"Pay respect to the filmmakers."

You know who would have agreed with you? President Ronald Reagan. For those who missed the Ain't It Cool News interview with Steven Spielberg, I present the following anecdote:

Also, we should remember that trailers used to follow movies--hence the term--but were eventually moved before the feature because audiences were bailing before they ever saw the advertisements for forthcoming movies. It's not my bag, but leaving quickly is nothing new to theater attendance.

I agree, and as much as I enjoy sitting through the end credits, I hate litmus tests even more.

The one inarguable statement in this entire thread, ladies and gentlemen! Now to go entirely off-topic for a moment...

I marvel at the people who believe football is a more active game than baseball. A Wall Street Journal study concluded there's only about 11 minutes of actual play in the average NFL game. The rest of the time is spent with getting players in position, running down the clock, etc. Viewers at home don't realize this because all that downtime is filled with endless replays and graphics showing stats and player bios, etc.

Conversely, in baseball, MLB rules state that, "When the bases are unoccupied, the pitcher shall deliver the ball to the batter within 12 seconds after he receives the ball." (Official Rules 8.04.) That means the ball is in play every 12 seconds, or there's a runner on base who, by design, adds a kinetic element to gameplay.

I don't skip credits because I think they are a "waste of time." I think they are boring and I don't care. Any actor I need to place is either going to show up in the first few moments of the credits or I can check IMDB on my phone on my way to my car.

I enjoy reading forum posts. I don't enjoy watching a list of names crediting people I don't know with work I don't care about. Craft services, personal assistants, office admins for effects companies. I seriously have to sit through this to be a real filmgoer?

That is awesome! I'm adding it to my phone shortcuts. Thanks!

I generally only stay if there's an extra scene/outtakes. Or if there's something I want to figure out, like an actor I couldn't place or a song I wanted to know the name of. Otherwise, I don't generally stay.

Shows how much I know or care about baseball- I must have been referring to the board that shows which inning they were in- anything that gave me a clue as to when the damn thing would be OVER! Again though, that's why I don't go to baseball or any other sports games. (I have heard that even some fans will leave a game early or stop watching if they think they can tell who's going to win- If I liked sports I would say that was wrong.)

I still think it's stupid and disrespectful to leave a movie early, unless you're just not into it in which case you were better off not going anyways. If the movie is good, you shouldn't WANT it to end. Notice how concert audiences are the exact opposite- they don't leave right when the band is wrapping up their last song and walking offstage- they STAY there hoping they'll come back out and do MORE!

Only if I know there's something worth waiting for.

Usually, no I don't stay.

I'll occasionally stay if I want to try and figure out who that actor/actress was, what song it was or something like that. Then I remember about IMDB and decide it's much faster.

Before a movie, I usually check the RunPee app and it tells me if there's an extra scene or something during or after the credits.

If you already know there isn't a scene during or after the credits, then there isn't any more movie to see so there's no point in staying longer. A concert is a bad example, since the band doesn't finish their set by just reading the names of everyone involved in the songs.

If you want to be technical, then you are correct.. the "movie" is not over...but the story is.

If it is so stupid and disrespectful to not watch the credits, why aren't there people who skip the story and pop in to just watch the closing credits?

If movie is good, no, I don't want it to end, but once the story wraps up that's the end for me. Sitting thru 5 or 10 minutes of scrolling names after that isn't going to make my movie going experience more satisfying, unless there's another scene after the credits.

That's because encores are pretty much standard protocol. They're not just "hoping" that there will be more, it's pretty much a guarantee that the headliner will do at least one encore. And most bands do the exact same encore at every show. It's not something spontaneous generated by the audience reaction, it's completely rehearsed. Usually, the house lights come on immediately after the first encore. That's how you know the show's really over, and that's when everybody leaves. In the movie theater, the house lights come on as soon as the credits start.

I was actually at a show one time where before going offstage, the lead singer actually said "We're gonna pretend like we're leaving now, but then we're gonna come back and do an encore." Personally, I apprecatied his honesty and and lack of theatrics, and I thought it was pretty funny.

I really don't think this is a comparable example though, as an encore is more of the same from what you see during the the main show (more music). It's not just scrolling words. In fact, I would compare an encore more to an after credit scene, which if I knew it was coming (like I do an encore), I would absolutely stay for. In this example, the credit sequence would be comparable to the wait when the band turns the lights off and pretends to be leaving.

Still, there are people that take off as soon as the main set ends, to try and beat the traffic. I'm not one of those people, but I've seen plenty of them.

It's ok. I already know their lenses were supplied by Panavision.

That's right. And do you stay after the band has left, with the house lights on, to watch the road crew take down the stage and cart it away?

No? Case closed.

Seems like he was doing it more for humor than honesty, but either way it's funny.

This is what I was thinking while reading: it's like the after-credit scene

Yeah, and there are people who will walk out of live theater as the cast is taking their bows. That's truly stupid.

I'm not going to say that Mr. Smithee presented the most compelling argument in favor of staying through the closing credits for a film. But what I am going to say is that, if that straw man is the best rebuttal you can come up with, he still wins the debate.

I always sit through the credits, unless they are ridiculously long (remember Dwayne Johnson's Walking Tall, where the fimmakers stretched the closing credits out to 12 minutes, just to make the running time not look like a complete joke?). But 5 or 6 minutes isn't going to ruin my life, and it gives me a chance to enjoy more of the film's score, pay a little respect to the hard-working members of the crew, and avoid the ridiculous crowds in the lobby and parking lot.

And what if you DON'T know? What if it's the first time the movie's ever played, or nobody's reviewed it yet (and how do you know THEY didn't stay through the whole thing? Yes, there are some reviewers who don't watch end credits, I called a local 'critic' on that one time and his response proved he was even dumber than I accused him of being.) I don't want to know when there's a surprise at the end anyways, that's the same as a spoiler.

Uh, at a movie that'd be the same as staying in the theater after the actual film (or digital presentation) has ended and watching the theater getting cleaned up, or if it's the last show of the night watching everything getting turned off. And actually, it would be interesting to see all that at the end of a concert.

BTW the only reason theaters turn the house lights up during credits is to avoid lawsuits from anyone who might get injured on the way out. I worked at a theater and fought against that practice for a long time, but someone did once come close to being injured walking out of a movie and from then on we had to have them come up (it didn't help that at the time the theater was owned by a lawyer). I don't know what they would've done if someone had gotten injured walking out in the middle of the movie. I don't doubt for a minute that people have faked injuries in theaters before in order to make a quick buck.

Yeah that's because there MORE MUSIC is coming and not just scrolling text.
Silly comparison.

Stupid and disrespectful? Maybe if none of them got paid, otherwise I don't owe them anything.

I didn't see "Grindhouse" in theaters but I heard that some people left that right when 'Planet Terror' was wrapping up (and that didn't even have its own end credits), not knowing there was another entire movie after that! That epitomizes people who didn't really want to be there.

These days I sit through the end credits because you never know when they're going to throw in a little snippet after the credits.

With DVDs, I FF through the credits to see if there are any of the aforementioned snippets. Most of the time there aren't but every once in a while..... -kd5-

Was the response as bad as your baseball or concert examples?

Well they certainly came out ahead, since they only saw the good part. Silly me, I had to stay and put myself through the chore of watching "Deathproof."

I've felt the opposite, sometimes, where I'm in a theater and the movie is amazing and I think something to the effect of, "This is so good, I can't wait until it's over so I can rush out and tell people and get more people to see it and so I can see it again!" I know that may seem odd, but there's something about being in the middle of experiencing excellent art that compels me to want to leave it and go get more people to experience it. It usually happens when I see a movie alone, and I especially remember feeling this way during The Departed.

He proved he knew as much about movies as I know about baseball- only difference being I never claimed to be an expert in baseball. (He wrote for Sacramento News and Review about 20 years ago and the letters to the editor section routinely had letters about how bad his movie reviews were. They eventually canned him and he went back to a smaller neighborhood paper where his stupidity continues to this day. He gave "Inspector Gadget" 4 1/2 stars out of 5 because it was like "a live action cartoon". Interestingly he once did an article about gags after end credits, suggesting he may have seen the error of his ways, but I later saw him walk out early of a preview screening of "Constantine" which had a good scene after the credits. When I walked out of that with the rest of the audience who stayed someone said "So those other people didn't get to see that last part??")

Now you've hit on an incident where my insistence on sitting through the end credits was very costly. My wife and I met with some friends on the night of 15 October 2006 for the movie. On the way back, we hit a deer on the Interstate. The deer was standing sideways in our lane in a stretch where there were no traffic lights. We scarcely had time to even see it before impact; that my wife managed to even get us partly into the other lane is astounding. We spun out and into the median, where we got our tax dollars' worth out of the newly installed stop cables. The car was totaled. My wife's EMS career was ended because of the damage to her shoulder, which continues to nag her. It makes me laugh to this day to think that if things had been worse, when they searched my body they'd have found ticket stubs for The Departed.

So if we had just left when everyone else did, maybe we come through that stretch of road before the deer ever got it into its head that I-71 was an appropriate place to chill.

Also, seeing the comment about the local reviewer reminded me of a story a friend of mine shared with me years ago when he was in college. He went to a showing once and sat behind the local paper's movie critic. The guy got there ten minutes into the movie, spent most of it distracted with his snacks and bailed early. My friend learned after subsequent such incidents that's just how the guy was. He approached him once about it and the guy essentially boasted that he didn't need to be attentive; he just needed to be present. His write-ups were brief enough that he'd never have to get into enough detail to expose how inattentive he really was. Neither my friend nor I have trusted critics since.

I only stay if I know there's something extra after the credits.