Lee's Summit, MO
MPAA SWAT at The Dark Knight
I ducked out early on Friday to catch the latest Batman flick. Basing my expectations on the relentless fapping of Internet fanboys, Rotten Tomatoes' 94% score, and the good reviews here on Sociocide, I figured it was worth setting aside time out of my busy schedule of responding to PMs on Bullshido and banging my head against my desk; I'm sure the desk appreciated the break too.
Since this was opening day we bought the tickets online ahead of time, as suggested by prudence and several humorless MovieTickets Dot Com ads over the past year or so. They rewarded us for our commitment to digital consumerism by having the automated ticket dispenser spit each of them straight onto the ground with the force of a toddler fed milk and gummy bears shortly before being set loose in a moon bounce.We were on our way to a great movie experience!
Smuggling our crappy Panera lattes past the apathetic ticket-tearer-guy was a breeze. And I suppose that if it wasn't for my senses being heightened from implementing this nefarious scheme to avoid even worse (and more overpriced) coffee, I wouldn't have noticed the two gentlemen dressed in all black purposefully walking off towards one of the theaters just to the right of the straw dispensers and arcade games.
Oooh, SWAT was here, I thought, with hopes of seeing someone get tased or covered in bear mace or something.
No such luck, as one returned to his seemingly self-appointed post near
Ticket Ripper Man, I noticed the back of his uniform/shirt. It didn't read FBI, or SWAT, or S.H.I.E.L.D. It read MPAA.
Yeah, that's right. MPAA, as in The Motion Picture Association of America. As an ex-coworker of mine would have put it, with a smile on her face to hide her unconscious, burning hatred of humanity*: "What the french, toast?"
The MPAA apparently has a "force" that's uniformed up to look like an official Federal police agency, and they'd decended on little old Lee's Summit, Misery, to fight the scurvy pirates who would record the latest Batman on handi-cam for the purposes of, well, making money off someone else's Intellectual Property. At least that's the story I got out of Mr. MPAA Cop Guy #2.
More about that in a second.
Since our theater was still being cleaned out of all the strewn popcorn and candy wrappers and AIDS needles
** I decided to make use of the crappy camera on my crackberry ("crackberry", aren't I a cad?) and snap some pictures of the guy posted at the entrance. He noticed me making a beeline over to him and flashed me a polite smile which I pegged as coming from somewhere between amusement and "I wasn't trained for this". Honestly I don't remember exactly what I asked the guy, basically something along the lines of a polite "so, what's your story" and "let me get a shot of the back of your shirt", before making my way back to the now disinfected theater.
I contented myself to my regular seat and set about trying to beat my previous high score at BrickBreaker so as to further crush my wife's hopes of ever catching up to it on her phone. Why RIM ships their phones with only a single game is beyond me; are we expected to fill the slow moments of our lives using our opposable thumbs for
responding to email?
After putting another couple thousand points between her and me, I looked up and noticed the second MPAA-cop-looking-guy standing over in the corner by the entrance eying the theater with the air of being propped up by an official capacity, and the wall. Mostly the wall though.
When he started walking over toward me I immediately knew that there had been a conversation between him and the guy whose pictures I'd taken. And I was right on both counts; he was walking over to me, and they'd had a conversation about me.
We both exchanged polite, but completely fake, seemingly-well-meaning smiles and I asked him if they were working for the theater or with the police. He started to explain, at first, that they were with the MPAA and a part of a "covert" operation to catch people who recorded films. After I brought up the fact that he was wearing a somewhat-militaristic uniform he corrected himself about the covert/overt mistake and returned to his explanation of what was going on.
Apparently they were from Dallas and somehow had gotten information that my little suburban map stain was the home of one or more notorious film-recorder-pirate-people. (I briefly wondered if they suspected me... maybe I smuggled the handicam in my coffee cup. Hmm....) In fact, they had busted one here just this very morning. Wow, I overemphasized my shock a bit.
Easing his concern a bit more, I explained that I was very pro-capitalism and supported the concept of Intellectual Property rights. Which I do, mostly, even if it's in direct conflict with my pirate genes. I still think Metallica are douchebags though, and if I see one more "trailer" with a working class movie guy whining I'll probably hoist my own Jolly Roger (Rancher) at the screen and commence slitting throats.
Having eased a bit more into his comfort zone he explained that they travel around doing this sort of thing because of the billions of dollars lost by the industry every year, and rattled off some probably canned figures. He knew his stuff and was no doubt good at his job, the extent of which I didn't get to pry out of him before the lights dimmed and real trailers started. We did briefly touch on technologies to monitor audiences to see if there's any recording going on, what the... err... pirates are doing to counter them. I even suggested using IR to disable the cameras ala our little anonymous project.
That was pretty much the conversation and I tossed Guy #1 a friendly grin as we left the theater when the film was over. Unfortunately, the film wasn't as great as the hype around it, and I didn't even see the Watchmen trailer that was supposed to be showing before this 2.5 hour circlejerk of a film.
Oh, and here's some pictures of the "United States Anti-Piracy Something". "Something" because I forgot what it said and it's a crappy picture. Guy #2 asked if I was going to "put his picture on the Internet" after my "covert" attempt to snap the last one (of him) failed.
I changed the subject, but all I got of him was the boots and black pants, and some lines which make it look like he's wearing some kind of tactical corduroy.
So The Dark Night sucked and the MPAA has a SWAT team. Business as usual on Planet America, I guess.
*
Completely pulled out of my ass to add color to someone for whom I honestly hold no real opinion for the purposes of implying some kind of backstory to justify why I would use a phrase like that without punching myself in the balls...
**Urban legend... I think. You can check it out on Snopes if you want though, I'm busy writing this, sheesh.
