Cinema Paradiso? Not Always

It takes a lot to walk out of a movie, said a young man named Colin on a recent Thursday evening. “If I pay for something, even if it tastes bad, I’ll keep eating it,” he said as he stood alone in an empty corridor of Century City’s AMC multiplex.

That night he was brimming with the vitriol of a food critic who had just bitten into an overcooked filet. “It’s just unbearable,” he said, explaining why he walked out of the movie “I Am Sam,” which stars Sean Penn as a father with a mental disability. “It should have ended five or six times by now,” said Colin, who was also fulminating about what he described as the filmmakers’ manipulative use of “warm and fuzzy” Beatles songs.

Multiply Colin by an untold number and you have a topic hardly anybody in the movie business wants to discuss. While studios and theater owners will try almost anything to get you into a movie, the last thing they want to acknowledge is that people walk out.

Almost everyone, it seems, has left a movie at least once, although many say they can’t remember what it was. Some enjoy the psychic thrill of voting with their feet. Sometimes, they even get their money back.

The movie doesn’t even have to be a bomb. The films people leave the most are frequently also the most admired.

In an industry town like Los Angeles, purists can be found in two camps: people who religiously sit through the closing credits to the bitter end, and those who believe the disappointed and disgusted have a moral obligation to leave.

According to online film critic Harry Knowles, proprietor of the aintitcoolnews.com Web site, “There’s a passion to attending films that is every bit as great as the passion in making films.”

Taking It No More

Rebecca and Eddie Oertell of Sherman Oaks aren’t shy about walking out. They walked out of “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.” “The acting was so cheesy. We expected more ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’” Eddie said.

They walked out of “Eye of the Beholder,” a 1999 thriller starring Ashley Judd and Ewan McGregor. “We got totally lost,” Rebecca said.

They walked out of a movie so forgettable they couldn’t remember what it was--”a John Travolta movie,” he said. “Based on that Scientology thing,” she said. “It was ridiculous. Twenty minutes into it, we were like, ‘Forget it,’” she said. A few minutes later, he recalled the movie was “Battlefield Earth.”

After they sat through all of “Vanilla Sky,” the Oertells wished they had walked out of that one too. “You see Tom Cruise and you think it’s got to be a good movie,” she said. “We kept thinking it might get better.”

Many of this season’s most acclaimed films have inspired walkouts. Numerous patrons walked out of “Moulin Rouge” last year, said Marlon Sanchez, a customer-service representative at the AMC theater in Century City. The fast-paced musical has been honored by several industry-related groups and won three Golden Globes, including best musical or comedy picture.

One person who walked out of the musical when it was released said, “I went to see it in the summer. The frenetic pace made me nuts.” His opinion has mellowed with time, and he thinks he might give the admittedly challenging film another chance on DVD.

Bob Glik of Irvine, a fan of “The Royal Tenenbaums” star Gene Hackman, said he went to that show “like a lamb to the slaughter.

“It started off in neutral, went up to a modest peak, then went steadily downhill,” he said. Glik decided to walk out and left his wife sitting with their friends. (Hackman won the Golden Globe for best actor in a musical or comedy.)

Getting Your Money Back

Some, like Glik, roam the multiplexes after they exit one auditorium in search of more palatable fare, a practice theater owners frown upon. The Oertells said they ask for their money back only when they’re extremely unhappy, as with “Battlefield Earth.” If they leave within the first half-hour, they said, they’re likely to get a refund.

Each theater chain has its own policy. “Our core belief is that people are frequent moviegoers. It’s not like buying a new car,” said Rick King, spokesman for AMC Entertainment in Kansas City, Mo. “Hopefully they not only plan ahead but also come on impulse. If you’re dissatisfied, we’ll work with you on your choice, to get you into another movie the same day, or have you come back,” he said. The chain has a “no-questions-asked” policy for the first 30 minutes if customers want their money back, exchange their ticket for another show or obtain a pass to return at another time. After that, he said, “it’s really the manager’s judgment.”

Another chain, Loews Cineplex, doesn’t have “a set policy. We leave it up to the discretion of the managers,” Mindy Tucker, corporate vice president, said from the company’s offices in New York. “Typically if they leave within the first half-hour, we try to accommodate them. We will give them their money back if there’s a legitimate reason.” Usually, she said, managers offer a pass for another movie. “We want our customers to leave happy.”

When patrons have invested much more--at operas, concerts or plays where tickets can top $400 for a Broadway show, for example--the motivation to stick it out is understandably stronger. If they decide they can’t stand it any longer, they can depart unobtrusively at intermission. Otherwise, walking out requires climbing over people in the dark. What’s more, according to Los Angeles Opera spokesman Gary Murphy, people who remain tend to gossip about those who’ve left early.

The Theories

Some say today’s moviegoers are less inclined to walk out in this age of information saturation, because they are more informed going in.

Others say the added information makes customers more assertive about walking out. “Your average moviegoer now sees him- or herself as a movie critic,” said Jill Stein, a social psychologist and UCLA lecturer in American society and culture. “Before, we were more passive, more receptive, less critical,” she said.

More information hasn’t necessarily sharpened viewers’ tastes, she added. “We’ve become barnyard connoisseurs,” she said. “We get a common thrill, a little sense of superiority. We like to think, ‘I could do better; the girl down the street could have taken on that role.’”

According to other theories, walking out could be a function of a “television mentality” or a psychological need for emotional distance.

Going to a movie theater is more emotionally engaging than watching a video at home. For Dana Polan, a USC professor of critical studies, walking into a darkened movie theater is a ritual that signifies leaving everyday life. Some people can’t take it, he said, and need to keep the movie at a distance by talking, sitting in the back, or getting up and leaving.

What Directors Think

Among people who believe in walking out is director Wes Craven (“Scream,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street”). “You want people to react strongly to your film,” he said. “Otherwise, you might as well be making cotton candy.”

Craven recalled that one of his earliest films, “Last House on the Left,” a 1972 movie whose disturbingly graphic murders and rape caught many audiences off guard, caused riots in some theaters. “In one theater, the projectionist had to lock himself in the booth,” he said. “I’ve had people say it was the best film I ever made. Others say I have to ask God to forgive me when I die.”

Craven himself walked out of a screening of director Quentin Tarantino’s critically acclaimed “Reservoir Dogs” in 1992 during a graphic torture scene that was accompanied by a lighthearted rock song. (At the time, Craven explained, he thought the director was self-indulgent, although years later he found it a powerful film.) Tarantino was in the lobby and saw him leave, Craven said. “He ran out and told his friends, ‘I can’t believe I made Wes Craven leave.’ He was very happy.”

While some directors expecting a warm reception might have their feelings hurt by walkouts, audience behavior is crucial to gauging how effective a film is, Craven explained. “As a director, whenever you’re at a screening, you’re constantly watching the audience, seeing who laughs, who jumps, who gets restless, who gets up to get popcorn and when.”

As artists, filmmakers challenge preconceptions, he said. “If they’re doing their job on the forefront, they’re seeing how paradigms are shifting and new realities are emerging.” In his opinion, viewers who hold on to the old reality are more likely to leave. Although such films are common now, a movie in the 1950s that showed an interracial couple, for example, probably would have resulted in people walking out.

Sometimes a film is different from what moviegoers expect. Decades ago, parents yanked kids out of “Fritz the Cat” when they realized it was an X-rated cartoon. And not everyone who bought a ticket knew Todd Solondz’s “Happiness” (1998) was a black comedy involving a pedophile.

Solondz, whose “Storytelling” opened Friday, said, “I’ve always known my movies are not for everyone. I feel bad they’ve wasted money on a movie they don’t appreciate.”

Quoted recently in the New York Times as saying he walks out of movies “all the time,” the director confirmed that he sometimes does, although “not regularly.”

“I do it on occasion” when he finds a film “assaultive and painful.” He would not identify any movies he had walked out of because “I would never do that to the filmmaker.”

“There’s always a certain element of risk in going to a movie,” Solondz said. “That’s what makes it exciting. If you knew what would happen at the end, it wouldn’t be very adventurous. If there’s no surprise, how much pleasure can you have from the experience?”

He surmised there must be people walking out of “Storytelling,” which has elicited sharply different reactions. “It’s just part of the territory, I suppose.”

Do’s and Don’ts

People who walk out do not always go quietly. In 1979, Robert Altman’s gloomy, complex “Quintet” sparked exoduses, recalled director Craven. Outside a Westwood theater, he said, some people who walked out told people waiting in line not to go into the theater.

Disgruntled viewers who don’t leave sometimes ruin a movie for others by complaining loudly, said Dana McWeeney, a Los Angeles film advocate for the Ain’t It Cool News site. “At that point,” he said, “it’s their obligation to leave.”

Five years ago Polan saw a fight break out at the end of “Affliction” in a theater on Wilshire Boulevard. “Some people were talking through the entire film and the credits. It started when someone got up and said, ‘Can you shut up?’”

In other cultures, notably India, social psychologist Stein said, audiences are more active, talking or yelling back to the screen. “Maybe we’re moving in that direction,” she surmised.

Reasons to Stay

Web critic Knowles, who refers to movies as his “church,” makes it a “point of pride” to never leave a movie. Not only is it his job, but he also can’t believe a movie can be bad enough to abandon. “Somewhere in there is a kernel of an idea worth finding,” he said.

Knowles explained why he walked out of the 1995 thriller “Never Talk to Strangers” with Antonio Banderas and Rebecca De Mornay. “I’m sitting there, watching this film, seeing a sex scene through a chain-link fence.

“I had found the reason why they made the movie. Someone said, ‘Sex through a chain-link fence! Brilliant!’”

Up until that point the film had been so unimaginative, he preferred to leave at that point so he could imagine for himself where the movie went from there.

There are also unexpected benefits from seeing a bad film through to the end.

Phyllis Seidman of Beverly Hills said she and her husband, Marvin, belong to several movie discussion groups. The less popular the film, she said, the easier it is to remember and the more they have to say.

Four years ago, they saw the sci-fi thriller “Pi.” “We wondered how we could have sat through this film. The photography was terrible. The acting was terrible. It was demeaning to almost everyone.

“I can’t tell you what we saw last week,” she said. “We never forgot ‘Pi.’”