Madonna banned from chain of US cinemas after being caught texting

Singer is no longer welcome in any of The Alamo Drafthouse cinemas after New York Film Festival incident

Madonna has been banned from a chain of cinemas in America after being caught texting during a screening of 12 Years A Slave.

The US pop icon attended a screening of the film, which stars Michael Fassbender and tells the story of a man’s capture by slavers in Washington DC in 1841, at the Walter Reade Theater in New York’s Lincoln Center as part of the New York Film Festival. The Guardian reports that Madonna spent much of the film’s runtime texting on her Blackberry and even said: “It’s for business… enslaver!” when asked to stop by a woman sat behind her.

The Alamo Drafthouse, which operates a zero tolerance on texting in their cinemas, has taken the decision to ban Madonna from all of their cinemas. “Until she apologizes to movie fans, Madonna is banned from watching movies,” tweeted CEO Tim League.

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He later told Entertainment Weekly that his tweet had been an “offhand joke, a spur of the moment 140 characters” adding that it was “more of a means to get the issue out there, that it is rude to text during movies.” However, having seen the reaction to his tweet, he has made his idle threat a reality. “Now that it seems to have taken hold, sure, I’m going to enforce it,” he said. “I’m serious, but I don’t think it really affects her life that much.”

Earlier this month, Madonna revealed that she was raped at knifepoint shortly after she first moved to New York. In a lengthy essay the singer wrote. “It (New York) did not welcome me with open arms. The first year, I was held up at gunpoint. Raped on the roof of a building I was dragged up to with a knife in my back, and had my apartment broken into three times. I don’t know why; I had nothing of value after they took my radio the first time.”

Last month (September 24), Madonna released a new short film entitled secretprojectrevolution to mark the launch of her Art for Freedom campaign. Speaking about the film shortly before its release, the singer said: “I hope my film and other submissions to Art for Freedom will be a call to action and give people a place to voice their own creative expression to help fight oppression, intolerance and complacency.”

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