Press screenings aside, I have seen eight movies at the Vancouver film festival since it began on Thursday — and at nearly every one of them, I have heard constant chattering from the filmgoers behind me, off to the side, across the aisle, and so on.
This sort of thing is an occasional problem at regular movies, too, and it can get pretty annoying; I will never forget the moron who felt the need to give voice to every one of King Kong‘s mimed expressions (“Beautiful!” “Where is she?”), or the moron who felt the need to blurt out the obvious punchline to every gag in Adam Sandler‘s Click before the film itself got around to delivering those punchlines (“It’s his sister!”). But it is at least possible to go through several mainstream films without encountering this.
Fortunately, I have not come across anything at this year’s festival to match those worst-case scenarios. But sometimes a constant hum or whine is more annoying than an occasional loud bang. And there seems to be something about the chumminess, the party atmosphere, the I-never-go-to-mainstream-movies-so-I-guess-I-
don’t-know-how-to-behave-myself-when-I-go-to-this, the je ne sais quoi of a film festival that just brings this out in people.
I’m beginning to wish the festival volunteers would say something about this when they introduce their movies and ask their audience members to turn off their pagers and cell phones, etc.
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