As I've been saying on the Blog for several weeks, September has been a busy month. This hasn't actually come as a surprise because September has a reputation for being a dumping ground. It's generally a month where studios can unload films that would have been ignored during the busy summer holidays, in preparation for higher quality releases in the months ahead. Obviously this means that I've seen a lot of films in the past month or so, and it also means that I've experienced a wide range of audiences. So in a more light-hearted feature, I thought I'd share some of my experiences of seeing films of late, particularly regarding the make-up of the audiences.

I think I could have predicted the audience for Little Man before I walked into the cinema. It consisted largely of children under the age of 12, who had managed to convince their parents to bring them to the film about the "funny midget". There were a few slightly older teenagers in there, and there was also an old couple who I'm convinced had wandered into the wrong screen, but pretty much 90% of the audience was comprised of children and their parents. Sometimes with films that parents have been dragged to, it's usually the case that the children still have a good time. But with Little Man, it was so devoid of jokes that nobody seemed to be laughing, irrespective of their age group. In fact, as I walked out I overheard one boy say to his father "I didn't like that; maybe we can come and see Pirates again next week?" This audience make-up is about par for this sort of film, but what really amazes me every time is that the poor parents don't seem to remember that the films are never any good.

About a week later I saw Little Miss Sunshine, and the audience for this consisted of me and one other person. I don't know what it is about this sort of film, but the showings are usually either packed or totally empty, and the latter is normally the one I prefer least. Laughter is contagious, so the experience of seeing a funny film with plenty of people can often make it seem better than it really was. On the other hand, most of us become very conscious of our own laughter if there is nobody else doing it, so seeing a funny film in a sparsely-filled cinema can cause us not to enjoy the film as much. However, Little Miss Sunshine was so good that just the two of us laughing made the place sound like it was packed to the rafters. I had quite the opposite experience when viewing Beerfest later that day; again it was just me and another person, but you could have heard a pin drop in there.

The Black Dahlia had one of the most unintentionally funny audiences I've experienced in a while. With film noirs you tend to get an interesting cross-section of people, usually consisting of slightly older viewers and students. But what I really didn't expect was what must have been an entire minibus of bearded studenty-types wearing berets, tweed jackets and stripy jumpers. I was convinced that at some point the cameras would appear and I would be featuring in some sort of TV stunt. Unfortunately, all that happened is that they sat there getting just as frustrated as me, but it was quite fun to speculate.

Going further back in time, an advanced screening of Aquamarine I attended was supposed to be an exclusive one for competition winners, but they let me in too for some reason. I lasted 10 minutes before I walked out and had to see the film later on in the week instead; the reason? Parents letting their children run riot. It doesn't matter what sort of screening they're at, or if the film is complete fluff like Aquamarine, there is no excuse for children running up and down stairs and throwing food at other patrons. On the rare occasions they let a small fry reviewer like me into critic screenings, those can also be rather bizarre. I sat next to a critic (I have no idea who she was, sorry) during a screening of Inside Man, who spent most of the film furiously scribbling notes and asking me what was going on. The critic sitting behind me in the screening I attended of A Scanner Darkly fell asleep every 15 minutes, and another in the same showing made a couple of phone calls in the middle of the film.

I guess there's no real point to the Feature this month, but then there hasn't been much to shout about in the film world either. None the less, I hope you found a few of these stories amusing, and I'm sure a few just go to show that sometimes the audience is more interesting than the film you're watching. So please make use of the Blog to share your unusual cinema-going experiences; I'm looking forward to reading them.

© David Mercier
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