Near Riot at The Duchess of Langeais

It's nice to see that a French film by 80 plus year-old Jacques Rivette can command such lines.
But before we could see the movie, there were technical problems with the projection at the IFC.
And almost all hell broke loose among the nice, entitled crowd.
To be fair to the high-minded but short on patience crowd, the riot had more to do with having to endure that stupid IFC animation that may trigger epilepsy attacks, and the sound (sans images) for their not very appetizing coming attractions three times in a row.
It apparently got so bad out there that at one point, one man informed us, the manager had locked himself into the box office and refused to come out. There were inflamed patrons banging on the door as if storming the very meme Bastille. Then the beleaguered manager sent a poor young usher to talk to the aggrieved masses. She very nicely apologized and tried to explain that because of the unforseen success of the film (no doubt fueled by a great review in the New York Times) they had been forced to change theaters; therefore the technical contretemps. This did not appear to mollify some jaunty, entitled patrons who started screaming at her with all kinds of demands as if she were solely to blame for the malfunction. One prophet of doom even cautioned the rest of us that we should demand our money back because those people had no clue about what was wrong and fixing it would take forever. He then stormed out of the place quite righteously. Needless to say, the film was up and running five minutes later.
What can I say?
I love this town to bits, but there certainly are some serious basket cases of unalloyed narcissism combined with rampant neurosis and the most horrid sense of entitlement living among us. New Yorkers' schedules, apparently even on a Saturday night, are so tightly wound, mind you, that a 15 minute delay at the movies is almost cause for World War Three. Are your dinner reservations going to get screwed? Are your dogs, cats and/or children going to starve to death? Or are you just a bunch of entitled, rude, smartass pricks that need to CHILL OUT?
Geez...

ps: the movie is quite good by the way. An old fashioned, tragically ironic bodice ripper, brought to you by the great Honoré de Balzac, sparsely and dryly translated into film by Monsieur Rivette.
Chapeau to both.