|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
By Dylan Masvidal & Jack Tellier
Movie theaters are meant to provide an escape from the outside world, a place where patrons collectively agree to watch and enjoy without making a fuss.
But lately, a lack of respect for the moviegoing experience has spoiled audience immersion.
“Someone left a used insulin syringe inside a cup holder,” said Ryan Arango, a team lead at the Regal Kendall Village. “It’s ridiculous.”
Recently, local moviegoers have suffered even worse behavior, which ranged from patrons being the victim of silly string and blue slushie attacks to used condoms scattered across an auditorium.
This is nothing new in South Florida.
In 2018, a Cinemark in Boynton Beach turned violent when a teen was arrested by police after attacking and pulling another teen’s hair, then spraying her with mace. A Saturday night in 2022 turned into chaos outside of an AMC in Pembroke Pines after false rumblings of a possible shooter, stemming from an argument between a group of teenagers, ended with a 15-year-old girl getting run over by a car.
Since then, the Regal Kendall Village, which is located at 8595 SW 124 Ave., has become a hotspot.
“I’d be kicking out a group of kids for sneaking in an air horn while simultaneously refunding a couple who had been pelted by red and blue slushies,” said Arango, who was tasked with checking in on screenings of “A Minecraft Movie” last April.
Teens have consistently caused problems. Arango sees it as the consequence of a lack of supervision.
“They get a taste of freedom and they don’t know how to handle it,” Arango added. “It especially happens inside a movie theater because they don’t have an adult watching them.”
In the four years assistant manager Adrian Gomez has been working at Regal, he’s heard it all.
“A lot of people see it as,‘If we don’t leave a mess, then the workers who clean the auditorium will be out of a job,’” said Gomez. “That isn’t the case by any means.”
When Gomez started, it took one or two employees to clean an auditorium on a routine day. Now, he says, two staffers, would be “drowning” if they had to tidy up.
Not long ago, Gomez says, he had to evacuate the entire building after a pack of teens snatched a fire extinguisher off the wall and doused an auditorium, then left. It was the fourth time that’s happened during his tenure.
Bad behavior extends to people not paying for a ticket. One teenage customer of the CMX theater in Palm Beach Gardens, 17-year-old Gavin Collins, says most people his age sneak into movies.
“The movies have gone up in price, like, really a lot,” said Collins. “If a lot of people don’t see anyone checking tickets, they can just walk in.”
During one trip to the movies, he and a large group bought tickets, only for the employee to let them in without checking.
“He was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t care. Y’all can just all go,’” said Collins. “Some people that work, they just don’t care. They have to deal with all the trash and stuff.”
Although many teenagers like Collins now rarely go to the movies, 22-year-old Denis Gonzalez is an AMC Stubs A-List member. This means he can attend up to four films a week for free.
Gonzalez thinks the corporations that own the theater chains are the real problem.
“Most of the employees are minors,” he said. “I would blame the companies for not enforcing stricter rules and hiring more professional people to work.”
A registered behavioral technician, Gonzalez frequently takes his young, special-needs clients to watch movies. He recalled an incident when an AMC employee shined his flashlight in the face of one client, a 21-year-old nonverbal autistic man.
This was a mix-up that Gonzalez says could have been completely avoided.
Gonzalez still views movie theaters as a positive place and likes to reward himself with a trip after a long day of work.
“I don’t think it’s always bad going to the movies. I actually encourage it.”
Gomez, in spite of it all, also shares this belief, viewing the cinema experience as something of great value.
“You got to roll with the punches for the guests that care,” he said. “They’re paying good money to come and watch a movie at our theater and we wouldn’t want them to get any less of what they paid for.”
This story is part of a collaboration between Miami’s Community Newspapers and the Lee Caplin School of Journalism & Media at Florida International University.
