It’s probably a given that all of us have MST3K’ed a movie at some point in our lives, maybe frequently, maybe usually, but has there ever been a time when you wanted to be quiet but due to the movie and/or occasion just couldn’t contain yourself?
My example was showing “2012” to a group of friends in our big (9′) home theater. None of us had seen the movie before and, because these were not “MST3K” friends I would not in a million years think of riffing on the film. But it was so incredibly bad and over the top I couldn’t contain myself, and started a running commentary (at first very low and then, as folks started to laugh, probably much too loud) that probably spoiled (if that were possible) the movie for the rest of the folks (at one point one of my guests asked me if I found disasters funny and I said “Only disastrous films”).
My only saving grace was when the little dog made it onto the boat my wife said loudly “well, at least we now have something to eat” which cracked me up (okay, so maybe you had to be there).
I was in a packed theater for the opening night of “The Return of King,” and when the Army of the Dead zoomed off the battlefield and into Minas Tirith and began zipping around inside the city, I leaned over to my daughter and said, not as quietly as I should have: “Scrubbing bubbles! Scrubbing bubbles!” About eight people shushed me. I slunk down in my chair.
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This isn’t so much when I shouldn’t have been riffing, but when someone else shouldn’t have. A few years back I went to see the movie “May” with a friend and a co-worker. There was this old guy with a big mustache talking a lot right off the bat. He went into “Predict the next line” mode, and was horrible at it. Not accurate, not funny.
My co-worker went up behind him, leaned in and said “Shut the F**k up!” very loudly. The man turned around and said “Excuse me…” to which my co-worker responded. “No, I would love to sit here and debate how much talking is acceptable in a movie, but it’s none.”
I don’t know that that is always accurate, but it certainly is if you’re not funny. The guy left the theater.
#25, Brian, is correct. Absolutley, you can rent/buy a
dvd and riff away with friends but not in a theater.
Well, maybe one exception. Someone above said at the end
of Avatar they said “And his eyes open.” If I had been in
the theater I would have added “Come on, dead people know what’s
going to happen!” (Hey, the movie was virtually over). ;-)
I don’t go to movie theaters much anymore – I think 99.9% of what comes out of Hollywood these days is total dogs**t – but I find myself riffing very often when my wife and I are visiting her mom’s home and are watching a movie. Most of the time I get mild laughter from her…for example, at the start of one film, as the credits rolled and it listed a seemingly endless amount of actors, I blurted out,” You know, I think I’M in this movie!” and she had a good laugh. (I think that line may have been in a MST episode, come to think of it.)
However, I overstepped my bounds with one comment: there was a commercial for Elvis Presley’s 1968 comeback special, and the voice-over referred to Elvis as The King of Rock ‘N’ Roll at one point. I paraphrased a line from The Commitments: “I don’t envision any king getting old and fat and singing ‘My Way’ at Ceasar’s Palace!” That line was greeted with a punch on the shoulder from my mother-in-law, probably the biggest Elvis fan I’ve known in my life. :oops:
I do callbacks all the time. Anyone named Mitchell shows up in a movie or a sporting event, I say, “Mitchell!” Same for “Klein!” I can’t help it. It’s reflexive. The same is true for any mentionings of “Torture!” I honestly don’t know I’m doing it, unless a family member or friend says something, which is often, but I can’t hear them. I’m fashioning a universe all my own, and it’s more interesting than the humdrum stink-bomb of a world they are inhabiting.
Randy
I have to agree with not talking in a theater, home’s okay with an accepting audience. I allow myself once in a blue moon to only do it during nonsensical theater previews such as the 101 dalmations I mentioned above. I had several situations with movie talkers in theaters who were not riffing, and it can be obnoxious. In particular, while cringing through that new indiana jones movie, I had two. One was some kid behind me humming John Williams’s theme out of key constantly. The other was some total stranger seated four seats away in my aisle who walked over to me and ask me to fill him in on the movie once he returned from the restroom??? I gave him a shrug and an odd look. I didn’t see him return to his seat after that. What’s funny is that the script’s exposition was so convoluted that I couldn’t have described it if I tried.
My girlfriend says that during a screening of “Interview With the Vampire”, she got so frustrated with the scene between Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas that she blurted out, “Oh, just kiss him already!”
I am unsure as to if others heard me but I was watching Avatar with my GF. She’s game with riffs but I remember hearing the Na’vi doing that rhythmic chanting during the file download into the back-up HDs er.. bodies and that cuing me to sing Ewok song from “Return of the Jedi.” Not to mention the constant “USB” jokes. I think some behind us laughed but I know that I was probably more irritating to the opening night show. Not as bad as the kids that were crying but bad that I got a few Buddy Holly looks from people in 3d glasses.
I, personally, never have done any inappropriate riffing, but my buddies in college (who emphatically weren’t MSTies and had that “I can do better” attitude towards the show) got thrown out of the movie theater when they wouldn’t stop mocking “Queen of the Vampires”. Once they heard the Valley-accented “Vampire Jessie”, they went wild. But it wasn’t like they were actually, y’know, witty or anything. Like I said, they were of the “Oh, I can do better than them” school towards MST3k, and people who have that attitude hardly ever can.
But I don’t go to movie theaters anymore much. Most of the stuff I’d want to see is good enough not to give me a riffing urge, and the stuff that is rife (“Avatar”, “2012”, any big stupid overhyped FX-fest pretty much) isn’t worth the ticket price to my broke self.
Never in public, its just rude…Very rude. Don’t care how bad the Michael Bay mega-flick is.
One night circa 2001 in Indy my cute red-head neighbor Stacey had her college roommate visiting and asked if I would join them to watch Chocolat.
I know…but, I figured a Johnny Depp romance flick involving chocolate, me & two women, I HAD to.
Don’t recall a single riff I laid down, but with Depp’s diverse career & characters I am sure 21 Jumpstreet & Edward Scissorhands were part of the repertoire.
Stacey & I were crying, the old college roommate on the other hand…
Let’s just say I didn’t get to write my letter to Forum. :-(
A long time ago, pre-MST3K, I was a young lad who grew up in Houston, where a pile of dirty clothes constitutes a mountain. The movie Urban Cowboy was set in the Houston-Pasadena area, and much of it was filmed there. However, some of it was not. When watching it at the theater in Houston, there is a scene where John Travolta and Debra Winger get their first mobile home. As the camera pans back, you can see mountains in the background (probably in California). I said, louder than I meant too, “Hey! There’s mountains!”. Nearly the entire theater broke out in laughter, and there were some isolated riffs in the theater throughout the rest of the movie.
“Louder than I meant to” – dang typos!
The friends who introduced me to MST and I riffed through a good chunk of “Baraka” before the rest of the viewing party finally made us stop. I might recall more of the riffs if I saw the movie again, but I do remember coming to the random shot of the Amazonian native girl peering through the foliage and saying, “Whoopi Goldberg says: Only YOU can prevent rain forest fires!”
Basically, I can’t help myself. I riff almost everything, bad movie or not. But I don’t really care if it annoys anyone, so it works out.
I agree with those who say, kindly, keep your jokes to yourself in public showings.
But I recently saw the new “Alice in Wonderland,” and when the Hatter does his — ahem — “dance” at the end of the movie, my brain just went riff-dead.
I stared in stunned silence. Nothing would come out. There was nothing there to come out.
The riff, if it could have emanated from my mouth, would have been something along the lines of “WTF.”
That’s all there was.
Not much of a story, I know. Oh well.
I am blessed and cursed with a family wed and raised on MST3K.
My extended family does not get it.
On a showing of “Catalina Caper,” which I showed just to introduce brothers, sisters, parents, my mother got upset because the talking distracted from the movie.
(I am reasonably sure she IS my mother, though that night my wife and I expressed doubts) :oops:
When it is Family Movie night (at home of course – we are not dolts) few films ever make it unscathed (particularly movies of the last few years-PU). :???:
2012 was a non-stop laugh fest. As a good father I have, of course, educated my children in the art of the disaster film. They were the only ones in their High School dram class who know who Irwin Allen was (sorry state of education). They know the difference between a disaster movie and a BAD disaster movie. :cool:
When we go to the theater, we are polite. We riff in whispered tones, into each other’s ears. (And that’s all the foreshadowing we can afford – the call came from inside the house – Hey, we’ve wandered into another movie – Oh hey, the script finally arrived) :lol:
Mike, Joel, Frank, Dr. F and the bots have ruined film watching for my generation and the next.
Thank the SOL! ;-)
I’ve been fortunate that, when I’ve riffed in public showings, it’s been more or less accepted, even endorsed. Two examples:
For bad movie riffing, I went to a matinee showing of “Speed”, where there were only a few other attendees. Early in the movie, Keanu Reeves surprises murderous mad bomber Dennis Hopper by shooting Hopper’s hostage, Jeff Daniels. At that point, Hopper is shocked and unprotected, and Reeves shouts out, “Freeze!” I couldn’t help but say an audible, “Shoot him.”
Then, when Hopper starts to react and Reeves again goes, “Freeze!”, I and at least one other person in the audience actually shouted, “SHOOT HIM!!” We managed to keep quiet afterwards.
For good movie riffing, I went to see “The Incredibles” and, before the movie, they ran the first trailer for “Revenge of the Sith”, including our first view of the “Vaderstein” sequence. When it was done, I let out an impressed, “Whoa!” A lady in front of me turned and smiled; she understood.
I guess it depends on your fellow audience members. Still, I do remember at ConventioCon I when Frank warned that the Brains were professionals and knew when to riff and when not to riff.
Fantastic thread. We should just talk about this every weekend! We’ll just confess our unwanted riffs of the last week.
I can riff on just about anything, and have been told to shut my mouth, pie hole, cake hole, etc. in many colorful and angry ways. The worst (or best) time was when I was visiting friends and shut down a viewing of The Grudge 2 within mere moments of starting the film. Some woman in the film kills her husband by hitting him with a frying pan, to which I sang “the best part of waking up…” in my best Bob Seger impersonation. They did not wish to continue watching the movie with me. :cry:
I remember back in middle school I was in an after school program and we would get to watch movies on Fridays. Me and a friend of mine would always riff on the movie to the point where the teachers would tell us to shut up or get out. I remember when we were watching the film “Jumanji”, there is a scene where our hero gets bitten on the neck by a bat, and my friend said “Hey, where’s the creme filling?” Well…it was funny for the time. “Where’s the creme filling?” was a riff we used extensively, if I remember right.
St. Patrick’s Day 2009, I was talked into going to see a special screening of the 1st Leprechaun movie with my friends. Needless to say we were cracking jokes the whole way through, along with a significant portion of the audience. One lone guy said he was actually trying to watch the movie (I know, I was shocked too). If that were the case he could have bought the movie in a dollar bin and watched it in the comfort of his living room. He gave up anyway, so other than that, no real downside.
I was also watching “Return of the King” on opening night. About halfway through the hobbits staring goodbye at the end, I said to a friend, “And the Oscar for best homoerotic midget tension goes to…”
Instead of laughing out loud, we were both trying to stifle it to keep from being any ruder than we already were, but both of us trying to hold it in just made it spiral out of control.
I swear that’s why I was literally crying when I walked out of “Return of the King.” From trying to hold in the laughter and failing. I’m sticking with that explanation.
I don’t like to riff in theaters, but when Joe Don Baker’s bloated face first appeared in “Joe Dirt”, I spontaneously shouted out “MITCHELL!” I honestly, couldn’t help it. I got a few confused looks from the surrounding patrons, but my friend laughed. After that I was guilty of one pre-meditated riff. When Joe Don shot Charlie, the dog; “Ladies & Gentlemen, our hero” I proclaimed. I few around us chuckled to that, but I don’t think they understood the reference.
I can’t really remember any specifics because it’s been so long since then, but I do recall making several other theater goers very angry by blurting out a few riffs during the movie Seven. I just couldn’t help myself. Honestly, though, that movie had it coming.
Opening night of Spiderman 3. No one in the theater could believe what we were seeing – I mean there was a dance break . . . in Spiderman! Anyway, there were many times during the film where I successfully contained my lampooning, but there was one moment where I could not resist riffing aloud so that people could hear. There was a critical moment in the film where Peter Parker discovers some evidence that solidifies The Sandman’s , that is, Flint Marco’s involvement in some crime committed. There’s a close-up on Parker holding the evidence and saying in a poignant tone, “Marco!” I, of course, in the same tone and loud enough for friends said, “Polo!” I got laughs from all the disappointed Spiderman fans within a 5-seat radius.
“Riffing When You Shouldn’t” huh? I almost can’t believe this hasn’t been discussed before.
But I’ve got a few memories. When I went to USC (Univ. Of Southern Cal.) I had taken a Cinema/TV class in Film History (as taught by Prof. Drew Casper I believe?) Even though not many shushed me I did quietly riff on a few of the films the class saw. Most notable were “The Brothers Karamazov” (w/William Shatner) and “In The Line Of Fire” (w/Clint Eastwood.) Unfortunately the only riff from those 2 that I can remember now is this one:
Clint chases after John Malkovich on some rooftops. He jumps a rooftop, misses and ends up hanging off a ledge. John notices this, turns around and then sticks a gun in Clint’s mouth as he’s hanging off the ledge. John wore sunglasses and a hat and to me looked like a famous Alternative Rock singer:
Me: “Michael Stipe NO!!!”
That didn’t get as many chuckles as when I riffed on Shatner in Bros. Karamazov. Tons of Star Trek and Spock refs of course but I was never shushed as much as I probably should’ve :smile:
BTW we Trojans were real lucky as the theater at USC was big and had great audio.
As for riffing on what might be considered an “inappropriate” film later I and a friend went to a screening of “Gorillas In The Mist.” A small crowd was there (I think it was an early &/or dollar screening) and we did have ourselves a time with the Sigourney Weaver intense drama classic. I felt a little bad because it was a true story but I do recall there being some ridiculous moments worthy of riffing in that flick. Can’t recall any riffs I or my friend made here either :???:
#25 and #44 are right. This is why I didn’t like the Rifftrax live because so many people were trying to riff the movie and thought every riff was hilarious by laughing extremely loud throughout the whole thing. Really drowns out the whole reason why you went in the first place.
I won’t go to CT either because the same thing will happen. I don’t want to shell out $30+ to tell someone to be quiet for 90 minutes.
#50:
Indeed, I’ve often wondered why MST3K/RT/CT didn’t do some of these (trailers).
Umm….MST3K did.
Two Moments come to mind instantly:
The first time was seeing STARSHIP TROOPERS in a packed theater. At the scene where Casper Van Diem and Gary Busey’s Kid face off in Messhall I found myself saying “Battle of the Hair cuts.” and a guy in front of my row belted out a laugh and his girl friend started shushing him.
Then I went to see Dogma and there was a trailer for SUPERNOVA. The Trailer ended with the tag line: “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the Universe.” and asked the guy next to me “Why didn’t they named the movie that? It sounds better than SUPER-“he turned and said very flatly “shut up.”
Oh! and speaking of Verhoven, I saw TRUE LIES and there was a trailer for STARSHIP TROOPERS. In that dead silence that occurs between trailers I said “Music by Yes.”
Over the years I found it very difficult to get someone to see a movie with me.
Yeah, we should find a way to do this thread more often; inappropriate or not, everyone’s gotten in one quip worth sharing. #22, that projector mishap sounds like the most golden moment of all.
Gotta agree about riffing in a theater though. To paraphrase Hemmingway, no one’s s#!t-detector can scan oneself, so even people with real talent will make bad judgements about what’s actually funny. The one time I broke the rule with success was for the “I, ROBOT” trailer, responding to the title with, “And don’t miss the sequel: ME, GRIMLOCK!”, which only worked because the friend I whispered it to was a Transformers fan who’d never read Asimov. Zero success elsewhere unless I’m seeing something for the 2nd or 3rd time, and many of my comments at home end up making no sense even to people I know, or come out meaner than I intended.
@#32: The Beyond is one I show to friends out of genuine respect for Fulci, but still can’t force myself to shut up during. One joke I shouldn’t have made was when Emily, who’s blind, feels Shweik’s painting then recoils to find her palms are bleeding: “Ooh, ouch! Never try read one of those unless it was actually painted in Braille.” Whether that was offensive or just nonsensical, no one laughed. The Beyond might not be great to riff period anymore since the character actually addressed as “Joe the plumber” could produce too many touchy political jokes. But that ending is very tempting, with the unlucky couple struck senseless staring into the infinite horror. Katriona: “My God David, they actually filmed that bloody sequel you wrote!”
The one time I was forcefully shushed by family was when I’d rented East of Eden for my mom, who’ll always love James Dean above all other actors. My 3rd hand understanding of his reputation as a rebel badass was somewhat at odds with the stumbling, inept young stalker we see in the opening scene, and I can’t remember what I said, but a zero-riffing policy was laid down 2 minutes in.
I have found that it is acceptable, and even appreciated, to riff the commercials and previews before the real movie starts. I don’t remember specific examples, but I have riffed commercials and some movie trailers (I’m pretty sure Transformers was one of them), and gotten several laughs and exclamations of “Yes!” afterward. My impression is that commercials and previews in the theater are fair game, but once the movie starts you keep your comments to yourself (at least until the DVD comes out).
During the scene in “The Two Towers”, after Théoden had been released from Saruman’s spell and he inquired as to the whereabouts of Théodred his son (who had perished prior), I couldn’t help myself: “Oh, he’s dea… duh, uh… downstairs!”
#6 – Another Return of the King story
My mom and I had dragged my dad to see RotK and he had sat patiently through the whole thing. By the time they were getting ready to board the ship at the end Dad had to go to the bathroom. After about the tenth time they said goodbye, he blurted out, “Just get on the f—ing boat!” Several people around us got a good chuckle out of that.
I also riff the trailers, and no one seems to mind. During the movie, though, I limit myself to 2 or 3 quietly whispered comments to my friend (it’s usually the same friend.)
This does remind me, though, of the time I went to see “Firestarter” in the mid-80s. Whenever Drew Barrymore was about to start a fire, she’d scrunch up her face in her best Shirley Temple impression, and I’m pretty sure she said “I’m gonna do something bad!” at least once.
Well, by the second or third occurrence of this, I was falling out of my seat laughing. I don’t think the other people in the theater thought it was as funny as I did.
This might be another good thread sometime – inappropriate laughter in a theater.
I consider myself lucky in this; I’ve managed to successfully break my best friend so that now she also can’t make it through a movie without riffing it, even when she means not to. Saturday night we went to see Clash of the Titans at the drive-in. We riffed the trailers, then as the movie started, she shushed me, insisting we wouldn’t riff the movie. When less than a minute later she was already tossing lines out, it was pretty clear we’d be riffing the whole thing.
I won her over to the dark side with one in particular: when Perseus tosses away his sword of the gods and Draco catches it, I said, “Oh, cool! A +1 sword of –” cutting myself off when the sword turns back into a simple rod, and finishing with “oh, dammit.” I couldn’t have timed it better if I’d seen the movie a dozen times beforehand.
The only line I use, that I can think of at the moment is, whenever a movie character survives a moment, he or she, shouldn’t have, I say the line from James Bond that Crow re-interpreted for SCCTM: “Mr. Claus, you have a nasty habit of surviving.” Best used in disaster movies, like 2012, Dante’s Peak…
This talk of when it is or isn’t O.K. to riff made me think of a similar potential thread: Personal rules you try following when doing your own riffing. Not so much because of taboos or courtesy, but for the sake of the comedy.
Ex: In Conan the Barbarian cash-ins and other sword n’ sandal/sorcery flicks, the gay jokes are just way too easy, so my rule is make one, and make it count. Since I still have Fulci in the brain, if riffing ‘Conquest’ (I know this is someone’s favorite Fulci film, so to clarify, it’s original enough that it’s not a rip-off, but was released to cash in on Conan), when Ilias gets his power-bow working and rescues the bohunkular Mace, who then laughs at the youth with that loving grin on his face: “Ilias, ah sure do wish ah could quit you.” It addresses their particular special friendship without milkin’ it. Err, I mean–
That, and how much success you have actually following your own guidelines and those of friends, is my suggestion for a follow-up weekend thread.
I only see movies with my best friends and wife (all fellow MSTies) we MST all of ’em without remorse, no matter what movie and where where are.
I am personally amused by the number of posts “….it was opening night of [insert mega-budget-two-syllable-dialogue-explosion-thon-turd-of-a-movie name here].”
Yet, almost all seem surprised the flick sux. :-) Why, why, why, would you do that to yourselves? Just an observation.
I got dragged to Pearl Harbor by some couples from out of town. That was the final straw….
I tell my girl, go with your friends, I am sitting this one out…again! Maybe she’ll quit asking.
Sorry, I had a final point I was rolling toward making: don’t blame Hollywood for the crap they make. If we made better decisions with our entertainment dollars and quit going to the garbage ones, they would quit making them. Better spending = better movies.
Class dismissed. Back to the frivolity! :-)
I know I am going straight to Hell for this but here goes…
I was watching the TV movie AMISH GRACE on Lifetime last week with my teenage daughter. It’s based on a true story of a man who murdered schoolgirls in a one room school house in PA. Not a funny subject at all…but at times I just couldn’t help myself.
Example:
A TV reporter is walking through a cornfield with an Amish farmer. He is carrying two ears of corn. The reporter notices this and comments “Big ears?”…I blurted out “Sorry Ma’am, they’re what I was born with!”
In another scene, a mother of one of the slain children bumps into the wife of her childs murderer in town. There is an emotional staredown. With a high pitched voice and finger quotation marks I had to yell “AWKWARD!”
The movie was just so easy to riff if you watch it. But was it wrong? I was making fun of a movie not the tragedy!
I’m amazed at how many people say, “I just couldn’t help myself” or “I (or we) don’t care if we are annoying people” Really? are there that many socially inept people out there? Uh, yes, you can help yourself, you just chose not to. it always amazes me how people can be so into their own little worlds that they litteraly could care less if they ruin something for someone else. and many of you have said “MST has ruined me..” in refrence to “not helping yourself” Again, YOU ruined you, not MST. At home, riff away…at the theater…shut it!
I took in both Rifftrax live and CT live. There was one moment at the CT event where a doofus shouted out a “riff” and Joel shot him down so fast it was awesome. I think that made all the other social children realize they should leave it to the pros.
My two sons (now adults) and I often riff movies at home . . . we try and contain ourselves in public. The most recent riff I can remember was the new Star Trek movie, when Kirk’s father was crashing the starship into the bad guy at the beginning of the movie. The maudlin exchange between he and Kirk’s mother was so long, since it took so long for the ships to actually collide, I blurted out, “Well, honey, instead of sitting here chatting I should have perhaps sprinted for an escape pod . . . ”
Not terribly funny, but all I can recall right now. we do it all the time . . . It’s impossible not too, after watching MST3K for years!
My brother wants to go see the remake of ‘Clash Of The Titans’ this week, so I have a feeling there will be a riffing incident to report soon.
#80
You might also have said (as I believe Mike and the bots
did in a similar situation) “Oh, he’s been sent to a
farm in the countryside to get better where he’ll be very happy.”
About PJ’s LoTR movies in general, the first is acceptable (FoTR)
but the latter two are prime riffing material, given all the
“liberties” he took with the story.
#85: ” Personal rules you try following when doing your own riffing. Not so much because of taboos or courtesy, but for the sake of the comedy.”
Ooh, cool topic! I second this suggestion.
And #89? There’s nothing wrong with mocking a Lifetime movie; their mere existence is a mockery of whatever horrible true story they’re trying to cash in on, so they’re more than fair game.
@90 Yeah, I agree that theater riffing is inappropriate… now. But my example came from 15 years ago, when I was still a foolish young man, who cared little and controlled his tongue even less. However, you’ll be happy to know, its because of this incident that I no longer riff in theaters. Lesson learned.
A few years ago, my future husband and I were at Otakon, and he dragged me into a screening of Joshuu sasori: Kemono-beya. Thankfully, the majority of the audience riffed the movie, beginning when the female lead was running away with a detective’s severed arm shackled to her arm (“A farewell to arm!” “T’is but a flesh wound!”), to when it was revealed another character was having illicit relations with her brother (“The Angelina Jolie Story!”). When the police force magically (and flamboyantly) appeared around a character who had just helped the lead escape, I couldn’t help myself: “NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!” My husband blurted “But they’re Japanese!” “Well, that’s why no one expected them.”
Stupid, but made an extremely graphic movie enjoyable.
In my film class, we were watching the original Stepford Wives and when they got to the kids on the bus, I tried to stop myself but I found myself, upon seeing everybody dressed the same with the same expression, saying ‘It’s the Children of the Corn!’
I’ve found myself riffing in my head during my undergraduate. My teacher started talking like Stallone,and all I could do was my best Stallone imperonation “I AM THE LAW” real loud! and I’m totally not embarassed whatsoever. MST3K on the brain!
Okay, I don’t think anyone here is actively condoning going to a movie with the intent of riffing it at the expense of others who actually want to see the movie (if you are, shame on you!)
But we ARE human, which means that sometimes we make mistakes, such as shouting out in frustration at the slow pace of a movie (#81 – I love the “just get on the f-ing boat!”; I felt the same way at that point), or simply saying something louder than we intended. And the topic is, indeed “Riffing When You Shouldn’t“. So I believe we all know it’s inappropriate. These comments are generally about single episodes, not consistent antisocial behavior.
So to all those complaining about the riffing in the theater, take a chill pill, get a grip, mote, beam, etc.
I don’t have any specific examples of times I’ve riffed movies, but just want to throw my two cents in. Riffing in a theatre can be encouraged, but it always helps to do it in a cinema that pretty much accepts it as a fun part of going to the movies. I wouldn’t riff at the local AMC, but when I go see a movie at my local cult cinema (the Mayfair theatre in Ottawa, Ontario), all bets are off. Making fun of movies there (even classics like Bond movies or Halloween) is, I think, expected. All in all, it’s a wonderful place to see a movie…