Come for the Movie; Stay for the Experience

The rest of the kids were out at recess, but I was alone with my teacher planning an unprecedented event. In two weeks, my grade school would have a VCR (!!!), and I got to help choose which movie the whole fifth grade would get to see. It was a logistical nightmare. With only one television and ninety kids, how would everyone fit into one classroom? The solution was to get three television sets (I think one of the teachers brought one from home). A consultant from Radio Shack was brought out to determine the lengths of coaxial cabling we would need. The principal brought a popcorn machine to hand out treats during the show. The superintendent came out to watch with us for a while. A local news team was on hand to cover the event. A squadron of fighter planes flew overhead and a parade ten miles long kicked off the whole event.

I may be misremembering some of those details, but I do remember that being able to watch Hollywood movies at school or in your home was a big deal. These days, when we can watch movies on our phones, having ready access to big screen entertainment may not seem like such a big deal. We can watch whenever wherever. But does that make it better?

I think it's more cost effective. When the whole family can watch a movie rented from Redbox for a buck or two, it certainly puts paying $46.50 for the fam to see Ice Age 3 in 3D in perspective. A subscription to Netflix or Amazon Prime can lower the per movie cost even further.

The increasing prevalence of HDTVs, Blu Ray players and digital surround sound all help to make the home theatre feel more like a movie theatre, which make it that much less enticing to go out and see a movie elsewhere. Why fight the crowds when you can sprawl out on your couch? You don't even have to sign a loan application to get movie snacks when you eat at home.

All of this is great, and I readily admit that I watch far more movies at home than I do out, but there is something about the movie theatre experience that cannot be replaced. The studios are making more efforts to connect with people wherever they are, but I believe that people who really love movies have to go see them for the best possible experience.

When you go to the cinema, you have a shared experience. There's a social contagion theory - that personal feelings become more intensified and vocal when they're shared with a group - that is missing when you watch a film by yourself or with just a few other people. For example, I don't often find old comedies to be laugh-out-loud funny, but when I watched the 1954 Sabrina with a theatre full of people I laughed along with everybody else - and at things I normally wouldn't have even found funny when watching it alone. Watching Pet Sematary in a theatre with a vocal crowd was one of the very best scary movie experiences ever because before the movie was over I was shouting too: "Don't trust that zombie-lookin' kid! Can't you see he's got a knife?" And taking my kids to the midnight showing of the last Harry Potter movie and finding it full of other Harry Potter geeks dressed in costume was an experience we could never have had at home.

Even with the best home theatre system, the picture and sound in a theatre is going to be better and truer to what the filmmaker wanted you to see most of the time. The smaller the screen, the more compressed the picture is going to be. I remember a sight gag in one of the Naked Gun movies (22 1/2?); there's a moment where Drebin's food is so old that it actually moves across the refrigerator in the background. It was a very funny moment in the theatre, but when I watched it home on cable, my screen was too small to register any movement; the cake (or whatever it was) didn't have far enough to go. In a lot of the big action movies these days, there is so much going on all over the screen that it takes the big canvas of a movie screen to paint it all. And maybe this is just at my house, but I can never turn up the volume to movie theatre levels without someone complaining.

For these reasons I really love movie theatres. One place I used to love to go was The Paramount Theatre in Oakland, CA.

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It is a beautifully restored movie palace that will occasionally show classic films. I saw Gone with the Wind for the first time ever on the big screen with a couple hundred other people. In that place, with that size of a crowd, with that movie, it was almost like I was going back in time and seeing it the way the filmmakers intended it to be seen in 1939.

When I'm visiting family in Delaware, OH, we always make it a point to go The Strand Theatre.

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It too is an old movie house (one of the oldest continuously running movie theatres in the country), but it has been split into a three screen theatre. We enjoy going there because the prices for tickets to first run movies and concessions are very reasonable. Ohio Wesleyan University operates it as a nonprofit organization, which keeps the costs down, and it's a model I wish more communities would adopt.

Nostalgia is a big factor in why my family likes to go to The Boulevard Drive-In in Kansas City.

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My wife and I both remember going to the drive-ins with our families when we were kids - staying up late and catching fireflies before the show, sometimes staying up super late to see two movies back to back, and sometimes having to crawl into the sleeping bag and sleep through the second picture which was just for grown-ups, getting to have snacks at 10:00 at night. Good times. This drive-in, like most these days, has a very local radio station for you to listen to the movie through your car's speakers.

But the place we go most frequently these days is the AMC Studio 30 in Olathe, KS.
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It has 30 screens so even when there's a big event movie, there's always something else to see. They have specialty theatres like the IMAX theatres, Fork and Dine (a more family-oriented set of screens that have "booths" and restaurant-style food service at your seats), and the Cinema Suites (a more grown-up oriented set of screens with reserved seating in leather recliners with food and bar service at your seats).  It's a quality place that combines the best of home comfort and the movie theatre experience.

So I encourage you to make it a point to see movies on the big screen. There are always places around that offer unique opportunities to have the communal experience of sharing a cinematic story. Yes, staying at home is cheaper, but with movies, as with so much else in life, you get what you pay for.

Next up: Spoilers