User blog:Timebomb192potato/Carwardine Forums "C/Movies" discussion: "Children terrified when Montreal movie theater shows La Llorona instead of Detective Pikachu


 * BrisbyBabe21: "I remember back in 1998 my parents took a 10-year old me to see Mulan, but they started playing Deep Impact instead. The staff didn't realize the mistake until a minute in (hell, the audience fully realized the mistake and started laughing their a**es off when they saw DEEP IMPACT flash across the screen) and I was introduced to a lot of science jargon before they shut it off halfway through. I will never forget the image of hoardes of soccer moms demanding refunds.


 * Many years later, I went to see Pitch Perfect 2 with my niece. The trailers play, then all of a sudden the Warner Bros. logo comes on screen. "Another trailer?" I thought. A few minutes in, we see... people in leather and a**-kicking and pimped-out monster trucks and stuff like that. Mad Max: Fury Road was playing for about 5 minutes before the entire theater stormed out to bark at the manager."
 * InvisibleDuck: "I'd like to imagine some bored punk kid dragged in by his family screaming "HELL YEAH!" as Mad Max Fury Road starts playing."
 * BrisbyBabe21: "I guess so. Relating back to the Mulan screwup, I vaguely remember my dad going "Whaaa..." as he saw action and science fiction trailers start playing instead of the trailers you'd expect to see in front of a family-friendly Disney film."
 * RyanNo2: "Back in '03 when I worked for a Calumet branch of a mom-and-pop theater chain native to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, one of my fellow projectionists accidentally threaded up Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World instead of The Cat in the Hat. The film starts with a guy getting amputated in battle. I was there to hear our manager say "Booth projectionist in theater 3, please report to the lobby", and to see the projectionist round the corner to see our manager standing next to a bunch of irate moms and traumatized kids. He wound up having the concessions guys hand out free passes while apologizing to each and every one of them."
 * BigManJoe: "Storytime again! Years ago (2003 to be exact), Chandler Cinemas was bought out by the Mexican Cinepolis chain. The head office down in Morelia, Mexico drafted in a new manager, freshly retired from the Gross Alaska chain down in Alaska. He got this great idea to show head office how experienced he was with his new plan for our site (Gardner, MA - aka Cinepolis Wachusett)


 * Instead of projectionists coming in at 8:00 a.m. to get ready for the first round of shows at 10:00 he decided that we would come in at 4:52 a.m. and he'd start preparing to run the first round of shows at 9:00. That way, we could save SEVERAL HOURS of payroll within a week!


 * This plan lasted about two weeks, and here's how it ended...


 * One Saturday, we were scheduled for Theater 1 to show a matinée re-release of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Theater 3 to show Redwall: The Movie, both starting around 11:00. However, his sub-plan was, since Theater 3 was pretty huge (I mean, we screened the first Potter film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, in that auditorium back when it was the Chandler Gardner 14), he wanted to move Potter into Theater 3 and Redwall into Theater 1, since he was anticipating to fill the place. We swapped reels, but didn't swap the posters and signs for the auditoriums. As a result, hoardes of Potter fans, freshly woken up and dressed in costume, piled into Theater 1 - labelled as Potter but showing Redwall - and a bus dropped off a bunch of middle schoolers which were led by their teacher into Theater 3 - labelled as Redwall but showing Potter.


 * About two minutes later, the manager ran up to me while I was helping with concessions. "Joe! You gotta help me!" Imagine the fun of a group of Harry Potter fangirls and grown-a** adult men dressed as Harry Potter characters having to see cute animals killing each other with swords and such, while an auditorium full of middle schoolers were befuddled to see Harry Potter instead of Matthias.


 * Our manager and some staffers wound up handing out free passes to a house of irate Potter fans and disappointed middle schoolers and then swapped the reels to start both films again.


 * His little payroll saving scheme ended right there and then. I mean, seriously, why didn't he notice that the trailers were for kids' movies instead of more "adult" features and vice-versa? He must have started running the reels and then walked away."


 * [delorted]: "This didn't surprise me. Once I went to a theater for some Adam Sandler movie and then one of the Saw films started playing. It stopped halfway through and then some elevator music started playing before the ushers came in to apologize and hand out free passes."


 * The_Visible_Woman: "Back in 1998, I was working on a Saturday morning, a sunny day outside, sold-out matinee of Barney's Great Adventure.


 * And then the world's most clueless projectionist started Species II. I turn the corner, a concerned mother comes over to me, and I rush into the theater to see the alien horrors' rage as I'm screaming over the radio demanding the projectionist to shut it off.


 * He got fired on the spot, but then got re-hired after he complained to his union (it was either United Auto Workers or the Teamsters if memory serves me right)."


 * JayHawaii: "I used to be a projectionist back in the late 80s. Accidentally started Halloween 5 instead of The Little Mermaid. There were a lot of upset parents that day. I got demoted from "booth operator" to "concessions" a few days later, but then managed to get the position back after complaining to my union."