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12.22.06
The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Chaperone
posted by Absinthe | 1:15 AM
It’s a busy time of year, screening-wise, as everyone’s rushing to get their Oscar pictures out the door by the end of the year. In a months’ time the cinemas will be a wasteland, a post-holiday refuge for the truly desperate who don’t yet realize that anything is preferable to Big Momma’s House 3: If The House Is A-Rockin’, Don’t Bother The Cross-Dressing Fat-Suited Undercover Cop.
But for now it’s an orgy, one that’s kept me from feeling the pangs of the run-up to Christmas. (It’s also kept me from having time to wrap packages, but that’s what tomorrow’s for.) This morning I hit my seventh screening in seven days. True to form, at six of them I had no trouble whatsoever with my “camera” phone. Uneventful as they were, there’s no point in recounting them here.
The seventh is a different story. Pull up a chair.
So I drive across town to the screening site. Going across town in Los Angeles can be a real crapshoot, as you’ve got to leave so early to account for traffic fuckups that you often end up arriving way earlier than you’re supposed to. I make it to the west side in record time and take a little walk before the screening, since a) the theatre is quite a ways from my car and b) when your job entails a lot of sitting on your ass it’s good to get a little exercise when you can. The weather’s nice and brisk, a little more humid closer to the water, almost like a spring-thaw day back where they have weather. It puts me in a good mood.
When I get to the theatre there’s a check-in desk for press, always a good sign; unfortunately one of the nice women behind it asks me if I have a cameraphone. “Sort of,” I say, showing them my SideKick.
“You’ll have to -” she starts.
“My wife’s pregnant and there’s no way I’m giving up my phone,” I say – I’m not cutting her off to be rude, but because there are going to be people behind me in line shortly and I’d like to minimize the impact of my presence.
Note that I’m not sharing with them any particular details, such as the fact that our due date is in May. No, I’m just letting them jump to reasonable conclusions and then not correcting them because, frankly, it’s none of their business.
“Just put it in your pocket,” is the suggestion I’m given. I know a burgeoning disaster when I see one but, what the hell, trying won’t hurt.
I hit the concession stand for a reasonably-sized bag of unbuttered popcorn and an unreasonably-sized cup of lightly-flavored high fructose corn syrup, because I’m hungry and because in my experience the private security companies are less diligent about frisking people carrying multiple precariously-balanced items.
Alas, not this time. I’m wanded by a sport-coated gentleman and then asked if I have a phone on me. When I admit that I do I’m required to produce it, which I do, and as she’s opening up the flap I realize it’s the same exact woman that stymied me the last time. So this time… this time, it’s personal.
She and sportcoat joust verbally with me for a while. I make no progress with her (“You can go in but the phone has to stay outside” is her final word, though she doesn’t respond to my carefully unbelligerent “What, you’re going to stop me?”) but appear to be getting somewhere with sportcoat, so much so that he graduates from stone dismissal to kindergarten logic: “How would that be fair to the other people?”
“What other people?” I ask as innocently as I can, figuring that if I’m going to have to have a pointless argument I might as well have some fun with it. (Yes, I realize that at this point I’m just hopelessly torturing an innocent person who probably isn’t going to give me what I want. I choose to justify this by admitting here that a) I once considered working for the government and b) I am a terrible person.)
“The other people who, who had to walk back to their cars,” he says.
I don’t really have an answer for this, because he’s right. It’s totally unfair. I would be happy to sit down with anyone and discuss the foibles of the policy’s fairness if we could just get past its stupidity. As it is it’s just not my problem.
“Look, I’m just trying to do my job here,” is what I say before he can say it. Finally I set my concessions down and mutter something about finding someone who can actually help me. Back up to the publicist’s desk, where everyone is paid to be friendly!
And, for once, helpful. I’m probably aided by the fact that I choose the nuclear option, making it clear that if I’m not allowed to keep my damn phone I’m leaving, full stop. I’m duly directed to someone who works for the studio, who’s obviously a superior if not technically “in charge”. She agrees to escort me past the barricades. She has not, however, accounted for the tenacity of the security company the studio has hired.
“Look, he’s with me, it’s okay,” she tells the guard. “Really, it’s fine.”
“If you allow a camera into the theatre you release (NAME OF SECURITY COMPANY REDACTED) from all liability if the film is pirated,” he responds in a loud voice.
“There, so… ok, so don’t pirate it or I’ll lose my job,” she says in my direction.
“I couldn’t pirate a flip book with this thing,” I don’t respond.
There’s a moment when it seems like sportcoat will stand his ground, kind of a pseudo-Mexican-standoff where nobody’s particularly interested in making the first move. I decide this is my opening, say “Thanks very much, I appreciate it” to my savior, and slide past the guard.
Victory is mine!
No, not really. Ten minutes later, before the movie starts, another studio rep comes up the steps and says, “I’m sorry, they say I have to actually hold the phone, congratulations, by the way, if it buzzes I’ll give it to you.”
“OK,” I say, figuring what the hell, it’s progress. “It’s going to buzz a lot.” My SideKick buzzes all the time, owing to the fact that it buzzes not only when it rings but when I get an email, when certain people sign on and off of instant-messenger programs, and occasionally because I have set it to buzz to remind me of the kind of thing most humans have little trouble remembering, like, for example, “Eat.”
Excuse me for a moment. My SideKick just told me I have to pee.
So for the first hour or so of the movie my phone is actually in the custody of a young woman who now officially has the dumbest job of the night. Every time it buzzes she hands it back to me, I look at it and confirm that absolutely nothing important has just happened, and then I hand it back to her. The fourth or fifth time it happens, she waves me off and lets me keep it. It’s a Christmas miracle!
On my way out I see my nemeses packing up for the night and, with great effort, refrain from sneering. Not because I beat them at their own game – I don’t figure I won anything, really, and there’s always the chance that my obstinate nature will just get me disinvited from future screenings. No, I’m laughing inside because what’s kept me warm for a couple of hours is something I saw down in the first row off the theatre floor. It’s someone else’s phone, one with a very distinctive skin and keypad illumination. Even from twenty yards away I can tell that it’s a Treo 680, a smart little number from Palm that also handles messaging, emails, organizer stuff, the whole nine yards.
Oh, and it takes pictures.
Oh, I’m sorry. It takes pictures and video clips.
Yeoman’s work, Unnamed Security Company. Yeoman’s work.
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Topics: General Geekery, Random Thoughts, The War On Camphones | 4 Comments »
December 22, 2006 at 9:42 AM
It would seem movie reviewing isn’t the ideal job for someone who refuses to be apart from his phone.
December 22, 2006 at 10:50 AM
In the event the bosses at Tribune choose the nuclear option, where do Is end my resume to be your Sidekick Caddy?
December 22, 2006 at 1:55 PM
Even the finest surgeons run across the occasional complication.
December 22, 2006 at 3:20 PM
I find your cell phone confrontation stories strangely compelling,