Friday, July 20, 2012

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

5 comments:

  1. Very true! Going out to the theaters has become much more expensive then just going renting a movie but going out with others to see a movie can't be replaced. We tend to not go out as much just because with a 1 year old, movies aren't the fun thing for her yet, but when we do it definitely becomes a how much money can we save by not getting snacks or going earlier in the day type of thing. I'm glad that you have older theaters that you like attending. I attended a restored theater in Memphis, TN when I used to visit my relatives there. We saw a classic movie when we went because that was all that they played, but the place itself was gorgeous.
    Great job with the post!
    ~Sage

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  2. Jeff-
    really nice post! I very much enjoyed reading it and found many points to be quite accurate. The use of the maps was especially nice.

    I think I must be broken, when it comes to the social contagion theory in this application. While I don't often go to the theaters to watch movies because they are absurdly priced, when I do go I seem to feel like I'm sitting in a room full of people watching a different movie than I. More often than not, when those laugh out loud scenes occur I feel lost, wondering why everyone is in such an uproar.

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  3. Jeff-
    Ahh, you talk about one of my favorite little culturally-iconic buildings, and how it's changing. As much of a cinephile as I am, I still haven't experienced a drive-in theatre. Shame on me, I know, but it's on a bigger list of things to do (a big tour of the last remaining drive-in theatres?) It's an idea.

    I enjoy your writing; it's much more knowledged (read: old) than mine, but that's a good thing. We shall have to discuss films sometime! I look forward to more stories!

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  4. Wonderful post, Jeff! What a lovely ode to the collective experience of sharing the sense of transport in a movie house. It's also very timely in a bizarre way in the context of the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado recently. My kids and I were supposed to watch "The Dark Knight Rises" but my kids felt paranoid with the whole thing, and we ended up renting a couple of DVDs from Red Box. Had shivers up my spine thinking how the audience in that benighted theater in Colorado felt when it dawned on them that the mayhem on the silver screen was nothing compared to the nightmare right in their midst. I recoil to even wonder if the survivors of this horrid incident will ever recover enough to venture into a moviehouse soon. Anyways, on the upbeat side, this post also reminds me of some of my favorite films that are a valentine to the power of cinema and the comfort of moviehouses: Giuseppe Tornatore's CINEMA PARADISO, Woody Allen's THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, Martin Scorcese's HUGO, etc.

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  5. I enjoy the wit with which you deliver your words.

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