Trouble for the tardy

When I heard the news last week, I panicked: I would never see the beginning of a movie again. Not in a movie theater, at least.

You see, next month the Loews Cineplex chain will begin telling people when their films really start. Not the time when the lights go down, mind you. Rather, the time lurking mysteriously beyond that, when -- after a parade of ads and behind-the-scenes shorts and trailer upon trailer upon trailer -- the featured entertainment begins.

Loews says that this is typically 10 to 15 minutes after the published show time. I would suggest it’s around the time you start to forget which movie you bought a ticket to see. I would also suggest that all the footage that screens before the feature has its uses.

For someone cursed with the unfortunate trait of chronic lateness, it’s a buffer. In addition, all those trailers prove useful for someone with the other unfortunate trait of not being able to enjoy a film without seeing it from the very first frame. I miss the early ads because I’m “late,” but I get to the curtain on time.

Further complicating matters, Kevin, the other half of my mortgage, likes to cut it close with movies, skidding in at the last second possible. He’s in TV and film marketing, so the pre-show parade is a bit like work. For him it’s far more entertaining to make the jaunt through the theater lobby something akin to the end of a Formula 1 race.

So a movie date is a balancing act, and the “Movie Times That Lie” have been my secret weapon. Kevin and my tardy self think we’re fashionably late. The control freak in me knows we’ll be on time for the start of a film.

But it seems some folks with things like “plans” and “children” and “better things to do” have complained about all that on-screen traffic before the main attraction. That pre-show period is too long, they said; they’re not going to take it any more.

So Loews will now publish a note telling moviegoers how many minutes will elapse from “show time” until the feature actually rolls. If I keep my thumb over that part of the ad, my life of movie show-time deceit may go on.

This in mind, I go for dinner and a movie last Saturday with Kevin and his friend Cameron, a New Zealand native, moving to L.A. soon from Singapore, who asks terrific questions such as “How many kilometers would that be?” and “Will the meal be in European portions, or those large American ones?”

Cameron tells us that this will be only his third movie in an American venue. Talk turns to a 1929 Auckland movie house he knows, the Civic, “one of the most ornate buildings I’ve ever seen in the world.” Indeed, the Civic has chandeliers and columns in the foyer, carved elephants on the walls and flamingo-adorned velvet curtains that sweep aside when the movie starts. The domed ceiling is painted as an April nighttime sky, and when the lights dim, the stars of the Southern Hemisphere twinkle. “Going to a movie,” Cameron says, “is about being ushered into an experience, being transported.”

Here, of course, the experience is about selling stuff before that experience occurs.

Later, at a mall multiplex (which boasts no stars nor carved elephants), we show off for our guest and arrive 30 minutes ahead of the 9:45 p.m. show time. Good seat secured, I go for bonbons and return to see slides -- snack-bar ads, trivia questions, pitches to be a frequent viewer. At the published show time, a “making-of” short plays (Ron Howard talks about “Cinderella Man”) and the lights go down. I can’t tell you how many trailers follow, but “Kingdom of Heaven” rolls at 10:05.

And in the few moments before Orlando’s doggone bloominess takes control of my senses, I realize the parade of commerce has, step by step, transported me out of hectic L.A. and all the way to the Crusades. Let the battles begin.

When the lights come up well past midnight and, backsides aching, we plod out, the consensus is mixed. I can’t remember the Crusades being quite so confusing, or that long. Cameron thinks the gore was too much; for Kevin, the plot comes up short. I seem the happiest, but that may have something to do with Orlando Bloom’s time on screen. Which was, well, long.

Night ending, we head for the car.

“Well,” Cameron says earnestly, “at least the trailers were good.”

Now if they would just serve the snack-bar ads in those European portions.

Christie D’Zurilla can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.