antw.re: everyone's gone to the movies

[Clément Levy]

Hi there!
>  ps: another cinema story, if you like ... the one time i realized the 
> huge  
>  differences between german and american feeling-culture ("affektkultur") 
> most  
>  was back in naughty-six when my wife and i were for honeymoon in nyc ... 
> having 
>  had walked brooklyn and manhattan for about 9 hours, as food some snacks 
> and a 
>  couple of beers, we came to lincoln center where they showed a woody 
> allen 
>  comedy (probably "bullets over broadway"). "hey, let's go for a funny 
> movie!" 
>  i said to my wife and in we went. the cinema smelled like a perfum shop, 
>  and people were dressed as if invited for the academy awards or 
> something. 
>  with jewelry and such. it was a saturday evening in may. to say that  
>  people had been waiting for us two tall german street-wear-wearing and   
>  
>  beer-smelling tourists would mean an exaggeration... the movie was 
> partly  
>  really funny and so - people in germany, no matter what class, they do 
> this in 
>  movie-houses! - we laughed. & laughed. and laughed. the others didn't, 
>  though. you know, the social frame would have allowed a single "haha" or 
> "hö", 
>  perhaps even two "hihihi" after another... yet certainly not this 
> uncivilized 
>  horse-laughter! folks sitting near to us freezed, keeping their breath 
> short,  
>  cause any moment the teutonic laughter-beast could raise its ugly head 
> again... 
>  now, would can you do? since we had paid and did not do anything against 
> the  
>  law (or are there "anti-public-laughter-laws" in new york?), we of 
> course kept 
>  our seats and with the minutes us continental misfits came to laugh not 
> only   
>  about the movie but also about the situation itself. guess we kinda 
> spoiled   
>  those people's saturday night amusement... you should have seen the 
> looks when 
>  my wife & i left after the show. "these german tourists...they really 
> lack 
>  manners ..."
>          
>  pps: there's btw also a certain seinfeld episode ... "oh jerry, how 
> could you  
>  do this during 'schindler's list'?!"
> 
Your story is really funny. 
I guess we European consider Allen more as a director for comic films than 
as an intellectual, although he might be both. I heard that his films have 
fast no public in the USA. So if New Yorkers look at his films as 
philosophic works or so, they may not laugh at all. 
Das Todlachen ist aber ein Schatz auf dem Erde, nicht ? French are very 
keen on "fou rire", and cinema, even Woody Allen still means entertainment 
(for this reason, I prefer Mulholland Drive which is aswell a post-
modernist work and a kind of thriller,-- and we should be careful and not 
think that this film is good because it's been produced by Frenchies, they 
make money and show off, like Jean-Marie Messier, who says everywhere that 
his company produced Lynch's MD so that we forget that he also produces 
junk music and junk TV and junk movies everywhere: this is called Vivendi-
Universal). 
Do you remember Pulp Fiction by Tarantino in wich there's a scene where the 
guy played by John Travolta tells how cinema theaters are different in 
Europe (he calls these differences "little differences", and in Amsterdam 
you can drink beers watchin' a movie, and in glass cups, not paper")...
Well, thanks for your story. Please excuse my errors in english.
Babaille.
Clément