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Video: Advertising Ruins Screening Of Scorsese's New Film
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jan 15, 2012
Modified Jan 15, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Jan 15, 2012
Modified Jan 15, 2012
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Between all the bedbugs and the unruly behavior, going to a movie theater feels risky enough.
But at least the movie usually plays: a tipster wrote us about an unfortunate experience seeing Martin Scorsese's Hugo at the Regal Union Square last night. "This occurred after the film broke twice during the screening and we had been sitting in the theater for 3.5 hours," he said. "It's quite the mashup. Considering the movie is a tribute to film and film preservation, it was especially hysterical and at the same time a total travesty."
After the film broke twice, moviegoers got to watch the climactic thirty minutes of the film with the commercials for the cinema laid on top. The tipster said that the approximate 200 people in the theater were offered refunds and free tickets by management, but many were so exasperated at the three-and-a-half hour experience, they left well before they were handed out: "When the movie was over people were really pissed, the managers were standing outside handing out passes and apologizing but after going through all that to get to the end of the movie and to have that happen was surreal."
Mostly, the tipster was angry that there was nobody there to watch over the film when it initially broke: "Tickets were $18 for this movie. Regal deserves to get shit for it. Maybe they can actually start putting projectionists in the booth." We can imagine it'd be pretty frustrating not seeing the end of a film you paid money for—but having watched the footage, we thought it was probably the funniest possible mistake that could have happened. Or a "travesty," as one woman so hyperbolically called out in the video. Would it be less of a travesty if the advertisements were for American Express?
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hugo
manhattan
martin scorsese
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movie theater
Regal Cinemas
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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