It's really hard for me to write today's blog, because what I really want to do - instead of putting together a considered and articulate piece of writing - is type "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP, AS SOON AS THE LIGHTS GO DOWN IN THE CINEMA, THAT'S WHEN YOU SHUT UP."
As you might have guessed from the nature of that textual outburst, I have struggled greatly of late.
My interactions with the cinemagoing public have left me teetering on the brink of a Falling Down-style rampage of indiscriminate violence. "I just want to watch... the movie."
Yes, I'm talking about audiences who feel that the cinema is their private play space within which they can chat, check their texts and emails, play games, even make phonecalls.
Mercifully, the bulk of my cinema experiences are at preview screenings, and while critics are not immune to making noise in a movie theatre, it tends to only be when warranted (to wit, gales of laughter during Burlesque).
However I do not see films solely within the context of work; like anyone, I "go to the movies". It is there that I am regularly driven to writhing, seething fury by the incessant noise of my fellow ticketholders.
It's not an exaggeration to say I fear that cinema etiquette is gone forever.
This weekend just past, I went to see Jane Eyre. The film was utterly exquisite - the audience was abhorrent.
At face value there didn't seem to be any cause for alarm: the crowd was mostly older people, save for a group of what looked like Year 12 students and their teachers, and the screening was on a Sunday morning at one of Village Knox's Europa cinemas.
Well, how wrong was I. The crowd yakked at full volume the entire way through the trailers, which is always a bad sign. A light smattering of low-level chat through the trailers is understandable, but this lot were engaging in full-bore conversation.
Eventually the lights went down and the film began. The music swelled. STILL they chatted, all the way through the titles until Jane Eyre first appeared on the screen.
As the poor woman dragged herself, sobbing, across the moors, the two women next to us carried on talking. "Oh, you really must see Red Dog, it's fantastic," they cooed, like hens.
The teenagers down the front kept opening chip packets and checking their phones.
I issued a violent "SSSSHHH" when I could take no more. That shut them up for, oh, about two minutes.
For the rest of the film we were subjected to constant commentary, inappropriate laughter, witless banalities, and never-ending coughs during scenes of quiet dialogue.
When Jane returned to Mr Rochester's charred manse, our neighbour droned, "Ooh, I bet everyone's gone." NO FUCKING SHIT, LADY.
By the time the lights came up at the end, we were ropeable.
The thing is, it wasn't like that was a particularly bad example of cinema etiquette; nearly every screening I attend these days is marred by rustling chip packets (the worst offenders being the numbnuts who seemingly think it's better to wait for a quiet scene to open their snacks; der, everyone knows you open your choc-top during an explosion) and endless chatter.
At one screening a woman's phone rang, which would have been bad enough had she not then proceeded to take the call. Yep: "Oh hey, yeah, I'm at the movies..."
To add insult to injury, this was the crescendo of a parade of bad cinema etiquette on her part that had also included constant texting throughout the film. I leaned forward and hissed, "If you're not going to get off that fucking phone then get out of the fucking cinema."
(Yes, I'm "That Person", but what does it say about our society that the "That Person" at the cinema is the one who tells people to be quiet, and not the person shattering the quiet to begin with?)
Why? Why does it have to be like this?
Amanda Dunn put it well in The Age last year, "Perhaps it's also our own silence and stillness that freaks us out — having to go for a few hours without tweeting, facebooking, texting or playing with the latest app on our phones. I have seen people so patently horrified at the thought of being incommunicado that they put their phone on silent and keep checking it during a film, radiating a little blue light in the process."
At LA's Arclight Cinemas, a staff member addresses the audience before each screening; they stand in front of the screen and remind you not to check your phone or talk during the film. It's a habit that locals often bristle at, but I couldn't help thinking of those waistcoated ushers while my fellow cinemagoers were chatting away through Jane Eyre.
Would it help if Australian cinemas introduced a similarly schoolmarm-ish approach to screenings? I can see the Herald Sun/A Current Affair stories now ("Nanny state cinemas want to stop you from enjoying yourself...")?
People seem to have genuinely become so hopelessly solipsistic that they need to be reminded that the cinema is not, actually, their living room, and that other people have paid for the privilege of seeing a film unmarred by their constant noise.
And if cinemas don't have the guts to introduce a person or an announcement to remind people to be quiet, then I'll just have to keep up my work as a tireless defender of silence in the cinema.
Go on, sit next to me and talk: I dare you.