A 60yo guy in black suit and tie sporting night-vision goggles helps take creepy to the next level.
The Consumerist is running an interesting letter from a reader named “Sam” today who writes to retell a creepy incident that occurred at a viewing of Nicole Kidman’s “The Invasion” during its opening weekend at the AMC Lowes Georgetown 14.
Aside from the obvious privacy implications, what makes the incident so particularly creepy, for those that have yet to see “The Invasion,” is that the movie is essentially about the “infected” seeking out and either converting or eliminating those that aren’t through the use of widespread monitoring and physical coercion.
So to have a 60yo gentleman “sporting a black suit and a black briefcase” standing in the shadows of the theater filming every movement of the audience as they are watching a movie that’s already putting them on the edge of their seat rightfully made some even more uncomfortable than they already were.
“Every 5-10 minutes he would sweep the audience with his video camera, then turn it off and just watch us, then turn the camera back on and sweep again,” Sam writes. He “…stayed in the theater filming for about 45 minutes.”
It’s enough to make any normal person who just shelled out $10 bucks of his hard earned money to walk out of the theater and complain, which he apparently did.
“After the movie I went to the Customer Service desk to inquire if they knew about this incident,” he writes. “The manager behind the desk informed me that Time Warner/Warner Bros had contracted a security company to film movie theater audiences around the country during the opening weekend of its movies in an effort to prevent piracy.”
Now in an update to his letter he notes that the Customer Service Rep was misinformed, that it was night-vision goggles and not a video camera that was being used according to an e-mail response from the Director of Guest Services of AMC Theaters. In fact, she apparently assured him that “AMC would never allow filming of the audience.”
In an further odd detail, she complained that this particular “Georgetown 14 theater has been recently hit by pirates and this was part of the effort put on by the studio to combat such piracy.”
Being “hit by pirates” means that now all opening weekend theatergoers have to suffer? I could see MAYBE sending the audience through metal detectors in some fashion with clearly observable signs notifying them about the impending intrusion of their privacy and offering a refund to those who refuse. But, to have some guy secretly standing in the shadows in a black suit and tie scanning them for 45 minutes has to be distracting and unnerving to say the least, not to mention downright insulting.
Who wants to be monitored like a schoolchild for half a movie that you just paid to go see? How can anyone be expected to enjoy the moviegoing experience that the MPAA so continually preaches the value of when it becomes degraded to little more than an odd voyeuristic fishing expedition for pirates?
Are we to be treated as potential criminals just for being guilty of wanting to see a movie during its opening weekend box office debut? If this is the case, I think many will simply wait until the weekend that follows and all the movie studios can kiss their holy opening weekend ticket sales figures goodbye.
[Read Sam's entire letter @ The Consumerist]
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This is the most extreme i could ever picture someone going through to prevent pirates from bootlegging a film.
Governments often have a shoot-to-kill policy for looters. The MPAA is pretty soft by comparison.
Are you saying we should be thankful the MPAA is not shooting us?
and since when is camming the same as looting? also as much as they want to be the MPAA isnt a government.
K.G.B
@Signa
I dunno they pretty well own the US government… they can put WTO sanctions on Sweden and China after all.
And for what it’s worth this is exactly the sort of invasion of privacy they’ve been engaging in carefully avoiding the legal minefield that they helped to create.
Watch this will go to court….of that I am sure.
Someone could ask a judge what right doesthe MPAA have for watching a crowd because they THINK (not prove) there COULD be piracy.
I simply see this as an invasion of privacy. There is absolutely NO WAY I would pay money and have someone “watch” me the whole time I am in the theatere. This is not 1984 and the MPAA are not Big Brother….no matter how much they want to be. I am sure that this could be stopped with a court order.
their efforts are completely useless because there is a copy already out there on the newsgroups probably inside job screener or projectionist did it