Denise Haskew watches films mainly on DVD now and will resist going to the cinema again until exhibitors ban noisy food.

Article first published: Summer 2005

The Film Council has recently invested several millions in a digital cinema project in the hope of increasing viewing choice at cinemas. Audio technology companies such as Dolby are constantly updating their sound technology to give us the highest fidelity surround sound for our aural as well as visual pleasure, and digital post processes mean that movies are now capable of being far more visually arresting than ever before.

So why, if the idea is to encourage film fans to watch movies at the cinema rather than waiting around for the DVD or TV movie premier, aren’t distributors, the Film Council, in fact anyone with a vested interest in motivating cinema attendance – why aren’t these people petitioning cinema owners to stop selling noisy, gassy, disgusting foodstuffs? I know where you’re supposed to sit in a cinema. In the middle so you’re looking at the screen head-on and say about a third of the way back (some people insist on row 12, but I find that cinemas vary too much to be that specific). But do I sit there? No! Once I get into the cinema I only ever have one thought: to sit as far away as possible from anyone who looks like they’ve stocked up on enough popcorn to sit out a small-to-medium sized nuclear winter.

This generally means occupying the least desirable seat – you know the place, so far back that the surround sound is coming from in front of you. This is normally close to one of the corners, but not quite at the back where the chavs sit, snogging chavettes and deriving comfort from the fact that from this distance the screen occupies the same proportion of their visual field as the TV at home.

So what is it with cinema ‘food’? Did you see what I did there? I put inverted commas round food. Why? Because of all the cinemas I’ve ever visited I don’t think I’ve ever found one item of food or drink (bottled water aside) that would rate a mention in a guide to even average nutrition. Have you ever wondered why cinema critics only review the film and not the whole viewing-at-the-cinema experience? Because if they did it would have to go something like this:

“My partner and I were directed to a vertically tiered seating structure, where we spent the first 10 minutes playing a charming game of stand-up/sit down as late audience arrivals made their way past us to their seats. For our convenience, a six-inch strip of cola-stained gum-encrusted 1960s carpeted flooring was provided at our feet for our coats and handbags.

“For a starter, my partner chose the industrial-sized bucket of corn pieces, pre-deep fried until golden then microwaved until rubbery and served with a shovel of high sodium salt crystals. I opted for the honeycombed pieces of processed sugar, shaped by the chef into 30 perfectly regular spheres and jacketed in highly emulsified, low cocoa content milk chocolate.

“For the main course we selected the house mezze, a smorgasbord of lovingly cellophane-wrapped mouth-watering candies, shaped into eminently chewable squares, sugar-encrusted jellied circles, scintillating coconut and licorice wheels, and even tiny babies, reminiscent of brightly coloured miniature voodoo dollies.

“The whole ensemble was washed down with a logo-emblazed cardboard oil drum filled with two kilos of ice and a pleasantly bouqueted liquid formed from a syrup of sugar and unspecified vegetable extract masterfully reconstituted by the addition of four litres of locally sourced tap water.”

It’s not that the food served at cinemas is universally shite (although it is), but that it shouldn’t be there at all. Until recently I was a smoker. I smoked 30 cigarettes or so a day – around one every 20 minutes. If I went without one for half an hour, I started to get a bit jittery. Yet I have the willpower to sit on an aeroplane for 12 hours without smoking. I sat through The Return of the King without reaching for a cigarette – and I was physically addicted to nicotine.

So if I could go without smoking for three hours, 19 minutes and 24 seconds because I wanted to see a movie, then the rest of the audience should be able to go without stuffing their fat faces full of industrially processed comestible garbage. I wasn’t allowed to smoke during the film out of – wait for it – consideration for other cinemagoers. Consideration! What’s considerate about sitting 18 inches from a perfect stranger’s ear and stuffing your orifice full of popcorn for 35 minutes – and chewing with your mouth open, and putting more popcorn into your slavering foul-odoured oral cavity before you’ve successfully dispatched the previous load.

Then there are those people who know they’ve got noisy food and try to eat it in as considerate a manner as possible. Which means that instead of sticking your hand in the Maltesers wrapper and taking a handful, you take anything up to a minute to manoeuvre your fingers into the wrapper millimetre by millimetre until you’ve grabbed a sticky globe between your thumb and forefinger, dropped it again like one of those grabbing machines at the fairground, before finally finding it again, lifting it up slowly, and putting it in your mouth and crunching it in slow motion. Repeat two dozen times, each time providing a low background rustling at just the right volume to cause maximum annoyance, eventually leading to me turning round and yelling, “oh for fuck’s sake just eat the goddam thing.”

Cinema owners must know that selling noisy food will spoil the film for serious movie fans – if they think it’s OK to sell slurpy drinks and cellophane-wrapped crunchy food, then they might as well let the cleaner come in and vacuum the floors during the showing. Of course, there’s money in reconstituted pigswill, otherwise there’d be no point in selling it. But I’m not saying stop selling it – just tell people to eat it before they go into the cinema, that’s all.

If people want to suck each other’s faces in the back row, they should get a room; if they want to eat, they should get a restaurant. They should only go to the cinema for one reason – to watch a movie. If exhibitors are serious about providing a good viewing experience for their customers, then they should take note of this.

Denise Haskew After 10 years as a television commissioning editor, Denise decided she needed a more intellectual challenge, so she gave it up to become a model. She has done all sorts of useless jobs, such as magazine publishing and PR. She plans to be on the first big spaceship to leave the Earth, alongside all the telephone sanitizers.