Caveat Empty

There are no guarantees. I hope the information in this blog is helpful. That is all I mean for it to be. Maybe not perfect, but maybe helpful. I recently went to see a movie in Atlanta at Atlantic Station, near my old neighborhood, now called Midtown. Atlantic Station is built over the bulldozed grounds once containing the Atlantic Steel Mill and neighborhoods of O’Keefe High School, rival of Grady High School, my alma mater. When I arrived at the box office of the gleaming new multi-plex movie theatre in Atlantic Station, on a street itself that looks slightly make-believe, like a movie-set, I double-checked with the ticket seller to confirm that indeed the film I came to see was Open-Captioned for the hearing impaired, and that this was the time of the scheduled showing. My wife and I bought our tickets, located the theatre with the name of our movie, as well as the important designation of “OC” for Open Captions over the entrance. We took our seats and entertained ourselves with popcorn and soft-drinks while the usual non-captioned movie previews played. Then our movie began. But no captions. We waited. Maybe there was a technical problem. Still no captions. We left our seats and found the theatre manager, who apologized for our inconvenience. They must have received a copy of the film with no captions by mistake. This sometimes happens. I was not happy. We had gone to the trouble of driving there and parking in a cumbersome underground lot, spent $20 on popcorn and soft-dinks, and now the evening was pretty much shot. More apologies. A cash refund for the purchase price of the tickets. Plus two free passes. They did their best.

In the past year, I have actually chosen to go to two movies that I knew were not captioned. I went to see Bobby, the movie about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, figuring it was about something I was so familiar with that I did not really need to understand exactly every word that was said. Also I thought this would be an interesting experiment for my cochlear implant brand of hearing, which tests at around 85-percent comprehension in the quiet of my audiologist’s office, then drops like a rock with the introduction of background noise, complexity, and reality. I enjoyed Bobby just fine. Another time I went to see No Country for Old Men, without captions. I had read the book by Cormack McCarthy, probably my favorite living writer, twice. I knew the story, the taciturn dialogue, and straightforward moral. Unfortunately, I did not get much out of this film, even though it won all the Oscars. I’ll try it again when my rental store gets the DVD, with captions.

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Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter