Few who use the phrase "drawn a line in the sand" in writing or conversation understand a crucial detail about what those words imply.
The most appropriate way I could think of to celebrate the 4th of July in column inches is to write about the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema operated by founders Tim and Karrie League. If you love high projection standards and hate cell phones and rude fellow patrons, the Alamo is your nirvana. I should specify here that I am exclusively talking about the original Alamo locations exclusively, for reasons I'll get in to further down.
Jeff and I have both recently lamented the sad state of cinema-going quality, and rightly so. I often forget that I live a charmed life in Austin, with better theater options than the rest of the country. I need not tolerate high schoolers who act like they own the place. Nor do I contend with chair-rocking, spittle-spraying megababies. I don't even have to deal with asshat hipsters thinking it's ok to whip out a phone and facebook/text/tweet their way through a movie. I go to a zero tolerance church called the Drafthouse. Three recent experiences hammered this home more than anything.
Ashley and I wanted to go see UP with a couple of friends. One of the friends really badly wanted to see the 3D version, which Ashley and I had seen already and were ambivalent about compared to the "flat" version. The Alamo Village was sold out for the rest of the night. The Village now operates top notch, crystal-clear 4K Digital projectors and is an "original" Alamo. It wasn't showing many other places, so our friend recommended the Regal Gateway, where we had never set foot.
When we walked up to the box office, I noticed it looked just like the cinema where Ashley and I first caught the "3Dimensionalized" version of The Nightmare Before Christmas in Florida during a different friend's wedding weekend. Due to incessant family meddling and cliche-as-hell drama, the whole wedding party needed an escape from the house (and the groom's sister), so I masterminded a multi-phase getaway to a movie. As I recalled, the cinema itself looked posh, but the projector was under-lit, the sound under-cranked, and the side sconces never dimmed.
This Regal Gateway 16 joint was the non-stadium-seating evil twin of that place I have gladly never seen again. The exact same issues were present. Of all things to have during a 3D show, unnecessary lighting from the sides is the worst idea imaginable. It gave me the most horrendous headache. I asked the theater manager afterward about the sconces, and she said "they don't go off, sorry" as soon as I said the word lights and then ran off. I paid IMAX-level ticket prices for it, and I feel dirty for doing so.
On a lark, one Monday night, Ashley and I decided to head over to the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek to watch Night at the Museum 2. She told me, "it couldn't be that bad, right?" Oh sweet Jesus yes, it could. It bears mentioning here and now that Lake Creek is not one of the Holy Trinity "original" Drafthouses. We walked in and took seats in the next to last row, dead center. To our left was a group of six kids who must have been high schoolers or just graduated. I can't place age ranges on teenagers anymore.
I knew the evening would be an "event" the moment we sat down. The girl next to Ashley reverse-snorted her disgust at having humans physically near her that were not on her Friends List. Behind us was a group of adults past their mid-30's who loudly guffawed and talked through the pre-show, which wasn't a sin so much as an annoyance and portentous of things to come. One of the kids drummed the Fox fanfare on the bar/table in front of them standard to all Drafthouses.
The first spoken line of the movie was so entertaining that Ashley's next-seat neighbor felt the need to loudly repeat it for everyone and look totally hilarious to like, all her friends. This quacking genius repeated chunks of every other line and insert other bits of conversation. Her male companion's phone rang. It rang again minutes later. Then he surfed the web later in the movie for around five minutes. I was almost completely disengaged from the utter waste of talent on the screen in front of me, and I was still furious. Ashley was as well, and took the preshow advice of raising an order card to alert a server of loud, disruptive behavior.
What followed left me absolutely irate and never would have happened at an Original Alamo. The server seemed like a nice enough guy. He didn't stoop down so as to not block the picture when he walked by, but he basically left you alone. He came by, read the miniature novel Ashley wrote, and apologized. He then walked over to the infants next to us and explained that he had just received a complaint about the noise they were making. Then he came back over and apologized to us again. What a great deterrent to customers complaining about noisy tables near them: a complete lack of anonymity as to who just lodged a complaint.
The first time I took my in-laws to the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, it was to see Ratatouille a couple years ago. The first words out of my father-in-law's mouth after the screening was, "I'm not used to the picture being that bright, or the sound that loud. That is how a movie is supposed to look and sound."
Others have come at this ongoing issue with the same "yeah who cares?" attitude that has helped it worsen to where we stand today. Being too meek to correct the mongrel behavior around you just encourages the animals around you to think what they're doing is fine and they can keep dominating the place. The Dog Whisperer is right: it's all about who asserts themself definitively. Complaining about it later with friends at an overpriced meal, or into the interweb abyss over Twitter is outright cowardice.