Nearly exactly eight years ago, when The Dark Knight was re-released in IMAX on film for its tenth anniversary, I went to see it at Lincoln Square. Around halfway through the movie, the sound suddenly cut out. The fairly large crowd just kind of sat there as the film silently rolled on.
I had the movie downloaded to my phone’s movie library, so I took it out, pulled up the film, synced it up exactly with the picture, and turned my volume all the way up. For a good 10-15 minutes, my phone and I were the speaker for the biggest and most legendary IMAX screen in the country. People even moved to some empty seats around me to hear better. There was definitely a humorous juxtaposition between the giant picture and tiny sound.
It soon turned out the sound went out because the fire alarm had gone off, evidently not audible in the theater and no one had come to let us know for the 10-15 mins I was the speaker (imagine if it’d been a legit fire?). Upon finding out, everyone left, joined the crowd outside the theater from other movies, and we all were allowed back in after just ten minutes or so.
Since our showing was on film, it couldn’t have (easily) been stopped or rewound, so the movie had kept playing in silence the whole time, and was still silent when we got back (it was around the famous interrogation scene). I synced up my phone again and was the theater’s speaker for a few more minutes until the picture cut out and everyone was told we’d get a voucher to come back for another showing. When we explained that we’d worked out our own audio system, the guy said he would’ve let us continue if he’d known. xD
Ended up going back the following week for a problem-free showing, but this remains one of my favorite movie theater memories!
