This is incredible. Read Kevin Williamson’s first hand account or Gothamist’s write up.
About last night: I will never understand what thought process occurs (or maybe ‘thought process’ right there is the wrong phrase) to allow someone to think that basic house rules or basic manners don’t apply to them.
One note: we were in the Meatpacking District, which seemed to have lent itself to carry a certain even worse class of audience than usual, at least around us, who thought they were in some sort of interactive club. The people to our left came in late, kept yelling out to the cast going by, banging on the table, starting clapping rhythms, and talking all the way through. The people to our left talked constantly, kept telling the parties on either side of them to move down to make way for their precious selves, and (now famously) got on their phones.
I had asked during intermission if an announcement could be made or anything to be done about the bad manners of the table to our left, not realizing the woman to our right would be the eventual straw-that-broke-the-camel. You know, after intermission, I was so frustrated by the hideousness of the theater guests around me that I asked K to directly ask her to turn her phone off (she was like, Googling something! in the middle of the show!).
He asked her to turn it off, saying it was distracting. She said, “Well, don’t look at it then.” And that’s another thing: when someone near you is behaving abominably, we often don’t say anything because we don’t know if they’re going to be dicks about it, thus furthering the distraction in a movie theater or play. Often people are just obliviously rude, and will put the phone away or stop talking. But this woman was consciously and maliciously rude. K then pointed out that a cast member had asked us all to turn our phones off at the beginning of the play. She said “Mind your own business.”
So he threw her phone away from her.
Would I have done that? No, but I would have wanted to. Because what else is the next step there? There was no way to get a theater manager — the cast uses the whole room for the stage, so no ushers or managers were on hand. Soooo then what? Basically you sit there, allowing yourself to be bullied, not watching the play, feeling angry and frustrated that the person next to you is a cretin of the first order.
I’ve seen this kind of behavior get worse and worse over the last few years as the idea of being separated from your phone for a few hours becomes less and less bearable in the popular culture. More to the point, everything I read is all about how addicted to our phones we are which allows for more whining about ever turning it off during a play or having it off the table during dinner or whatever.
Like I’ve said before, I’m lucky enough that I don’t pay for theater tickets, I go as the guest of a press critic. But if I paid the amount that theaters charge nowadays for tickets and this kind of nonsense was going on??? God, I would be even more furious at these people for ruining the experience.
Long story short: K is the hero Gotham needs.
