I abhor people who text in movie theatres with others sitting around them. Loathsome behavior. But if two guys are sitting in a den or living room and texting each other about a show they’re watching, who cares? That’s almost the way it was when Bill McCuddy and I texted each other through the last 60% of Seven Pounds as we sat in Sony’s seventh-floor screening room on Madison and 55th.

One, there was no one in our vicinity at all — we were in the rear seats, and the other two guys in the theatre were several rows in front of us. And two, sitting passively and open-pored while watching Seven Pounds was simply not an option. If this had been even a semi-absorbing, half-tolerable film, it would have been boorish and unacceptable to text…but we had to do something. It was Will Smith and Gabriele Muccino vs. poor little Jeffrey Wells and Bill McCuddy — we had to fight back and respond WHILE THE FILM WAS PLAYING. It demanded immediate action.

If anyone had been remotely near us, or if there was the slightest chance that our text screens might have provided even the slightest distraction for anyone, I would just sat there and taken it and suffered silently.