Chris Hemsworth finally comes out and admits that Cannes’ standing ovation thing is “awkward”
“It felt like 30. You just clap your hands after a [while], you’re also clapping yourself, which is even worse. Do I stop?”
Aux News Standing Ovation
Today, in “Finally, somebody fucking said it” news: Chris Hemsworth has come out and admitted that getting seven minutes of a standing ovation in the aftermath of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’s debut at the Cannes Film Festival this year was “awkward,” and only got moreso as the applause continued.
Which is as good a time as any, it feels like, to acknowledge that the Cannes clapping thing is weird, and has only gotten weirder as the internet has made it easier to fixate on facts like “This movie got a 10-minute standing ovation; ooh, this one got 10.5!” As an immediate way to gauge audience reactions to new films, it’s maybe mildly useful—although plenty of great films have passed through the festival’s theaters with minimal claps, and even boos—but it’s also just genuinely weird to think about a whole theater of people standing in place and clapping, just so their claps can be counted.
Hemsworth pretty much agrees, it seems, telling The One Show that the waves of applause started awkward, and only got worse from there. “I’ve heard six minutes, six-and-a-half, seven, someone said eight, there’s all different reports,” Hemsworth said of Furiosa’s reception after debuting yesterday. “It felt like 30. You just clap your hands after a [while], you’re also clapping yourself, which is even worse. Do I stop?”
Hemsworth’s co-star in the film, Anya Taylor-Joy, was a bit more accepting of the strangeness, noting that, “It goes in waves. To be fair, they can boo. So I’m really glad it was clapping and not booing.” For those keeping track, meanwhile—because we are also human beings, and numbers draw our eyes like mindless magpies—Furiosa’s ovation reportedly landed somewhere in the 6-8 minute range, roughly tying with Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and Andrea Arnold’s Bird. The longest ovation in the festival’s history remains the 22 minutes of clapping that followed the debut of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan Labyrinth, which is, don’t get us wrong, a great movie, but, c’mon: Whole thing must have started to feel silly around minute 17, right?
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I can’t remember a time in my life before the clapping!!! My hands hurt! Please let us stop!
Picturing the world’s most sadistic music teacher shrieking “ TOO BAD! YOU’RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT, SO CLAP YOUR HANDS!!!”.
checks calendar Ah, it’s time for two weeks of complaining about the Cannes standing ovations while reporting on each and every one of ‘em
If every report finally comes out and says how fucking stupid it is maybe they’ll stop reporting on it and those dumbasses at Cannes may actually start not clapping for fucking minutes on end. What makes me mad is how the trades report that length of clapping equals emotional response. Like five minutes is considered “tepid” Five freakin minutes, tepid? really!
“If everybody keeps talking about it maybe everybody will stop talking about it.” Kinda sounds like you just wanna keep reading about it as long as the tone’s snarky
Ngl, my heart skipped a beat when I read, “Chris Hemsworth finally comes out…”
There’s more appropriate places on the internet for your erotic fan fic.
–The AV Club
“Thor? I could hardly thit! The Hemsworth Tales”
‘”Ngl, my heart skipped a beat when I read, “Chris Hemsworth finally comes out…” “’I read that title the same way… and it confused me?
Same!
He’s Australian. We have pretty good bullshit-o-meters for this sort of thing.
It’s just ours are in metric which is why it works better in France.
The secret is to go to the theater bathroom during it, and imagine you’re finally getting the credit you deserve for taking really good dumps.
I already think that. About every movement.
🎶 And every movement you make, every piss you take, I’ll be clapping you 🎶
That was actually Sting’s working title, but the others prevailed on him that wouldn’t get on top 40 radio.
Sounds like someone didn’t use protection while having “intimate person to person contact” (as I have to refer to it to my students) and it now burns when they pee.
I like to deliver acceptance speeches from the stall. “We all know that a giant turd is a ‘big production’ in all senses of the phrase. And no big production can enter the world without the hard work of so many. First and foremost, I’d like to thank the dried apricots and multigrain bread, which prevented the production from falling apart. Also, all of my gratitude to adequate hydration, without which, this production surely would have been much harder. And of course to Taco Tuesday, the ultimate partner, you truly are the grease that kept this production flowing smoothly. Thank you all, and good night.” *FLUSH*”
“Oh dammit, I forgot to thank my wife! Christ, I’m never going to hear the end of that.”
At a certain point I imagine it becomes Applause Chicken: no one wants to be the first to stop clapping.
Unfortunately, it’s even worse: the first person to stop gets summarily executed.
Or to be the first one to sit down? Standing ovations just get so awkward. Was at my kid’s end-of-school year orchestra concert (middle school), and was clapping at the end, and everything was nice, and then someone stood up, and then more people stood up, and then it got to be the point where I felt like I’d be an asshole if I didn’t stand up. It seems like just about every performance at every level I go to these days ends up the same way.
Which is why reading about it always reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) stories about how no one wanted to be the first person to stop clapping when Stalin gave a speech, because they’d wind up in Siberia.
When it’s about Stalin, it’s probably not apocryphal.
And we all know how much chickens love to clap. And dance! Co-ca-co-ca-co!
At the very least, at a festival like that the actors/filmmakers are actually there to receive the applause. I’ve been at movies where people stood and clapped and the whole time I felt so embarrassed just to be there. Like, you know the people can’t hear you, right?
Oh man, I remember watching Independence Day in the theaters in small town midwest America like 30 years ago and there was so much clapping and cheering at the end.
I used to think that, but I feel like applause takes on a different meaning when you’re watching a movie with a group of people who aren’t connected to what you’re watching. It’s not “we’re communicating our appreciation directly to artists”. It’s sharing enthusiasm for something that’s just happened. Like going to a sports bar and seeing people cheering at television screens.
Sports fandom’s also pretty ridiculous though.
Are people feeling that level of enthusiam for seven minutes or are they just slapping their hands together in a sort of mindles marathon?
At a certain point there has to just be a fear of stopping too soon and getting thought of badly for it. Pan’s Labyrinth is a great movie but I think an applause the length of a sitcom episode is absurd even for that
You could listen to, maybe, seven songs on the radio, drive to the market, watch an episode of something during that time. I love the movie too but that’s madness. I wonder if the audience worked in shifts.
Well, gee Chris, I’m sorry about that. You seem comfortable with that Miami Vice-looking pink jacket.
Maybe because he looks good in it? When your sexy and you know it, reach for the Pepto-Bismol jacket and show it.
Whenever I leave the house, I check the mirror and ask myself: “Now, does this guy look like a successful narcotics merchant?”
You know that old joke where Bono slow claps his hands at a gig and says “every time I clap my hands, a child dies of starvation”, and some wag in the audience says “stop clapping, you fucker”?Anyways, Cannes crowds are just doing their bit end child hunger ASAP, so Hemsworth should shut the fuck up. Also, fuck Bono
I didn’t know that Bono thing was a thing. But it’s a very believable Bono thing. That man takes good causes and drives people away from them with his obnoxious attitude.
I’ve noticed this happens from time to time at concerts, usually as a way to encourage the band to come back to the stage for an encore. It always feels so wrong to me. It’s one thing to show your genuine applause for a show you enjoyed, another to use an extended applause as a way to guilt the band into doing an encore. Guys, if they planned to do an encore, they’ll do an encore! Let the enjoy their downtime.It does, however, have allow me to leave the show before everyone rushes the doors, so it’s not all bad.