This should scare everyone into being more considerate.
The Alamo Drafthouse takes the theatergoing experience very seriously but has always managed to get their point across in a comical way, especially when it comes to inconsiderate patrons. However, it seems where cleverness has failed, the expanding chain of theaters has decided to motivate its clientele with some good old-fashioned terror.
With the record-setting premiere of the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s “It” still fresh in Americans’ minds, the theater company recruited the film’s impish Georgie (played by a far less sinister 8-year-old, Jackson Robert Scott) to send a message to those who think texting during movies is acceptable behavior. Scott was in attendance, dressed in character, at the Phoenix Alamo Drafthouse on opening night, so commandeering his talents for a low-budget 30-second spot was apparently too good a proposition to pass up.
Here he is freaking out an entirely new internet audience in the name of manners and common courtesy:
Those familiar with the film will recognize the reference, but one needn’t be a student of the film to find their skin crawling from his frighteningly casual transformation from “cute kid” to something else entirely.
As mentioned above, this isn’t the first time Alamo Drafthouse has taken talkers and mobile phone users to task. In 2011, the chain posted a video that quickly went viral with the following preface (per the video’s YouTube page):
“We do not tolerate people that talk or text in the theater. In fact, before every film we have several warnings on screen to prevent such happenings. Occasionally, someone doesn't follow the rules, and we do, in fact, kick their asses out of our theater. This video is an actual voicemail from a woman that was kicked out of one of our Austin theaters. Thanks, anonymous woman, for being awesome.”
Other theater chains may be making more accommodations for theatergoers hell-bent on using their phones — much to the chagrin of more serious and traditional fans of cinema. Whether the motivation behind Alamo’s campaigns is simple courtesy or even the ultimate safety of their patrons, they seem unwilling to budge on the issue.
Fortunately for all, they keep coming up with innovative ways to remind us of that fact.
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