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Art-house cinema chain bans 'annoying' popcorn
Benedict Moore-Bridger, Evening Standard11.08.08
Cinemas across London are to ban popcorn because bosses claim it is too downmarket.
The country's largest art house chain, Picturehouse Cinema, will introduce popcorn-free screenings from next month which could lead to a blanket ban if successful.
Gabriel Swartland, head of media at the 19-cinema chain, said: "Lots of people absolutely hate it and have asked us to ban it, so we're going to do exactly that."
The Everyman Cinema Club, which owns 17 venues including one in Hampstead Heath, and the Tricycle cinema and theatre in Kilburn already refuse to serve the snack. The Tricycle's artistic director Nicolas Kent said: "Its smell is all-pervasive, it makes huge amounts of mess, and it distracts and annoys people intensely."
A £4 bucket of popcorn can have a 10,000 per cent mark-up, making a ban at multiplex venues unlikely.
Reader views (2)
Quite right too. The smell is vile. Do people really eat the whole time they watch TV at home? I doubt it.
- Lezl, London
I applaud this chain for attempting to stamp out popcorn.
Cinemas have long refused to sell chewing gum, for obvious reasons. Banning popcorn would certainly enhance my cinema-going. I hate the smell (and the taste) and I hate the noise of people eating it, usually desperately hungry and wolfing it like starving pigs.
I have never understood why, of all the foods on this plant, popcorn was the one chosen for cinemas.
Why not a banana?
And what was wrong with a carton of Kia-Ora?
- Sidney Marks, London, UK
