SHUSH!

Friday, Jan. 7, 2000 | 9:45 a.m.

My wife is not shy about pointing out to someone that they are being rude.

It doesn't matter if the impolite person is your average citizen, a hit man for the mob or a member of a street gang.

If you're rude and obnoxious in her presence, she will let you know.

Which is why I don't take her to movies often.

There are too many rude and obnoxious people in the audience and I never know when I may have to fight our way out of the auditorium.

Hey you! The one with the cell phone! Yeah, you! I paid to see the movie, not to listen to you talk on the phone.

And you! Put that damned laser pointer away before I turn it into a tail light for you.

Doesn't that pager have a vibrator, fella?

For Christ's sake, why don't you two go to a motel!

You! The one with the crying baby! Just because you couldn't find a sitter, you've gotta make everyone suffer?

Why are you talking to the screen? It can't hear you!

Going to movies today can be a trying experience for many of us.

Trying to hear the dialogue. Trying to watch the action. Trying to step out of reality for a couple of hours in the dark to enjoy a good story.

There always seems to be some rude person in the audience. More often than not, it's the person sitting next to my wife.

Fine behavior

Gannett News Service film critic Marshal Fine says that every time he goes to a public showing of a movie, rather than a private screening for critics, it makes him glad he's a critic.

"The last time I went, it was a sneak preview of 'Bicentennial Man.' I took my wife and two kids," said Fine, whose reviews appear periodically in the Sun. "A man was there with his 2- or 3-year old child who walked around, shrieked and yelled for two hours. Nobody ever took the kid in hand to keep him quiet."

Fine says that people are used to sitting in their living rooms watching television, where they talk to the screen or others in the room and are not really that focused on what is going on inside the set. People watch TV more as a diversion, he said, but most go to movies for the totality of the experience. They don't want their attention diverted.

But all too often, someone in the theater audience is inconsiderate.

"I have a three-stage process when someone behind me is being rude," Fine said. "First, I turn around and give them a look. Then I shush them. Then I will go tell the usher."

But by the time you have to resort to getting an usher, Fine notes, you've lost your train of thought and your concentration. The movie experience is ruined. "It's up to parents to teach their kids good manners," Fine said. "It's a learned thing. It's a learned behavior to be a good audience."

Getting better?

Actually, says Tom Ippolito, manager of the UA Showcase Mall Theater on the Strip, movie theater rudeness seems to be on the wane.

"It's an issue, but not a big issue," Ippolito said.

Attendance records may bear that out.

Jack Valenti, chairman and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), told theater owners at the annual ShoWest convention in Las Vegas last March that attendance was at a 40-year high with more than 1.48 billion admissions in 1998 -- an increase of 6.7 percent over 1997.

During the '90s, theater box office receipts grew by almost 50 percent, according to Valenti. And, he said, the fastest-growing segment of the audience since 1993 has been the over-40 crowd, increasing by 35 percent.

Either people are getting accustomed to rudeness in the theaters, or it is true that people are becoming more considerate -- in which case I would feel safe in again taking my wife to the movies.

Terry Ryan, head of the Ryan Group, a Southern California company that provides workshops and videos on manners and etiquette, says that in the last couple of years she has seen the start of a turnaround in attitude.

"In America, right now, we are eager for more order and civility in our life," she said. "We are experiencing rampant misbehavior -- lying politicians, road rage, shootings in school -- Americans are ready for change. They want to take responsibility for their action, to treat others with respect.

"Etiquette and manners give us guidelines, help us in this journey. It should be common sense."

About 75 percent of her business is in teaching etiquette and manners to elementary schoolchildren.

"Children are very aware of their peers and when their peers are acting in a disrespectful way the majority of youth are uncomfortable with that type of behavior and are embarrassed," Ryan said. "The children are asking for the classes, parents are eager for them and schools are looking for them as an adjunct to their curriculum."

Sue Fox, author of the book "Etiquette for Dummies" and founder and president of Etiquette Survival, Inc. and ESK Publishing Group in Northern California, agrees with Ryan.

Five years ago Fox struck a gold mine when she decided to teach manners and etiquette. Her company provides group training and private consultations to business professionals, corporations, children and educational institutions.

"There is an increasing demand for this information," Fox said. "I see more articles, more television show discussions. I'm approached a lot by schools that are interested. I have 22 consultants around the country working primarily with private and charter schools."

She said her basic task is to raise the awareness of the individual. "We live in such a fast-paced world. There is a lot of pushing and shoving when you're in a crowd. But it is so obvious -- we just need to pay attention," she said.

The factors

A number of factors created today's state of rudeness.

"We are a product of the '60s where we didn't feel any of this was necessary," Fox said. "And there is no training available, but for the wealthy. In most families both parents are working and so there is little etiquette training at home. Schools notice the problems with the children who lack self-respect and respect for others."

Fox says that etiquette owes much to the philosophy of Buddha. "It is consideration," she said. "The Buddhist philosophy teaches you to be mindful of what you say and do. You want to make people comfortable."

America is going through an etiquette renaissance, Fox says. "It's a contributing factor to one's personal and professional success. A faux pas you may commit in a work environment could cost you and your company business and relationships. Manners and politeness are the most important quality to encourage in children. It gives one a sense of responsibility, tolerance, self-respect and respect for others," she said.

UNLV Sociology Professor Donald Carns says that a lot of our manners in group settings, such as movie-going, are conditioned by sporting events, where people yell their heads off.

"I was out at the Thomas and Mack. It was freezing cold and there was a guy with his shirt off pouring beer over his head," Carns, 62, said. "I suppose that sort of public behavior is seeping into theaters."

But he doesn't know for sure because he rarely goes to movies. He rents videos like so many others of us. Carns takes a more philosophical view of rudeness.

"I'm not convinced there has been a decline in manners," he said. It boils down to a merging of the masses, with the rich and the poor going to the same events, where different sets of social manners collide.

"At one time society was more stratified. The poor went to wherever the poor went and the rich went to wherever they went," Carns said. "We have put everybody in a mixing bowl. There are mass sporting events and multiplex theaters in shopping centers. There is a democratization of social actions, and that offends some people."

Carns challenges the presumption that good manners were always as important as some people believe. "Americans were a pretty raucous crowd on the frontier," he said. "A life of manners was in the minority, and mostly practiced by women."

Those with the best manners were the rich, who had time to learn and practice them. Carns said that it isn't that we aren't a mannerly society, it's that the country is "headed toward a mannerly society all its own. It's not the old manners, but it is manners. "The purpose of manners is to make it as smooth as possible for people to get along," Carns said.

"My view of American history is that we are a cauldron of change. That is also one of the bummers. We can't fall back too easily on a particular style of manners that will get us through anything, like the British can. There's is a pretty predictable system of manners. Ours are sub-aggragated by class, region and our view of the world."

He pointed to teenagers as an example of the class differences regarding public behavior. "Half the people at malls are teenagers. That's where they hang out now," Carns said. "They have some sophisticated manners between them ... they know who the good ones are and who the bad ones are."

For those who aren't aware of what is acceptable behavior, many movie theaters remind you with a slide or an announcement of some sort before the show begins.

Mark Pascucci, spokesman for Loews Cineplex, one of the largest chains in the country with 2,908 screens, said that his company is concerned about rudeness, "but it is not an all-consuming issue. We do have to contend with people who talk during movies and use cell phones and get pages. But they are a small minority. For the most part, people are cooperative and nice," Pascucci said.

Currently the chain shows a slide on the screen before the show starts to encourage courtesy. "But we're looking into producing a short film," he said.