The Miscreants of Cinema Are Coming to an Indie Screening Near You
Quick thoughts on audience behavior at the theater
If there was any reverence for cinema, people are now pissing that away. I call the pissers "miscreants of cinema." If you've seen a movie at a multiplex sometime in the past 15 years, you know what I'm talking about. The war to get teens and grown folk who act like teens to not have full-blown conversations, to not talk on their phones, to not text on their phones, while watching a movie in a theater...that war has been raging for years now. And it is uncertain which side is winning. What's troubling is that some of this disrespect for cinema has been coming to indie screenings and festivals. I'll come back to that in a bit.
I must say that in my theater travails lately I've noticed less of this behavior. It's probably been over a year since I've had to tell a group of teens to keep it down when they decided to break into full-blown convo mode during a movie. Speculating, there are two things going on here for the decrease in the trend.
First, location and price. I live in NoHo and most frequently see films at the Burbank 16 or, less frequently, at AMC Universal. This part of town is filled with people that make movies, aspire to make movies for a living, know people that work in the field, or are movie nerds. Inherently there is a little bit more respect for cinema here than in the average town.
I also tend to go to the pricier screening options these days when I see a film: IMAX, or Dolby, or the upscale option each theater chain has available. The miscreants typically (though not exclusively) tend to not want to pay extra to not watch a movie. Luckily, chains offer subscriptions like AMC Stubs so I can actually afford to go to these pricier screening options which would otherwise cost $20 to $26 a pop.
Second, I think the miscreants just aren't going to movies as often. For better or worse (worse for the industry), people are attending theaters less frequently. This decline stems partly from high ticket prices and partly from shorter attention spans conditioned by TikTok and Instagram's dopamine-heavy content. Movie studios share some blame for this trend by producing less compelling content. As a result, going to a theater to watch a movie has become less of a cultural norm than it was in previous decades. Predictably, miscreants only participate in activities that their social groups value.
I've spent a lot of time here droning on about the multiplex, but that really was just to set a point of reference for miscreant behavior. What I'm seeing and hearing about is a lesser offensive, but still disappointing behavior from filmgoers in independent film spaces—spaces like local indie screening events and film festivals.
I had a recent convo with a festival director friend and we got onto the topic of theater-goer behavior. He started describing something troubling that he noticed at the recent edition of his festival. During a screening block of short films, a huge group of attendees decided to get up and leave in the middle of the program. Why? Because the short they came to see just finished up and they didn't care to stay to see the rest of the shorts in the block or participate in the Q&A at the end of the block.
This behavior exemplifies what I call "miscreant" conduct. It disrupts the viewing experience for audience members trying to watch subsequent films and fundamentally undermines the purpose of film festivals. Festival programmers carefully curate short film blocks, thoughtfully arranging them by tone, quality, and genre to create a cohesive viewing experience. For short filmmakers especially, the value comes from diverse audiences—people who didn't specifically come to see their work—experiencing their films. When viewers only stay for films they already know about or made by people they know, filmmakers lose the benefit of genuine, unbiased reactions. This cross-pollination of audiences and films is precisely what makes festivals valuable and distinct from streaming services.
This wasn't an isolated incident. According to my friend, box office staff regularly fielded requests from patrons wanting discounted tickets to see just one short film within a program block. Such requests fundamentally misunderstand the festival format—it's comparable to asking for a discount because you only want to watch one scene from a feature film.
This attitude is particularly disheartening in festival contexts, where the entire point is discovery and exploration. Festivals exist to introduce audiences to unexpected gems, to inspire through unfamiliar work, and to foster connections between diverse film communities. Sadly, it appears that even independent festivals—traditionally havens for cinematic appreciation—cannot escape the broader erosion of our collective cultural attention.
I believe this behavior directly results from our culture's shift toward on-demand, buffet-style media consumption. Streaming platforms like Netflix have conditioned audiences to expect complete control over their viewing experience—watch what you want, skip what you don't, all on your own schedule and terms. This mentality has apparently followed people out of their living rooms and into traditional cinema spaces, where viewers now expect the same customized experience despite the fundamentally different context.
This trend damages media literacy too, as my festival director friend pointed out. When viewers exclusively consume content they're already familiar with, they fail to develop the ability to recognize and appreciate techniques and elements from diverse genres. Consequently, filmmakers must include more explanatory material to help audiences understand complex narratives and story structures. I expect this problem will intensify as younger generations, raised in algorithmic content bubbles, reach adulthood. The unwillingness to sit through even a few different short films at a festival signals a troubling narrowing of cultural perspective.
Disturbingly, I've observed this same disrespectful behavior among filmmakers themselves. At a recent local screening event in Los Angeles—essentially a mini film festival featuring multiple films across two blocks—I witnessed something particularly disappointing. A group of filmmakers whose work screened early in the first block immediately left the venue after their film ended. Their only return? At the very end, just in time to see if they'd won any awards.
This unwillingness to watch their peers' work reveals much about their character as artists. Their disinterest in learning from fellow filmmakers or supporting the community demonstrates precisely the kind of self-serving, hyper-individualistic mindset threatening independent cinema's future. This cultural shift toward selfishness must be reversed if independent film is to survive and thrive.
My hope is that at least for the independent film scene we can have a respectful culture. Respecting the artists, respecting the hard work. And respecting the promise of what cinema can do for the world.