I woke myself up with the sound of my own snoring during a screening of The Gods Must Be Crazy in college. Then did the same during a midnight showing of Brazil years later. It would have been the 10th time I saw the film, so no hard feelings, Terry Gilliam.
The only movies I’ve fallen asleep to were actually action movies:
300
Quantum of Solace
Once.
It was some very bad Scifi film (can’t remember the title) but to its credit ? I worked graveyard as a repossessor. I feel asleep due to exhaustion.
I went to a screening of Mishima with Paul Schroeder in attendance.
unfortunately I went to eat before hand and about 30 min in i started dozing.
needless to say i missed a good 30-40 min
This may sound like something a guy who doesn´t like movies would confess, but I really love cinema.
When you walk into a theather, your troubles, your fears, your doubts, everything awaits for you there, by the snacks kiosk. Your body starts to responde immediately, starting on your heart, that it lowers it´s beats, while your muscles relax and your head, well, your head goes anywhere.
Sometimes, without wanting to or even feeling like it, I fall sleep. I´m helpless: I may be enjoying the movie, hating it or even not caring about it, and then, Morpheus takes me into his arms and lulls me into sleep. And yes, sometimes I´m a snorter!
The funny thing is that sometimes I go to see that movie again, to catch whatever I missed, but, no, it seems like I saw everything, as if my mind was still paying attention to the screen while I dozed off.
I´ve slept in lots of movies, but the one that really did the trick was Richard Linklater´s Waking Life: I loved it so much I´ve seen it three times on the big screen in different places and festivals, but every single time I fell sleep, like a baby, deeply, profoundly. I love that feeling of homeness-ness (pardon my english! I´ve learnd watching movies!), like if the movie, the screen, even – sometimes – the seats tell you that it´s ok, that you can give up, surrender and feel like in the womb, like kicking with joy, like getting ready to see the world, but just in a while, later, when there´s nothing more to do than go to the kiosk on your way out, and take your problems with you, one more time.
That´s what movies are to me, a shelter, a home. a safe place. I feel no guilt or remorse if I fall sleep: if the movie was good I´ll be back, if not, I´ll leave it like that, I´ve seen a good sleep-inducing movie.
I used to think I was too much of a cinephile to fall asleep during a movie but aging + sleep deprivation = drifting off at the cinema. I fell asleep during “Le Pont du Nord” which was screening here as part of a Jacques Rivette retrospective. I wasn’t disinterested, just really really tired. And I find it hilarious that someone else mentioned “Copland” — I too fell asleep even though I was psyched about watching it. “The Mummy Returns” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” both put me to sleep due to sheer boredom… guess Brendan Fraser just doesn’t do it for me.
Has anyone considered that maybe the reason so many doze off to Waking Life is that it’s really, really boring? Don’t get me wrong, I love philosophy and surrealism and existentialist mumbo jumbo, but even I was hard-pressed to stay focused when I saw that in the theater. Also, some of the animation made me seasick.
One can go to sleep at good movies, as well. I remember vividly sleeping through “The Sting.” I also remember staying awake for every exciting moment of “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” (Am I have a Quaylean moment?) Nothing to do with the quality of the films, but everything to do with my state of mind at the screening.
I disagree with you, MR E2 ME. A little, at least. I didn´t find Waking Life boring. It felt like actually dreaming, like being drawn into it. The pace, the mood, the setting, even the seasick parto of it its the best recolection of the dreaming stage, with every part of the process, like slipping away. Yes, sometimes there´s not much happening and sometimes the characters can be intolerable and their speeches too “serious and self concious”, in the exact limits between snobism and pretenciousness, but at the same time it´s like… a dream, isn´t it?
Frustration, loneliness, joy: all the moods, all the sensations are there, grabbing you by the nose, making you get into a real stream of unconciousness. Philosophy, surrealism and existencialism are as present – and as redudant, sometimes – as they can, but the thing in there it´s the way it makes you travel almost phisically, to a stage you already know. Been there, lived that.
I guess I gave up one of my favorite directors, right? That one who died sadly after making Before Sunset, leaving that post mortem gem, A Scanner Darkly…
I don’t dislike the movie at all. In fact, I own it on DVD. I’m just saying that it DOES have a tendency to induce “sleepiness” when watched, but maybe you’re right – maybe it’s more because it’s so much like an actual dream than it is because it’s got some “boring” parts. Still, some of the animation is nearly unwatchable for me, not because it isn’t nice to look at but because of the way the “camera” is never at rest.
Yeah, that´s right, it´s like the whole time everything it´s trying to escape its edges. I guess it´s like a way of keeping it unreal with it´s over the top surrelistic moments that leave aside all the intentions of being subtle.
Another movie that made me sleep like, but in an uncomforable way was Inland Empire. The thing with Lynch is that dreams=nightmares. I´ve seen the movie without blinking the first time, but the secon time I left myself go, and boy did I felt uneasy!
Lynch is the master of horror no one discovered yet!
I can’t recall any time I’ve fallen asleep at the theatre, though I do frequently fall asleep when watching at home since a usually do most of my movie viewing past midnight and I’m always tired
Not at the theatre.
Have watched hundreds of movies in a theater but fallen asleep only once …. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was the movie. Utterly boring and stupid movie.
1408
Talladega Nights
The Dark Knight
i fell asleep in peter jacksons remake of king kong. hate that movie
I have only fallen asleep once at the movies…Ice Age 2!!! Why did I let my girlfriend talk me into it?!
Contact
The Last Samurai*
The Matrix Revolutions*
Resident Evil: Apocalypse*
*I was a little stoned. And in college. So forgive me. Actually, I’m still in college. Those movies were shite though.
Ocean’s 13
I had a pair of gin and tonics before the show.
I thought it would put me in the groove.
I think they did me in instead.
I’ve done this a number of times, but not so many that I can’t recount all of them. The first time was when I was a teenager (14) and I went to see my first midnight movie. It was Rocketeer and I was desperate to see it. I fell asleep. A year + later I went to see Freejack (why? I was a sci-fi lovin’ teen) at the dollar theater and fell asleep early.
Cut to 2004: I’m a grown man now and I decide to go and see Steamboy (late show) and follow it with a midnight screening of The Shining. 20 minutes in and I have decided that the movie is a complete waste of time. However, leaving and then getting back on line for the midnight movie is an option I don’t like so I decide to drift off to dreamland, wake up, and watch The Shining with a well-rested brain. My plan succeeded except for the fact that I then fell asleep during The Shining as well. ~sigh
Great topic.
I fell asleep during the third Matrix thing. I had no idea what was going on and all I can remember is there was an “important” war being waged on Reeves and his crew and it must have went on for 19 hours. I woke up during the credits, turned to my friend who said “that sucked.” I said “huh.”
Confession: I sleep in the theatre at most film festivals I go to. I’m not talking about Cannes or Sundance or Telluride, I’m talking about small regional film festivals in the middle of nowhere. I will stay awake if I’ve personally met the filmmaker, otherwise I crash during almost every other screening. The quality is usually very low as they tend to program a lot of films from the region from first time filmmakers and the formula becomes familiar. I always stay out very late discussing movies and usually drinking a lot with other directors so the only time I can find to catch up on sleep is during the actual festival.
In between classes, I went to see Shaun of the Dead for a second time. The theatre’s arm rests flipped up, so I laid out across 3 or 4 seats and napped for about 30 minutes. Love the movie, but I needed a place to sleep!
Cannes constantly knocked me out. I saw Last Days and my friend and I traded off elbowing the other one awake. We both wanted to see the film, but just were physicallly incapapble to stay awake that week.
I remember seeing an opening scene of an Italian film that year, and realizing that some of the spoken Italian wasn’t being completely subtitled… then woke up to applause. Ahhhh, Cannes :)
es estupido, pero si, me he dormido debo aceptarlo, por eso debi comprar unas sillas de teatro para instalar en mi cuarto y evitar dormir mientras veia “Twin Peaks” que ohh por dios que es genial… es impresionante Lynch es un genio.. pero en la segunda temporada me dormi en un par de episodios, sin embargo me los vi a la mañana siguiente.
I used to go to teh big hollywood blockbuster midnight movies when they’d premier in my youth, and because of that I slept through the midnight show of Star Wars Episode 2 (to my infinite luck), Spiderman 2 (also to my luck) and at least one of the Lord of The Rings films.
Oh and I slept through a good 50 minutes of the third Pirates movie, upon waking I noticed my gf was asleep as well, so I woke her and we left.
I tend to drift off during frenetic action sequences. As for home viewing, thinking about starting to write down dreams I have after falling asleep to movies (nearly every night).
Oh man, I could not keep my eyes open during Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I really wanted to see it to, but I forgot my glasses and just kept dozing. And I have this bad habit of jerking while falling asleep, like a full body jerk that scares the crap out of me, well, I did it twice and accidentally kicked the seat in front of me. I got a mean look for that one, rightfully so.
I almost fell asleep in The Hours. It was a midnite show and I had gotten up early. I was so tired and that score….but I pushed through and stayed awake.
Robert Altman’s Gosford Park. Maybe it was the relaxing moods of the scenes. I caught it again on TV and appreciated the movie this time around.
I’m with Joshua. It was “There Will Be Blood” in a theater 40 miles from home, the 10 p.m. show on the Friday of an impossibly taxing week. No reflection on the film, of course, and not really an anomaly when it comes to home viewing. I’m an indiscriminate dozer on the couch or in bed. No matter if it’s football, “Adult Swim,” the Food Network, Keith Olbermann or that infomercial for the appliance that makes margaritas AND guacamole with one handy flip o’ the wrist. Lights out + horizontality = ZZZZzzzzzz.
I fell asleep during Tropic Thunder, but I had just flow on a red eye from Anchorage to Atlanta to Chicago and I can’t really sleep on planes and then I was dragging all of my crap all over the loop until I found a movie theater and I ended up falling asleep during the middle and probably missed 15 minutes or so. I remember it being funny, but I was too tired to laugh.
MrE2Me
I suffer from the same affliction as Charlotte, above. I just can’t seem to fall asleep in a theater, no matter how terrible the movie is. Even at home I usually make myself watch something until the end, which is probably some mild form of obsessive compulsive disorder. There have been several films I came very close to walking out of, but only one that I did – Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle. No, I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece, but my GOD was that terrible! My friend and I split after less than 30 minutes. The theater was literally empty. Poor projectionist…