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In Reply to: Saw "The Passion..." last night posted by shipguy on February 25, 2004 at 11:28:27:
I guess it was pretty realistic and life changing for her, no?Chris
Follow Ups:
all the movies with scenes that cause your heart to pound and this
one did her in?
never heard about it. Leave it to a 25 year old reporter trying to make a name for himself/herself.Someone dying of a heart attack in a theatre is not uncommon . . . and often in a scene that scares or excites them. The frequency of this has declined, however, as the average age of theatre goers has plummetted to 12. Given that the average age of the audience for this film is much older* it will happen again. And someone will make the same fallacious point again.
*The queues of theatregoers even here in NYC was much older than is typical these days, rather overweight and psyching themselves up (one way or the other) for the experience. I am surprised there was only one reported instance!
I ran movie theatres for seven years here in Miami in areas with high concentrations of elderly people and I never had one die on me and some theatres did over 1.2m people a year.Slip & falls, sure. Dizzyness, yep. Fist fights, you betcha. Heart stoppers, no.
Chris
probably had the stats for their theatres nationwide. The greatest incidence was in the South and Midwest (some time ago, in the middle 1960s when the movie going public was much older). One would have thought that it would have happened in Miami theatres as well. Though the demographic breakdown of your attendees would have been far more telling than that for the general population.Additionally, though the stat is impressive, it is but an infinitesimal fraction of nationwide attendance.
As an aside, I saw Ben-Hur at the old Warner in Washington and went the day after someone had died of heart failure. I was young and did not ask which scene. That incident is not counted amongst the 3. I was present for those.
In the interest of full reporting, one was in NC (The Killing of Sister George), one at the old Loew's Kings in Brooklyn (Le Mans) and one (far more recent) was in a Manhattan Cineplex (he was slumped over as we came in and I do not remember the film as we were ushered out and I decided for an excellent Martini instead.)
All 3 were male and 50 something.
just that a lady had a heart attack and died yesterday, during the crucifixition scene. Now, I agree, that this probably would never have been reported nationally were it not for this particular movie, but you can't deny that 'religions' cause a lot of people to well up with emotion? I would be willing to bet that the movie brought about the emotional reaction that led to her untimely and unfortunate demise. That and a bad ticker.Chris
no, but you implied it. My stat is as unscientific and as close to the edge of probability (closer, actually) as yours.The incident at the Loew's Kings caused me to look into the matter.
Three of the four incidents (I cannot remember the fourth) occurred at movies with lesser impact and which were not controversial. And they never made the papers.
Additionally, the cinema chains don't wanna talk about it because:
1. given the demographic of movie goers today death from bubblegum (or drugs) is far more likely. They don't wanna talk about that, either.
2. Theatres never have O2 or defibrilators
3, The also virtually never have staff trained in CPR.Theatres have more people and for longer than many flights. Airlines must carry such equipment and staff. Why not theatres?
First of all, where did you get that '12 years old' as an average? We had a database of frequent movie goers that had 3 million people in it and was pared down to something like 1.8m while I was there and that was a few years back, so that number has steadily risen. I don't think that the average age was 12. For the record, our research showed that the average American goes to a movie 8-12 times a year, but kids go more and so do the elderly, obviously, but I don't think that the national average was 12. 16-19 might be closer to it atcually.Secondly, the lady apparently died as a result of the movie's crucifixition scene, stirring up her emotions and blowing out her heart. You can say all you want about it being common, but you just don't know what you're talking about. People have sex in movie theatres while the film is showing and that's far more common than somebody dropping dead for any reason. How many times have you seen somebody actually screwing in a theatre? I'm 42 and I've never seen it happen personally, but it has in the theatres that I've managed. Nobody has died as I said before, or ODed or choked on gum.
As far as not talking about it, shit we'd talk about stuff happening all of the time. However, if a woman slipped on a wet floor in the lady's room, it would hardly make the evening's news. Other things, maybe, but not the minor stuff. I could literally write a book with anecdotes from my seven years and it would actually make for an intersting read. Even when we GMs would meet for our anual GM meeting, the war stories were expected and happily shared over lunches and dinners.
Maybe you remember the two people killed out in the parking lot in Dallas, outside one of our theatres a few years back. That made the national news. We also had an usher gunned down in the lobby when the GM/Manager paniced and started running. The poor fellow was left holding the popcorn bag so to speak and paid with his life. That made the news. Just the other night, the local news showed a box office and the crawler stated that two old guys got into a fist fight while in line. I had the sound down, so I couldn't hear what theatre or the specifics, but it was on the news here. Hell, I was never robbed, but I personally know of about six of them in the S.Fla region alone, while I was employed in the business. I know the people too and talked with them about it. Those are more common than death and all made the news. You seem to think that everything is hush-hush and that people are dropping like flies during movies, but that just ain't so, I'm afraid to say. We may show movies, but we're not Hollywood.
As for point two and point three that you make above. No kidding?
It's tough enough training 16/17 years olds to pop popcorn without burning off their noses and training them to show up on time to clean the threatres and you want us to train them to use a defibrilator and do CPR? LOL. Call the paramedics and let the professionals deal with the crisis, as that's what they're trained for.
How much do you want to pay for your movie ticket, $30?
The staff would have to be rigorously trained for all of those medical procedures and with the turnover rate (8 months average) that we have in the business, it wouldn't be worth it for something that is not that common to begin with. The same thing goes with wheel chairs. They would have to be properly maintained and inspected, etc., so where does it end? Injecting insulin, when somebody goes into shock?
Why do you think that we no longer have professional union projectionists running the shows? $15/hour minimum. Your tickets would reflect that in price. So you're left with hopefully a mechanically inclined 18 year old running them and sight and sound can suffer to a degree, relative to the U.P. of days past.
I had a nice elderly woman who would come weekly via a cab. She'd get out and couldn't walk too well, but she didn't have a walker or a wheelchair. She had money and was always nicely dressed, so she wasn't some poor person. At first, we'd have an usher walk her down to her show and back out to the curb for her cab. Since this theatre was 16 screens and the smaller, newer houses (doing the art films) were at the end of an almost 40 yard walk, it was a hike for her. Soon after her initial visits, she stated that she couldn't walk and that she needed help, so one of my staff got the brilliant idea of letting her sit on an office chair and wheeling her to her show. While this worked in theory, it was not the greatest idea as the chair could quite easily tip over when moving from the tiled lobby floor to the carpeted floors and then up this small slope that we had in that particular hallway. It then progressed to taking her into the lady's room so she could go to the bathroom and then it was helping her up onto the toliet.Now you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see what's happening here with liability, do you?
This all came to a head one night when I was there and I had to put a stop to it. The potential for the chair tipping over on the way to the show or the potential for the lady falling in the bathroom was far to great and outweighed the goodwill we provided for her initially. Care-givers are trained to do this type of function and my 'kids' were not. I remember letting the woman know that we just couldn't keep doing this anymore and that she needed to bring a walker or a wheelchair or an attendant the next time she came and you should have seen how pissed off she was at me. Calling me the Devil and telling me that I was going to burn in Hell for not helping out an old lady. Sorry ma'am, wheeling you into the bathroom on an office chair and having a teenage girl lift you up onto the toliet ain't in our job description. Sorry to appear to be so mean about it.
You have to think about all of this stuff. You should see the lawsuits alone, that we have for slip and falls and popcorn kernels. People wonder why tickets are so high? Well, that's part of it.
Anyhow, I don't know what your reality is for going to the movies, but it seems to differ from mine and as I said I ran them for 7 years in a market that was number 2 and 3 respectively in the country at various times, not some podunk town out in the middle of nowhere.
A lady had a heart attack and died during the crucifixition scene of a very powerful and controversial movie about the last 12 hours of Jesus's life here on Earth. You can draw any conclusions that you like from that statement.
Take care, Chris
Didn't "Jaws" cause some heart attacks when it was released, or is that just urban legend?
had it not been jaws, no one woulda known.Porno palaces (when they still existed, before VHS and DVD) had a fairly high number.
One assumes older men in raincoats, but that would be conjecture.
No, it was clearly older women in raincoats.
nt
RubenSan Francisco, California
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