BUT, (and this is the real point of this thread), are audiences more or less the same worldwide in their TERRIBLE PIGGISH BEHAVIOUR? Sometimes it really is sheer torture having to put up with the incessant chat, stupid comments and hysterics from huge groups of people who appear to have chosen going to the cinema as a substitute for going to a party.

It's not only the hilarity, it's also the non-stop munching and slurping that goes on at all showings, even if it's just after mealtimes. The Exorcist was intolerable: it played to a packed house of youngsters, some as young as eight or nine (no age restrictions!) who spent the entire film in fits of laughter.

Or am I just being old and grumpy? Wouldn't William Castle (for example) be proud of making a film that generated that kind of response? How much "audience participation" would you accept in an Indiana Jones movie? And how much in Schindler's List? Here it's all the same: stupid remarks, constant giggling and continual stuffing of mouths.

I'd move over to video or DVD except that my family watches TV as if they were at the cinema!

Right off the bat--I went to see the re-release of The Exorcist in a theater and was surprised, not shocked or offended, but puzzled that someone had brought an 8 year old boy to it. I mean, was he deliberately trying to give the kid nightmares for the next year?

I'm a Janus at the movie theater. I'm the first to shush someone talking, but I'm also the worst offender--leaning over to the person next to me and making snide comments where the opportunity presents itself.

Also, I'm two-sided about being "interactive" with a film. From one perspective, movies aren't reality, and to approach them with a measure of silence and detachment seems a healthy response. On the other hand, to become emotionally swept away, and respond with vocal laughter and commentary seems appropriate sometimes too.

I love Mystery Science Theater 3000--It was and still can be extremely funny stuff to watch.

But MST 3000 did, as Rocky Horror did in the 70s, make it more culturally permissible for current moviegoers to talk to and back at movies. MST 3000 continued the trend of a looser respect toward film. MST made it cool to act like in-the-know hipsters who are above movies and even have a right to be a vocal participant of them.

But perhaps this is part of a necessary, inevitable, and constantly on-going trend to reclaim movies from a certain stuffiness.

Renata Adler called television "an appliance, not an art form." Having films on TV at home, being able to rent and buy video or DVDs and having them arrive in the mailbox, has all made the Cinema casual and domestic.

When people go to the theater, they carry this casual notion of film along with them. Movies aren't an audience of strangers at a special event. The room disappears and all people see are the friends they came in with and it's OK to talk with them, right?

In any case, film isn't sculpture, and movie theaters aren't museums. Film is a popular entertainment and filmgoers are still your average prole. Higher etiquette is for the yacht club, so I don't expect it at the mutiplex. In an age when investment bankers visit the NY Opera in jeans after having been in jeans all day at work too, when manners in general have been sacrificed on the alter of what feels comfortable, I don't see the movie theater as some special hold out.

Thus, I go with the flow. Going to see a film on a big screen, especially now that larger screens and stadium seating have returned, is still the ideal way to see film. Watching films at home has many advantages, but screen size isn't one of them.

Pauline Kael talked about the need to become anonymous in a crowd, to hide in the dark, and to enjoy secret subversive thrills. That experience only happens in a theater with an audience. And, for some mysterious reason, comedies come alive in a theater and seem much more funny there. Whatever a film's charm is, it's mostly improved by projection. I remember going to see Plan 9 From Outer Space with a crowd and roaring endlessly. Then I caught it on TV alone and all the fun was gone, it was unbearable, Plan 9 needed a crowd, or at least Crow and Tom Servo, to amplify the comedy and, at home on TV, it didn't have them.

So, going to the movies is still necessary if you love movies. You can bunker at home, avoid the crowds, see what you want when you want with who you want, you can stop it to go to the bathroom, or shut it off when you get too tired, but what movies mean to you and what they can do for you will suffer and diminish if you stop going out to see them.

Knowing that, I go to the movies and ride the wave of what the audience is like. And usually if the film is good, it grabs the people and they quiet up or laugh out loud. And, if the film is bad, then it doesn't really matter--all the munching and talking is minor compared to how you're already suffering.

Two differing audience experiences I can recall, one bad, one great:

THE FUGITIVE. I timed this well. Early afternoon screening in LA. Nobody but me in there! And then, two minutes before the movie rolled, a group of Vietnamese people came in. Nice looking bunch, a family. Trouble is, only one of them understood English, so he translated every single word of dialog for the others!