User:Propaniac/mrpayback

Mr. Payback is a comedy film released in 1995 and promoted as Hollywood's first "interactive movie." The movie utilized a voting system that was specially installed in theatres to allow audiences to vote at intervals for one of three given options for how the plot would develop.

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San Francisco Chronicle Audience Gets Revenge in `Payback' Interactive movie in Emeryville PETER STACK, Chronicle Staff Critic

Thursday, February 16, 1995

MR. PAYBACK: Interactive film with audience participation. Starring Billy Warlock. Directed by Bob Gale. (PG-13. 25 minutes. Film repeated three times per admission; seating limited to 100. Exclusively at UA Emery Bay, Emeryville.)

-Other interactive movies are in the works as several theater chains and Sony Corp., the major backer of the idea, stick their toes into the fickle waters of public opinion. -Other so-called ``waves of the future,'' such as 3-D and Smell-o-Vision, never caught on. -Open this week in 44 specially equipped theaters across the country. Sony Corp. is a major backer of the $1.6 million movie, which was filmed in 35mm, then transfered to laser disc for projection onto theater screens. The 25- minute movie was written and directed by Bob Gale, who wrote and produced the ``Back to the Future'' trilogy. -Theater owners have already noted that it's hard to eat popcorn and drink sodas during the interactive experience -- but Interfilm, the company that made ``Mr. Payback,'' went to great lengths to make sure the push-button gadgets are spill-proof. -The UA Emery Bay will charge its regular $7 (or $4 matinee) admission to 100 people at a time to see ``Mr. Payback,'' and each admission entitles viewers to see it three times, which takes as long as one showing of a regular feature. -At the outset, a narrator encourages audiences to yell and scream and generally ``behave as if you were raised in a barn.'' -Audience members sit in seats whose armrests are fitted with pistol- grip devices, each with three buttons. -As the movie plays, prompts appear on the screen like subtitles. The audience votes on color-coded choices by pushing buttons, determining what action the hero will take. Every time the audience makes a choice, a tally of the number of votes for each choice shows up on the movie screen. Every push of the button equals a vote, so the more pushes, the larger the tally. The fingers wag like crazy -- a minor distraction like somebody rustling popcorn.

During the next screening of the film, the moviegoers are likely to vote for another choice, since they already know the outcome of the first one they selected. A complicated laser system seamlessly shifts the action according to audience whims.

Plot
Played by Days of Our Lives actor Billy Warlock, the film's title character is an outwardly-average dweeb who actually possesses bionically enhanced superpowers, which he uses to thwart evildoers and win vengeance for their victims. He has a sidekick named Gwen.

There are three possible overall plot lines for the audience to choose from, one featuring corruption in local government, a second featuring racial bigotry, and the last featuring a sexually harassed female college student. The latter storyline was most popular with audiences, but since a ticket entitled the viewer to three showings of the film, presumably most audiences saw all three storylines.

In a typical scene as described by San Francisco Chronicle film critic Peter Stack, a healthy driver parks in a handicapped zone and the audience is able to choose Mr. Payback's reaction; their choices include disabling the car or physically attacking the driver so as to make him handicapped.

Other options during the movie (depending on how the audience directed the storyline) concerning the methods of Mr. Payback's revenge include "Flatulence Mode", involving Mr. Payback expelling gas in people's faces, and permanently attaching a graffiti artist to his racist artwork on a playground.

Manhattan-based Interfilm, the production company that created ``Mr. Payback, tested a similar interactive movie in 1992 titled ``I'm Your Man. That film played only in Lakewood near Long Beach and in New York.

``It was kind of Flinstonian in its crudeness,'' said Bob Bejan, 34, president of Interfilm. ``But it did surprisingly well. So we were able to get investors, mainly Sony, and go public.''

Said writer-director Gale: ``We expect a certain amount of skepticism about it, but what we've done is separated the isolation of video games and turned it into something social, where the audience is in charge of destinies. It's not quite democracy, more like mob rule, but, hey, this is the '90s.''