History Main / AudienceParticipationFailure

* Arlo Guthrie, at the end of the original slbum version of "Music/AlicesRestaurant", tries to get the audience to join in on the chorus. The first attempt causes Arlo to say "That was awful" and try again with more success. Live performances of the song often went the same way, with the audience mumbling along with the first attempt at the chorus, followed by Arlo chastising them for their lack of effort and trying again.

* Arlo Guthrie, at the end of the studio version of "Music/AlicesRestaurant", tries to get the audience to join in on the chorus. The first attempt causes Arlo to say "That was awful" and try again with more success. Live performances of the song often went the same way, with the audience mumbling along with the first attempt at the chorus, followed by Arlo chastising them for their lack of effort and trying again.

* ''Series/WhoseLineIsItAnyway'', Creator/GregProops attempted to get the audience to sing along with him as a response to improvise in the style of a pantomime. When he only got a few responses, he yelled out: "'''SING, DAMN IT!'''" He got them to sing.

* Arlo Guthrie, at the end of "Music/AlicesRestaurant", trying to get the audience to join in on the chorus. The first attempt causes Arlo to say "That was awful" and try again with more success.
** "I've been playing this song for twenty minutes. I can play for another twenty minutes. I'm not proud... or tired..."

* In Bo Burnham's live performance of "Oh Bo", there's a point where he goes silent expecting a response from the male audience, but since he's been singing that part himself throughout the song, he gets no response.
** He also has a similar moment in "What's Funny":
-->'''Bo:''' Welcome to the show/It goes a little something like this:/Joke *points to the audience*\\
'''Audience:''' *silence*\\

--> "Bo": It's a Klan Kookout-just the black people!\\
"Audience": *silence and scattered laughter*\\
"Bo": *much quieter* Klan Kookout.

* ''Art Vs Science'' attempt this in their live performance of the song "Parlez vouz Francais?". The chorus go: "Parlez vouz Francais? Oui! Parlez vouz Francais? Oui!" This being Australia, this generally ends up more like: "Parlez vows Francais? Whee! Whee!" Some particularly drunk/confused people go "Woot."

* In an episode of ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'', the consummate [[CatchPhrase professional]] lawyer Wayne Jarvis brings up having been "voted the worst audience participant Creator/CirqueDuSoleil ever had," because "[he] did not find their buffoonery amusing."

* At one point during the filming of ''Film/AKnightsTale'', the Czech extras hired to play a crowd watching a knightly tournament (very few of whom actually understood English) were supposed to cheer wildly when Creator/HeathLedger, playing the titular knight, defeated his opponent in a sword fight. But, as most of them didn't understand English, the crowd hadn't actually understood their instructions, and when the fight was over they stood there silently for almost a minute, staring at each other in confusion. When actor Mark Addy, playing one of Ledger's cronies, abruptly broke into wild cheering, the crowd finally got it and began to cheer as well. Director Brian Helgeland thought this was so funny he [[ThrowItIn actually kept it in the film]] and reshot some sequences before and after to make their reaction more appropriate to the story.
* ''Film/TheOogielovesInTheBigBalloonAdventure'' was especially created for audience participation among its preschool-aged audience. Its opening weekend box office results were so poor that the average screening would have had no more than one child and one adult in the audience.

* Occurred during the filming of ''Film/ManOnTheMoon'' in the ProfessionalWrestling scene between Creator/AndyKaufman (played by Creator/JimCarrey) and Wrestling/JerryLawler ([[AsHimself playing himself]]). In the storyline of the film, Lawler was the over-the-top super-popular {{Face}} character, while Kaufman was the obnoxious Main/{{Heel}}. However, the extras present in the auditorium, most of whom were not Pro Wrestling fans, didn't know that. They had never heard of Jerry Lawler, but did recognize and like Jim Carrey, so they kept cheering Carrey-as-Kaufman and booing Lawler. The director of the film had to give them very specific instructions as to who to boo and who to cheer.

** Silence is bad, and indicates a bored crowd.

** ''Mystere'' has a lot of AudienceParticipation, and it's always aware of the possibility of this. Yes, it's funny enough to have audience members toss Bebe Francois's ball back to him after it lands in the front row, but it's even ''funnier'' to see him start to cry if no one initially feels like doing so. A goodly chunk of the repeat value of the show comes in seeing just what happens when the cast comes up against reluctant audience members.

** [[EightDeadlyWords Silence is bad]], and indicates a bored crowd.

-->'''Corey Taylor:''' Let me hear your fucking voices as one, motherfuckers!
-->'''Audience:''' *general roar*
-->'''Corey:''' Way to go *does verse*
-->'''Audience:''' *chanting* Fuck me! I'm all out of enemies! Fuck me! I'm all out of enemies!
-->'''Corey:''' Now that's exactly what I asked you to do 15 seconds ago!

-->'''Bret:''' Everybody come on!
-->'''Everyone:''' ''Silence''
-->'''Bret:''' Yeah!

-->'''Bret:''' When I say "ooh!" all the ladies say "ooh, Flight of the Conchords, you're so big!"
-->'''Bret:''' Ooh!
-->'''Audience:''' Ooh, Flight of the Conchords, you're so big!"
-->'''Bret:''' ...Oh.
-->'''Bret:''' Wow, thank you. Wow.
-->'''Jamaine:''' *scratches head* Thank you ladies, you didn't have to say that...

-->'''Bo:''' Welcome to the show/It goes a little something like this:/Joke *points to the audience*
-->'''Audience:''' *silence*
-->'''Bo:''' Exactly.

--> "Bo": It's a Klan Kookout-just the black people!
--> "Audience": *silence and scattered laughter*
--> "Bo": *much quieter* Klan Kookout.

-->'''Bruce Dickinson:''' Everybody sing it!
-->'''Audience:''' [[TheUnintelligible BAARGH]]
-->'''Bruce Dickinson:''' ...minutes, to miiiiidniiiight...

-->'''Audience:''' ...just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead. Mama, life had just begun, and now I've gone and thrown it all away. Mama, oooh, didn't mean to make you cry, if I'm not back again this time tomorrow, carry on, carry on, as if nothing really mattered...
-->'''Richard:''' You can remember all that and you can't remember my three poxy words!

-->'''Audience:''' Something something something something, la-da da-da dah / La da-da dee-dee da-da something something la-da dah/ [Unintelligible]
-->'''Paul:''' No. Stop. Let's break it down.

* During live recordings microphones often have to be aimed at the audience in order to properly capture the crowd noise on the recording, if not done properly it can give the impression that the audience didn't participate even when they actually did as they are hardly audible in the final mix.

* On a UK exclusive skit on ''Series/TheMuppetShow'', a farmer who sings "The Old Sow Song" while bashing some livestock with his pitchfork tries to get the audience to join in on singing the chorus at the end of each verse. However, each time we see the audience, they are just looking on, evidently not amused. At the end of the final verse, the farmer snaps and yells at the audience, asking them why they aren’t taking part in his song. Some pigs dressed up in biker outfits show up (they’d dressed that way for the opening number, "I Get Around") and tell him they think the song is dumb. We don’t see what they do to the farmer, but it probably isn’t pleasant....

* At one point during the filming of ''Film/AKnightsTale'', the Czech extras hired to play a crowd watching a knightly tournament (very few of whom actually understood English) were supposed to cheer wildly when Creator/HeathLedger, playing the titular knight, defeated his opponent in a tournament. But, as most of them didn't understand English, the crowd hadn't actually understood their instructions, and when the fight was over they stood there silently for almost a minute, staring at each other in confusion. When actor Mark Addy, playing one of Ledger's cronies, abruptly broke into wild cheering, the crowd finally got it and began to cheer as well. Director Brian Helgeland thought this was so funny he [[ThrowItIn actually kept it in the film]] and reshot some sequences before and after to make their reaction more appropriate to the story.

* Intentionally done with the "What do points mean?" gag on ''Radio/ImSorryIHaventAClue'', in which the chairman either has a ridiculously long definition of "points", or replaces the question with a ''different'' call-and-response catchphrase. Originally, this lead to total confusion, with the audience not sure what they were supposed to shout and laughing too much at their shared uncertainty to do so anyway. At some point, however, the audiences decided they were just going to shout out "PRIZES!" regardless.

* ''Series/WhoseLineIsItAnyway'', Greg Proops attempted to get the audience to sing along with him as a response to improvise in the style of a pantomime. When he only got a few responses, he yelled out: "'''SING, DAMN IT!'''" He got them to sing.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnS9M03F-fA Here's Baez performing "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"]] on ''Series/TheMidnightSpecial'' in the '70s. Note her rather miffed reaction to the audience's failure to sing along on the chorus.

* There's an apocryphal story about a Music/{{U2}} concert. Bono starts clicking his fingers, encouraging the audience to join in. He says "Every time I click my fingers, someone in Africa dies," to which one wag responded "Well stop fucking doing it then."

** Invoked InUniverse in the Christopher Durang play 'Identity'. The main character recounts a story of seeing Peter Pan in her childhood, but after the audience claps to save Tinkerbell, Peter Pan shouts at them, "You didn't clap hard enough! Now Tinkerbell's dead!" The experience contributed to the main character's poor state of mental health.

* Intentionally done with the "What do points mean?" gag on ''Radio/ImSorryIHaventAClue'', in which the chairman either has a ridiculously long definition, or replaces the question with a ''different'' call-and-response catchphrase. Originally, this lead to total confusion, with the audience not sure what they were supposed to shout and laughing too much at their shared uncertainty to do so anyway. At some point, however, the audiences decided they were just going to shout out "PRIZES!" regardless.

'''Audience:''' Hey Li-Lee Li-Lee Lo!\\

A subversion of AudienceParticipation.