The film that got everyone arguing in the lobby, part 1

It has been so long that I have been to a movie in a real movie theater that I am starting to get nostalgic. And that makes me think back on my favorite moments in movie theaters.

I think my all time favorite such moment happened some years ago when I went to a movie theater in Manhattan to see a movie with my friend Athomas. The moment happened not during the movie, but immediately afterward.

Usually when you go to a movie, the audience leaves right after the credits. People stream out to the lobby, and from there they exit the building and go on with their lives.

But that didn’t happen with this movie. Instead, everybody in the audience went to the lobby and then stayed there to debate with their friends about what they had just seen.

Everyone was so immersed in the questions raised by the film that they didn’t want to let the experience go. For a good ten minutes, that lobby turned into an intense debate forum.

That, my friends, is the one and only time I have ever experienced anything like that. And I have seen hundreds of movies.

You might very well ask what film provoked such a unique and astonishing response. In a day or two I will tell you.

But first I’ll give you a chance to guess.

One thought on “The film that got everyone arguing in the lobby, part 1”

  1. Funny, I’d never thought about that aspect of seeing a movie in the theater. Normally you think of the contents of the movie, but sometimes the surrounding experience is just as (or more) memorable. Off the top of my head, three favorite movie theater experiences (most all at film festivals):

    – After a showing of a documentary about medical doctors volunteering their time in distant places, the director is on stage answering audience questions. His cell phone rings, “Oh, wait, I have to take this call!”. It’s one of the subjects in the film, calling in live from a satellite phone from the mountains of Pakistan.

    – Koyannisqatsi, with the Philip Glass orchestra on stage playing the sound track live.

    – John Waters speaking after a premier showing of Hairspray. Smoking, of course.

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