Going to the movies was always something of a magical experience for me.
I’m sure this somehow related to how rare a trip to the theater was as a child. After spending at least 10 minutes thinking waaaayyyy back to my childhood, I’m 89.78% confident I saw a movie in a theater exactly three times before age 10. I think I know kids who had been to Disneyland more often.*
*Our big family night out consisted of a Friday night trip to McDonald’s and Walmart, where I would whine my way into getting some sort of Star Wars toy…ironically, a movie I had never seen. Yet through some sort of cultural osmosis I could tell you every single detail of that movie. Don’t ever let it be said my priorities were misplaced as a child.
My cinematic biography, through age 9:
1) “The Cat from Outer Space”…or, as I like to call it, the most straight forward movie title of all time.* The details of this one have faded over the last 30 years; all I remember is the titular cat had a glowing collar that let him do awesome stuff and he wanted to get back to his home planet. It was like a 70’s “E.T” but, you know, with cats. And less quality.
*I want studios to get back to this. No fancy, arty titles with deeper meaning; just straight descriptions. “Transformers III” would be “Nearly Three More Hours of Robots Fighting” and “The Hangover 2” would be “The Exact Same Move You Saw Two Years Ago-Now with More Asians”.
2) “Coal Miner’s Daughter”- This was my first experience with a drive-in movie, so my biggest memory is the wonder of watching a movie in a car and an obsession with the insane amount of popcorn we brought from home. In my memory it has grown to a 30 gallon size trash bag full, which means my mom would have been popping it for the entire spring of 1980. Sadly, it didn’t take long to get seven year old me gorged on snacks; I was in a food coma before the halfway point of the movie. So I never found out what happened to this Loretta Lynn person, I hope she did ok.
3) “Poltergeist”- I was taken to this by “friends” of the family. The quotations are necessary because I’m pretty sure they were trying to scar me for life. This movie terrified me. I was so traumatized while watching it I resorted to hiding my face in my shirt and faking having to go the bathroom so I didn’t have to watch what happened next.* This movie installed my fear of clowns, which no childhood is complete without. I did learn to never, ever build your house on an Indian burial ground, so I’ve got that going for me.
*These remain my go-to escape tactics from any situation. When all else fails, cover your face with your shirt. It is amazingly effective.
Over the next several years I made friends who went to the movies more often and, most importantly, didn’t mind dragging me along. By the time I managed to get a driver’s license, I was a full blown junkie: I would see just about anything and loved the experience of physically being in the theater.
So when did going to the theater start sucking so much?
I used to go at least once a week; now it is a chore to go once a month. While this has freed up a lot of money for other endeavors (hello, beer) and time for more ambitious activities (much longer naps), I miss the joy of the movie-going experience. So what went wrong? Let’s break it down with an anal retentive, over generalized list.
Five reasons going to the movies is no longer fun:
1)Babies. Please do not misunderstand, I am not opposed to the idea of babies in general. Rumor has it they are quite enjoyable and sometimes rewarding. I am, how-evah, opposed to the idea of bringing a baby to a midnight show of “Pulp Fiction”.
This practice has ruined going to late shows for me. I can’t take watching people bring sleeping babies in at 11:59, presuming that their child will sleep through the entire thing. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the parents have an infant cineaste* who is there to enlighten us all with a critical analysis of the movie. I am more inclined to think your child will wake up screaming because movies are, you know, loud.
*I feel this baby would wear a tiny black beret, smoke a thin cigarette and have a perfectly groomed baby goatee.
Making matters worse, it is never family fare showing when the babies are brought in. It is the most gruesome, violent, hard-R rated stuff you would ever see. I can barely make it through that stuff without screaming like a baby, let alone an actual infant.
2) The Sheep Mentality. I have a high tolerance to watch nearly anything, including foreign and art movies. This has led to me sitting in nearly empty movie theaters several times.* Why do people insist on sitting practically on top of me? There are 150 empty seats in here, is the group mentality so strong you still had to sit that close to me? This happens no matter where I am sitting in the theater, from the front row to the back corner. Maybe I am anti-social, but I don’t think we are all going to bond over the next two hours and become life long friends. I also don’t trust anyone sitting behind me that I can’t see. I don’t know what is going on back there. I have been known to seriously creep myself out during horror movies by imagining someone behind me is slowly moving closer to me, a row at a time, while I watch the movie.
*I have been the only person in a theater exactly once. It was a late show of “8 mm” yet another bad Nicholas Cage movie. Evidently, no one saw me in the theater and the movie was stopped about 30 minutes in because it was believed the auditorium was empty. This would not have been an issue; however, I had fallen asleep at some point. You don’t know disoriented until you wake up at 1 a.m. in an empty theater with no movie playing. I think there may be a Twilight Zone episode like this.
3) The Food Issue. Here is what you should be allowed to eat in a movie theater: A-Popcorn. B-Candy. That’s it, that’s the list. It’s a theater; it should smell like popcorn, not jalapeno covered nachos. There is a place to eat those kinds of foods and it is called a ball park. If I can no longer have a beer at a movie in Springburg, you can’t eat a hot dog.
4)The Confused Older Viewer. These are common at early matinees. They are usually there in couples, at least 60 years old and, god bless ‘em, can’t keep a single damn detail about the movie straight. Characters, plot points or even what day it is are all just too much to handle. Unfortunately, these people have the loudest whisper in the history of man, so we all get a running commentary of there attempt to keep up. “What just happened?” “Who is that?” “What else is he/she in?” “Why are they fighting?” The rule of thumb should be: If you can’t keep up with the fast pace of “Matlock” episodes, you should probably just stay home.
5) 3D. What’s that, box office worker? I get to wear these ridiculous plastic glasses for two hours? All while I stare at screen that is so much darker than normal it’s as if someone smeared mud on the projector? While people in the movie do asinine things like jab sticks toward the camera so I get the “full effect?” And it’s only $12.50 a ticket? Sign me up! Sigh. With all the advances in technology we are back to the gimmick of 3D. I thought we left this stuff in the 50’s, with things like Smell-o-Rama and vibrating seats.
I just read that list again; it seems my evolution to cranky old man may be complete. The bottom line is even if I go to the theater much less than years ago, I will never give it up completely. Because when it all goes right and you are seeing something great, there is just nothing like it. I will keep plunking down the cash for tickets, at least until Smell-O-Rama comes back.
