A history of moviegoing

Forecast: Slightly melancholic after weeks of ceaseless rain. Strange fits of nostalgia.

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I was born into a family of moviegoers. Before I was born my parents spent their weekends watching triple-bills at the big movie houses in Avenida. They brought their lunches, drinks, and chichirya. Smoking was allowed inside theaters, and peddlers walked up and down the aisles selling peanuts and other snacks. (In theaters in the provinces, people put their feet up against the seats. This was not due to bad manners, but a safety precaution: there were rats in those theatres, and a breach in etiquette was better than having a toe chewed off.) My father was partial to war movies like his childhood favorite, Objective: Burma; my mother liked romantic weepers like All Mine To Give. They both loved Biblical epics like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, and when I was a kid they would take me to the annual Lenten screenings of those colossal classics. My parents constantly told the tale of how, during the crucifixion scene in Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings, I had leaned towards my mother and loudly whispered, "Jesus has no armpit hair."

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The first movie I ever saw in a theatre was Walt Disney’s Pinocchio. This momentous event took place at Greenhills Theatre. I was four or five, and my mother brought me. I can still remember the thrill of handing our tickets to the usher, pushing the heavy doors open, going through the dark-velvet curtains and walking down the aisle to find our seats. I’d seen old movies on television, but these people –well, cartoon marionettes and talking wolves – looked about 20 feet tall. And there were Other People in the theatre. I found this both scary and exciting, although I couldn’t explain why exactly. My parents were always warning me about Other People, how they were out to kidnap me (they never said why; it couldn’t have been for ransom because we weren’t rich) or steal all our household appliances. My father even made up scenarios to test my resistance to the evil ploys of these villains (who could be anyone at all). They would knock on the door. They would ask me if my folks were home. Then they would claim that my parents had been in an accident and they would take me to the hospital to visit them. The scenarios grew increasingly morbid and complicated (They would produce letters or other kinds of proof that their mission was legitimate), and my father had to be convinced beyond any doubt that I would not be fooled.

So one of the few places where it was safe to be among Other People was at the movies. It was okay to sit in the dark with a bunch of complete strangers, stare at the moving images, listen to the words and music, and reveal what they made you feel. You gawked, laughed and cried together. It was one of my earliest notions of community.

The second the movie ended this community broke up into units of Other People, presumably vile and not to be trusted. If it was my father who took me to the movies – we saw all the James Bonds and Bruce Lees – I couldn’t go to the ladies’ room by myself. I had to use the men’s room, where my father could stand guard, and where I may have inflicted psychological scars on total strangers with my uncontrollable giggling.

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I remember when I first asserted my rights as a moviegoer. In high school I’d gone to a screening of The Killing Fields with my best friend, Gail. In front of us was a group of teenage boys. They wouldn’t stop talking, but I managed to ignore them until a particularly grisly hospital sequence. That’s when they went into a loud chorus of "Sharpnel. Wow, pare, sharpnel. Aray, sharpnel, kadiri. Ang daming sharpnel." (Sharpnel. Wow, man, sharpnel. Ouch, sharpnel, gross. So much sharpnel.)

I could bear it no longer.

"It’s SHRAPNEL!" I informed them in a loud voice. Gail elbowed me and told me to shut up. For several seconds I waited for a fight to break out in the theater. But the moment passed, and the boys simply got up and slunk away.

There are at least as many characters in an audience as there are onscreen. There’s always some moron "explaining" the movie to his date in a loud voice and getting the plot wrong, or doing play-by-play commentary ("He’s standing up. He’s walking to the door. He’s turning the knob…") or talking on his cell phone ("What? I’m at the movies! I’M AT THE MOVIES!"). There’s the idiot who puts his feet up on the back of your seat or kicks your seat repeatedly, or spends the whole movie texting. They annoy the hell out of me, and I could avoid them altogether by watching movies on DVD, cable, on my computer or iPod.

Still I go to the movies. No, I insist on going to the cinema. There’s the whole ritual of getting tickets, popcorn and drinks, finding a seat, watching the trailers. And there’s the audience, this frequently aggravating bunch of Other People, your community, whether you can stand them or not.

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Recently my friends and I went to an evening screening of Chito Roño’s horror movie, Sukob. The theatre was packed with people who’d come straight from the office, bringing their dinners. The woman sitting directly behind me was eating Jollibee palabok.

There are movies that require your undivided attention and promise some kind of epiphany about the human condition. This is not one of them. In true Filipino movie tradition, Sukob is meant to be seen with a crowd of Other People shrieking, laughing, and commenting on the action. I do not know if this is Cinema, but it is a blast. No one in the audience truly believed that the characters up on the screen were real human beings with motives and emotions. They never stopped being movie stars pretending to be caught in a supernatural crisis. The thrill of watching this movie was in guessing which star would meet her horrible end next.

Die, overpaid celebrities, die!

At the first big scare, the woman eating palabok screamed and broke her plastic fork. For the rest of the movie she managed to incorporate her dining misfortune into her running critique. "Dumidilim na, wala pa rin akong tinidor." "Patay na siya, pero gutom pa rin ako kasi walang tinidor." (Night has fallen, and I still have no fork. He’s dead, and I’m still hungry because I have no fork.) And the cryptic "Aray ko, namatay lahat ng buhok kong kulot." (Ouch, my curly hairs have died.)

Instead of being infuriated by her yammering, I found that my viewing experience was enhanced by her contribution. It was like watching a movie I’d seen before, but with a hilarious commentary track.

That’s when it occurred to me: The audience isn’t just talking to themselves. They are literally insinuating themselves into the movie. The movie is more than a flat screen upon which images are projected; the movie is Kris, Claudine, you, me, and the woman eating palabok. We are all in this together, a community huddled in a dark space, dreaming with our eyes open.

Everyone is a movie star.

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