Movie Screening Phone Bans Reach Ridiculous Levels
from the oh-come-on... dept
For years, we've found it absolutely ridiculous that the movie studios have required that anyone attending early preview screenings remove and deposit their mobile phones in some (often unguarded) box. The entire policy has never made much sense. First of all, a mobile phone is unlikely to have a decent enough camera or enough memory to actually video tape a movie. Second... who cares? This is all part of studios stupidly overreacting to the idea that their movies might leak online before the official release date. Yet, as we've seen there's almost no evidence to support the idea that the availability of the movie online has any negative impact on box office proceeds. So, for the uncomprehendingly small chance that someone at a screening is able to record the movie with his or her phone and get it online, and that version of the film somehow destroys box office proceeds... Hollywood has decided it makes sense to treat everyone (including movie critics) who attend preview screenings as if they're criminals.It's even being taken to more ridiculous levels now. Valleywag points out that Time Warner entertainment critic was stopped from watching a Warner Bros. (yes, owned by Time Warner...) screening, because he refused to give up his iPhone. Yes, the same iPhone that does not have a video recording function. Perhaps they were afraid he'd be playing games through the screening? Or maybe Twittering away a live commentary?
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Filed Under: movies, reviews
Companies: time warner, warner bros.
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Re:
Piracy or no, cam or no, some movies just can't stand on their own.
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http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2009&wknd=19&p=.htm
For comparison, X-Men: The Last Stand dropped 66.9% in its second weekend, X2 dropped 53.2% and the first movie 56.9%. It's a shame that these blockbusters are so geared toward the first weekend's grosses regardless of quality, but the second movie tends to be thought of as the best of the series and has the smallest second week drop. Make of that what you will.
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Interesting.
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Are you really surprised?
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Oops...
Now, back to my original post...
Come on, Masnick. Are you really surprised these people have such little knowledge or understanding of modern technology?
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Yeah, that's a really weak line. This is a tough article for me because I hate the idea of commandeering cell phones (particularly any w/PDA functionality, since that has personal info on it), on the other hand, if I were Batman, my Joker would be people that allow their phones to ring in the theatre.
I gotta tell you, about two years back when my previous contract expired, I decided to try to live for 3 months w/o a cell phone. The first month was tough. Month 2-3 were wonderful.
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A fairly mediocre action movie, on par with X-men 2 or 3.
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>To be fair, it doesn't matter whether or not the phone
>has recording capabilities or how well it can record, if
>the policy is no mobile phones allowed, then that's the
>policy. I'm happy they stuck to it and didn't back down
>for the sake of one person who can't bare to part for an
>hour or two with his phone.
I don't surrender my phone or my pager... EVER. I work for a hospital. If I get a phone or a page and I don't answer, it could cost someone their life.
It's a lousy policy that should be abolished. Their movie, no matter how good, is not worth someone's life.
And before you get all high and mighty and say "well, you shouldn't see the movie then", ask yourself whose is really more important... your doctor... or your favorite movie star? If you answer the later, I'll ask you again when you or someone you love hurt or sick and need medical attention.
If you think nurses, doctors and EMT's don't deserve to watch movies because they are oncall and have to keep their pagers and phones with them, then make sure you have your organ donor sticker on your license because at least you'll make some small contribution to soceity AFTER you die... because you certainly aren't making one now.
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Ok, yes it's a stupid policy, but they aren't equating a person's life w/a movie. You don't HAVE to go to the theatre when you're on call (in fact, depending on your role at the hospital, that would be kind of silly). The only person that could put a person's life at risk would be YOU.
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>You don't HAVE to go to the theatre when you're on call
>(in fact, depending on your role at the hospital, that
>would be kind of silly). The only person that could put a
>person's life at risk would be YOU.
Spoken like a true moron with entitlement issues. So, by your reasoning, a surgeon should NEVER be able to go to a movie, because he's decided to devote himself to helping others? He should never be able to take his children or his wife to see a movie? Even though he can be called AT ANY TIME to go in and do emergency surgery?
As with the other gentlemen, please put your organ donor sticker on your license so you can make SOME contribution to better the world.
And think about your idiotic response when you're in the ER after a car accident and they need an extra surgeon but no one's answering because they're not on call so they surrendered their pager and phone to the movie nazi's.
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Except you're being an idiot as well.
1) You aren't on call 365 you have rotations
2) If you have a pager you don't need your cell phone inside the theater. If you get a page then you can leave the theater quietly without disturbing the other people and go make your call.
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PS ..... and yes, my donor card IS signed. Might need it if you're the surgeon :)
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Actually I think I was speaking AGAINST entitlement, but I'm the moron? Anyway, on to the rant you posted stating that surgeons etc. ARE entitled to do things:
"So, by your reasoning, a surgeon should NEVER be able to go to a movie, because he's decided to devote himself to helping others? He should never be able to take his children or his wife to see a movie? Even though he can be called AT ANY TIME to go in and do emergency surgery?"
Okay, so we jump right in w/the inflammatory mischaracterization of what I said, and a false statement by you. Your statement implies that from the time a surgeon becomes employed to the time that they quit/retire/etc., they are on call. They aren't. Secondly, there are professions that preclude people from doing certain things, most of which are rewarded with high salaries. For instance, people with access to classified information can't always reveal the details of their work to their spouse. That's a reality of the profession YOU chose to pursue. Deal with it.
"As with the other gentlemen, please put your organ donor sticker on your license so you can make SOME contribution to better the world"
Hey, at least you said please.
"And think about your idiotic response when you're in the ER after a car accident and they need an extra surgeon but no one's answering because they're not on call so they surrendered their pager and phone to the movie nazi's"
Er...Ok. In the unlikely event that such a situation should arise (unlikely because hopefully all surgeons aren't as asanine as you), sounds like I or my family will have an outstanding lawsuit on our hands.
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Re: Oncall
In addition, if I had to guess, I would say that you have probably lived in some big city all your life, and work in a much less critical line of work. I would not go so far as to say you work in a unimportant job (such as one which has you asking "Would you like fries with that?", or some Wall Street broker or corpse-rat exec who has no clue of reality and legality, like Madoff), but I cannot rule it out either. But I do feel that you have probably not experienced small town living, where like nowhere else, it drives home the fact that in some cases, the second person who does a given job may be a 30-60 minute drive away, if you are lucky. And I think it is also safe to assume that you have not worked or volunteered as a doctor, nurse, EMT, fire fighter, or law enforcement officer in an area where you are always on call, and when the pager goes off or the phone rings, you often start out at a fast trot even before you know the details of what you are being called upon to do. Or, to know what it is like to be sitting down to dinner on a night where you have already had 2" of ice, heard the long string of tones, and head out the door not knowing if you will be back before your family gets up the next morning. Or, to be awakened to those same tones at 3am, not knowing that six hours later, you will be giving condolences to the wife of a fellow responder who died that night. Or, to be sitting in a theatre watching a moving you have waited a year to see, and had your pager go off (in vibrate mode), and be headed out to drive your vehicle to where you need to go, while your wife is left to go home with friends after the movie is over. I don't know what position IdiotBasher is in, but he is in a position I respect. I respect him because I take his word on the fact that he works in a position of sacrifice (which could include things like his health, marriage, and other things most folks take for granted), not as a cosmetic surgeon or some bean counting accountant, but in a position which really makes a difference. I respect him, because those responses above were my life in a small town I grew up in, where we lost a fellow responder, and later in small city (Fort Wayne, IN), where I was a volunteer fire fighter and hazmat specialist. (Even there, in a area of 500K people and 3 major hospitals, a simple traffic accident or house fire could put other bases into standby, if not actually shuffling equipment to other stations.) I was even part of a team which deployed more than 80 doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, along with other specialists such as myself to Miami and New Orleans after Andrew. And most of us turn our phones/pagers onto vibrate without even thinking about it when we enter someplace like a theatre, unlike those who think they are important but really are not, who are the target of our ire. It is a habit I even followed when the pager meant not that some person stood to loose their life, but instead in a less important job, knew that perhaps, given the "911" message, that perhaps tens of thousands of people were unable to access the INTERNET to do what they felt was important in their lives at that moment in time. And heaven help us if that also meant that credit card POS machines were unable to work, or the DOD had one of their networks down.
So with that said, why don't you guys either get a real clue, just make sure you have that organ donor sticker/endorsement on your license, so that you can make a contribution when you leave your life of being the sheep, cow or lemming you and others like you apparently are.
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Re: Re: Oncall
I mean, OK, I know I don't know the details of the scheduling on EVERY job out there, so you're right, maybe there are some jobs that require 24x7x365 on call. However, the two points I would raise is first that those jobs simply HAVE to be incredibly rare, so far outside the norm that their almost not worth considering. And second, for those that do have to be on call literally ALL the time: your job sucks, you need to take the issue up w/your employer, because that requirement is ridiculous.
"In addition, if I had to guess, I would say that you have probably lived in some big city all your life, and work in a much less critical line of work. I would not go so far as to say you work in a unimportant job (such as one which has you asking "Would you like fries with that?", or some Wall Street broker or corpse-rat exec who has no clue of reality and legality, like Madoff), but I cannot rule it out either"
Pretty good, actually. All my life Chicagoan and I'm an IT consultant.
"And I think it is also safe to assume that you have not worked or volunteered as a doctor, nurse, EMT, fire fighter, or law enforcement officer in an area where you are always on call, and when the pager goes off or the phone rings, you often start out at a fast trot even before you know the details of what you are being called upon to do"
Er, US Navy Scout/Recon, Marksman MOS, one oversea tour.....so yeah, I have. And when I was in the service, there were certain privelages that I wasn't allowed to partake in, which I knew when I signed up. One of those was being available for callup, which meant that I couldn't take extended leave offbase for most of my commission. How is that any different than losing certain privelages by being an ER surgeon?
And didn't I preface my initial comment saying that the rule was a bad one? I never said I don't respect ER docs, but if the theatres say no phones, then guess what, you don't get to go in w/a phone. However, please find me a theatre that WOULDN'T allow a pager on vibrate. If you do, I will happily cosign a letter berrating them and demanding they rescind the policy for the sake of medical specialists that are on call.
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That comment was a little extreme and elitist. The job isn't as rare as you think it is. My mom is a nurse and she has one. I work in tech support and just shy of it, if our network goes down they call me because I'm the closest and freak out if I don't answer (this douse not stop me from turning off my phone but it would stop me from giving it up).
On the other hand, this guy is not one of those people that has that job. He still should have said no, gotten kicked out, downloaded the movie, and given it a bad review. ☺
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VRP
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In reply to Idiot Basher
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I used to be an emergency responder myself and all I can say is that if you're too damn lazy to call dispatch and give them the number of the theater of where you're going to be for the next couple of hours so that the theater can page you then you shouldn't be an emergency responder. Besides that, I've never seen a theater that bans pagers.
I've known your type. You're just trying to abuse your position to get special treatment and I find that repulsive. What are you going to trot out next, "think of the children"?
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Yeah, you sound like a WAHHHHHHHHmbulance driver.
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Idiot Basher
Sure hope he isn't within 100 mi of any hosp I'm in.
This doctor is MOST important, to eliminate. He's dangerous.
VRP
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Here's an idea for you: Don't try taking your phone to places it isn't allowed. Leave it someplace secure instead.
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THIS IS AMERICA! YOU MORON!
NOT THE UNITED STATES OF RUSSIA....
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If this is the case, then this article is a waste, but it is a nice soapbox.
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Um...cand we take away the RINGERS
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Re: Um...cand we take away the RINGERS
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??
Right or wrong, that is the policy. They are letting you in to see a screening of a movie that has not yet been released. They do not have to do this. You do not have to attend. If you know that this is the policy, then leave the phone in the car. Perhaps even turn it off and leave it concealed on your person (unless they use metal detectors or something). It's the same thing you go through if you need to enter the county courthouse. Nothing that might be construed as a weapon can be taken in, so you screen your items and leave some in the car.
If it's just unacceptable for you to be separated from this device, then just don't go. Show them you mean business by not seeing the screening you were invited to see! Laugh in their faces and let them know that you do not want this privilege and if you can't have it your way, you'll take your toys and go home!
(Boo freaking hoo!)
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That's the point. What has this world become when no one cares what is right or wrong, justified or unjustified -- as long as a corporation tells you to do something, even if it's stupid, "oh boy it's the rules better follow 'em!"
That's ridiculous.
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camcording law?
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Re: camcording law?
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Solution for any movie critics:
1. Keep your old phone instead of donating it, etc.
2. Hand it over at the door.
3. Keep your iPhone, which, if you're like me, has a lot of your life on it, but hasn't managed to teach you not to use so many commas in a sentence, on you during the movie.
4. ?????*
5. Profit!
*= Due to the somewhat poor, fixed focus camera on the iPhone, even using a jailbroken video recording app wouldn't work, as it is almost useless in low light situations. With that being said, this step can never be "Record the movie on your iPhone."
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Balancing act
And the people complaining about phones going off in the theater, grow a set of balls and handle it yourself. Stop giving the theaters an excuse to buy nvg's and lock us down looking for violators of their dumbass policies.
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If it doesn't suck, a leak shouldn't matter...
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Re: If it doesn't suck, a leak shouldn't matter...
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WTF
We really are a bizarre species aren't we? It really doesn't matter what the subject matter is, we always find a way of reducing it to a verbal cat fight.
On Topic - Surely the people at these pre-screenings are mostly journalists/critics and not doctors?
Given this fact, and that most phones now have email options, wouldn't preventing the critics from trying to get one up on eachother by tapping their reviews in while the movies playing be a good idea?
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This all seems rediculous...
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....oops again
And then the leaked version is better than the theater version, and suddenly this doesn't seem so ridiculous anymore.
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Give me a break !
First you can and can not do this or that with music,
then they ruin TV with Ads on the screen while you are watching a show,and channel ID logo boxes.
And you cant record a dvd you own,
Then you cant bring a dam cellphone in a move theatre?
Whats next a god dam personalized lawyer to follow people around so you can stay legal all the time???????
Get me a car exhaust already,Im done-
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Just a distraction
The real issue is how so many movies get onto file sharing sites and why so many are digitally-perfect (sometimes HD quality). Why isn't the movie industry going after its own sources, such as screeners, reviewers, the movie crew, etc. You can't tell me that the third assistant to the assistant director of "Transformers 2" doesn't have a DVD of the movie. And you know he's going to share with friends, one of whom will "accidentally" leak it online.
So yeah, let's concentrate on the cell-phone issue so no one will look at the real security risks.
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