Cops in a Theater

Sign you're in a pretty safe town: when the manager of the four-screen theater you're watching Snakes on a Plane in calls the police to handle rowdy patrons, they send five or more officers.

That's correct, at the 7:30PM showing this evening at the Regal Seminole, the manager stopped the movie right as Kenan "Good Burger" Thompson took the stick so he could yell at the audience for helping to make a mockery of the movie even Samuel L. Jackson isn't taking seriously. I guess he was worried about a riot, because he brought five cops with him to ask a few people to leave.

So we sat and watched ads for about 10 minutes as the manager and the one guy who felt like speaking up bickered back and forth, then stared each other down until the guy and all his friends got up and left.

At that point the manager reminded the rest of audience that "All you college kids need to remember there are other people in here and they want to see the movie too." Then he left, feeling quite proud of himself and apparently pretending that the six people who were removed had been responsible for a full theater's worth of clapping, cheering, and yelling.

The rest of the movie finished without incident, although there was a marked change in the atmosphere after that. Until, of course, the final scene. No amount of police presence could take away the power of that scene. The Tank Man would have remained in place to witness that scene in all its glory.