movie you will sit still, shut up and stay for the whole thing. I hope that next time you attend a concert you might even consider listening to the performance without being under the influence of alcohol. See if the musicians you like sound just as good when you’re sober.
But I swear, if you try to leave a play which I’m attending early – look out for flying objects.
