Samantha Tumpach should have listened to the Vatican when it said to stay away from the movie The New Moon, here. The 22-year-old woman was jailed and is facing felony charges after filming 4 minutes of the film at the surprise 29th Birthday party for her sister.
Tumpach had been filming the surprise party when the movie started. She then shot a few minutes of the film with her new camera, including the commercials. She is heard chatting in the background with the rest of the people in the party. That is when movie theater staff pulled her aside, called police and pressed charges.
I fail to see why Muvico Theater in Rosemont, Illinois could not use a degree of restraint or why prosecutors could not use a degree of common sense. Unless they thought that the party was an elaborate scam to tape the movie, a warning would seem to suffice. Clearly Rosemont must have a couple of real criminals to prosecute.
For the full story, click here.
Rosemont is an interesting town that was run by Mayor Stephens and his family. Of course, Mayor Stephens just happened to own most of Rosemont and his family permeated the town administration. There were rumors of Mafia connections to Stephens, but not proven. I do know from personal experience that I was never treated as kindly by the Rosemont police as this lady was when I was involved in a minor disagreemnt at the Rosemont Horizon, n/k/a the Allstate Arena. I am shocked that she had to spend 2 nights in jail over this nonsense. I would hope that the States Attorney would understand that there was no intent to “steal” the film as evidenced by her talking over the film. This whole situation is right out of a Seinfeld episode.
Rosemont is basically a freeway interchange near O’Hare Airport. There are probably more hotel rooms than residences and it makes some of its money from an ungly arena. This just seems ridiculous.
“I fail to see why Muvico Theater in Rosemont, Illinois could not use a degree of restraint or why prosecutors could not use a degree of common sense.”
Because it’s the content industry, and they have a proven record of doing this?
Jill,
That is a mouthful….
Eternal life without parole for her!
In the days of DVD Home Theater, what is a movie theater but an exercise in customer service? Theaters don’t make money off of ticket sales. They make it off concessions and other attractions like games.
If I were the theater’s owner? The manager would be fired. Today.
Wouldn’t Fair Use cover this?
My, my she should be publicly flogged at the town whipping post for this intrusion of family mementos. Just who the hell does she think that she is, someone special. After all it was her sisters surprise 29th birthday party. Some family members will go to any length to make it all about them. These people need help. This is criminal indeed.
I see nothing that the T’s did wrong except try and have a good time. The manager, Police and Prosecutor should all be admonished. However, they may not have real crime to fight or maybe the recent bank take over in Aurora might have taken the toll on the owner of the theater. You just never know.
Point of clarification in the main article it states 3 minutes, the police said maybe 4.