CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- You know the person. You may even have been that person.

The movie theater is dark. The previews have rolled and the film you came to see begins.

Then, a bright angelic light invades your space as a cellphone lights up. Or the first ring -- tone notes of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" fill the theater. Or the unmistakable tippity-tip-tap of nearby texting distracts you.

Welcome to the movies, circa 2012.

"It's definitely an issue," says Greg Pauley, vice president of the Greater Huntington Theater Corp., which runs Park Place Cinemas in downtown Charleston.

As cellphones have become ubiquitous in the past decade, the issue of their usage in shared public spaces, notably movie houses but also concert halls and schools, has increasingly bedeviled the folks who oversee those spaces.

"I'm not sure it's exclusive to movie theaters. It's almost a social issue at this point," said Pauley. "If you can't stop someone from texting and driving, I don't know how you can stop them from texting in a movie theater."

But movie houses try, in varying ways, to deal with a classic challenge -- the urge to communicate, even in the dark -- which has morphed with the onslaught of mass market cellphones.

"When I first got into the business our main problem was people talking and, believe it or not, smoking," said Pauley.

There is also a generational aspect to cell phones, especially when it comes to texting, he said. "Kids today have grown up with these devices. It's almost like language for them -- it's a way to speak. So they don't necessarily view it as doing something wrong."

Yet when filmgoers are paying nearly $8 per person to see a film, some order, so to speak, is in order inside the movie house. Multiplexes have taken various approaches to ensuring customers get to see films undisturbed.

"Some circuits have taken the issue to zero tolerance," said Pauley. "That's a pretty extreme stance to take. It's just kind of a touchy situation. We're there to serve our customers -- on the other hand we have to protect some of our customers from the other customers."

The "common sense" Park Place approach might be characterized as the polite warning followed by the heave-ho.

"We're going to nicely ask you to refrain from it -- whether it be cellphones or talking. But if you don't obey us, we're going to ask you to leave."

Part of the problem is that some customers seem to think texting is less objectionable than talking on their phone "because it's silent and they're not disturbing the people around them," Pauley said. "But some of these phones have the light intensity of '57 Chevy headlight."

The rise of theaters with stadium seating accentuates the problem, he said. "Every one behind you is higher, so when you lift your cellphone to read a message you're basically shining a flashlight that everybody behind you can see."

This March, Park Place will convert to all-digital screens and stronger warnings about cell phone usage are coming, said Pauley. "We will have stronger ads as a reminder to silence your cellphones before the film starts."

Cinemas have staff check in on each movie auditorium a couple times during the course of a particular screening to see if cellphones are in use.

"We check them a minimum of twice every show. That's part of their job requirement -- to police the theater," said Tina Humphries, one of the managers at Marquee Cinemas at Southridge.

"Normally, we tell people to put it away and they put it away. Usually, once you go in there and tell them to put them away they do. Every now and then you'll have someone get belligerent."

People who text may think they are not disturbing nearby filmgoers since they are not talking, she said. "Honestly, it doesn't occur to most people how irritating the light is."

Cellphone luminosity is especially distracting in 3-D movies, she added. "It's not only the glasses. There's something about the way 3-D is projected, it looks darker."

An usher staring or pointing out a first-time offender usually works, but a second warning can mean the movie is over for that person, said Humphries.

"We try not to be real hateful with it. It's seldom we have to go back more than once."

Reach Douglas Imbrogno at doug...@cnpapers.com or 304-348-3017.