It’s been months and months since my last tirade about movie focus. Maybe Melissa, as a former movie theater employee, can shed some light on this. But lately when I patronize my local Mega-Google-Plex, the movie is more often than not slightly out of focus. It’s just enough to annoy the hell out of you for the entire film – am I alone in this? Even when it’s more than slightly out of focus, people will gladly sit there, sluping their 96-ounce soft drinks, and apparently not care. And when I go and ask the 10-year-old usher to have someone check the focus, they either do nothing, or peek their head in from the back of the theater and think to themselves, “He’s crazy – it’s fine.”
Once, when I complained that the “UltraScreen” (that’s the actual name) was badly out of focus, the gum-snapping, bow-tie-wearing girl’s advice was “Sit further back.”
They’re charging $7.50 for me to see a movie that will end up sounding and looking better on DVD at home. They want $3.50 for a breadstick masquerading as a pretzel. Many of the floors could use a periodic hosing down with Lysol. So I don’t think checking the focus on every showing of every film is too much to ask.
Thanks for your attention.
You know how they say you start to resemble that which you hate the most? When I read that I heard Andy Rooney talking in my head!
Here I am to enlighten you with my movie focus knowledge. But actually not. I was never promoted enough to be a projectionist, which is probably your problem anyway. You’ve probably got only one or two projectionists working the entire building (Maybe three, if your mega-hyper-super-googleplex is really that big) so between running around threading all the films and starting them and flirting with all the other employees, they get kind of busy.
I will now break it down for you: Out of every 10 employees,
5 have been hired within the past two or three months and have no idea what they’re doing, or else they would help you.
2 are working there becuase they couldn’t find any other job, and they feel they are ‘above’ working there, so they try and work as little as possible.
1 is just trying to get outside to have a smoke and will assure you in any way possible only so he can get rid of you immediatly.
It’s probably the last day for 1 (theatres have a high turnover) so he also feels no need to work.
And then you have the coveted last 1, the 1 you’ve been searching for, the 1 that knows how to fix your problem. Unfortuantely, there’s only a 50% chance that the 1 will try and do anything, and even then, odds are high that the 1 will be distracted by something on the way to the projection booth, which leaves you with an approxamately 10% chance of ever having the focus on your movie fixed.
I could also explain the origin of the $3.50 price tag on the breadpretzelstick, but we could probably save that for another day.
Xkot, I guess I was in “grumpy old man” mode for this post. But at least now, I have other modes.
Melissa, thanks for the insight. I think I usually get the guy who’s on his last day.
Write an email to the head of distribution for the studio that released the movie. From my first hand observations, they interact with the theaters, and they have time on their hands. And they have no problem being grumpy.