Madonna's furious texting and loud outburst at a film screening last week got her permanently banned from a movie theater chain known for its zero tolerance cell phone policy.
The Queen of Pop attended the premiere of Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave" at the New York City Film Festival last week and witnesses said she was texting continuously throughout the entire screening.
Charles Taylor, a film writer for Salon, published an eyewitness account of the incident from one of his NYU students who attended the premiere.
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"Eventually, a woman next to me tapped her on the shoulder and told her to put her phone away, and the blonde hissed back, 'It's for business... ENSLAVER!'" the student wrote in a post that originally appeared on Facebook.
"During the standing ovation, the blonde ducked out and Jason Ritter turned around to make commiserating eye contact, as ['America's Next Top Model' judge] J. Alexander asked, 'Who WAS that?!' Jason then looked down at the floor. His eyes got wide, and he picked up an envelope and showed it to us and J. And it said: '2 screening tix MADONNA.' And sure enough, we looked to the side of the theater and standing against the wall in black lace gloves was Madonna. The worst person in America."
Madonna's actions particularly offended Tim League, who owns the Alamo Drafthouse chain of movie theaters in Austin, Texas. He tweeted that the 55-year-old Material Girl would be banned from his theaters until she apologized.
League told Entertainment Weekly that his initial tweet was an "offhand joke, a spur of the moment 140 characters" and was "more of a means to get the issue out there, that it is rude to text during movies."
But, he said, "now that it seems to have taken hold, sure, I'm going to enforce it."
All Alamo Drafthouse theaters are notorious for a strictly enforced no-cell phone policy.
The theater's website states that it has "a zero-tolerance policy towards talking and texting during the movie. If you talk or text, you will receive one warning. If it happens again, you will be kicked out without a refund."
The theater chain made headlines a few years ago with a viral no-texting ad featuring a real voicemail from a disgruntled customer.
Warning: The video below contains strong language.
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