Movies are for watching, not sleeping through

I went to see Kill Bill 2 this morning and it was good. In fact it was much better than the first one, though considering how I didn't love the first one, that's not so hard. The theatre was pretty full for an 11 am showing, so of course I had a twitchy-nose picking guy sit next to me. That's the kind of luck I have.

However Mr. Twitchy-Picky wasn't the worst of it. Three or four rows ahead of me was Mr. Snore, who felt that it was his job to provide a second soundtrack to the one Quentin Tarantino had chosen. Eventually his seatmate nudged him hard enough that he shut the hell up.

But this reminded me of another time that someone's snoring disturbed my moviegoing experience. A couple of months ago, I was at the very same theatre, watching "The House of Sand and Fog". Not a bad movie, not great mind you, but not awful. It was yet another showcase for Ben Kingsley's awesome talent, never a bad thing. HOWEVER, diagonally behind me was a middle-aged man who fell asleep right after the credits. He managed to sleep through almost all of the movie, snorting and snoring so loud I could barely hear the actors. The person sitting behind him kept kicking his seat, the person sitting next to him seemed to elbow him every couple of minutes, and still he slept on. Someone eventually called an usher who shook the man for a solid minute before he woke up and quieted down.

Wouldn't you know five minutes later he started up again?

So what's the deal with people coming to a movie to fall asleep? Why pay 11 bucks to sit up straight surrounded by strangers and loud noises to sleep when you can do it horizontally and for free at your own house? My theory is that if you're paying for a movie you might as well watch the damned thing, fight to stay awake and go crawl into bed afterwards if you're so sleepy. Then again, what do I know? I paid to see "Waterworld".