For all those who have had problems with cellphones during a performance and haven’t been to the movies lately, attend upon my tale!

I went to see a movie yesterday and during the preview saw something that filled me with great delight. One of the ads featured a guy at a table on a cell phone essentially telling his girlfriend he can’t live without them. Suddenly Sidney Pollack comes in and starts talking about how the scenery is all wrong because the colors are too bright. Then he tells the guy on the cell phone he should be red eyed and pacing around the room instead of sitting.

The guy on the cell phone gives Pollack an incredulous look and Pollack says “I’m sorry, is my directing interrupting your cellphone conversation.”

I was cackling with laughter and was a little envious that the film format allowed them to do this sort of thing. I am half tempted to have my technical director move the rear projection drop downstage so I can project that little ad on it before the shows.

Though I have to also acknowledge there were 3 additional announcements to turn of cell phones – one before and two just after this Pollack piece. One of them was a screen that sat there static for a minute or so while a voice asked people to turn off cell phones a few times. As funny as the Pollack piece was, it might have been too subtle an approach. (Of course, it too plainly asked for cell phones to be turned off.)

It certainly didn’t appear that people understood that the cell phone requests also extended to cessation of all noise. A woman behind me kept chatting in what sounded to be Tagalog for the first half-hour or so of the movie.

A number of theatres have gotten a little clever and produced CDs with cell phone rings that they play preceding a performance to catch people’s attention and ask them to deactive the tones. Heck, the Chicago Sinfonietta even integrated them into a performance. But sometimes it seems like a losing proposition to request people turn them off, no matter how many times you ask.