Apparently Substack does not yet support including images in Comments (and I'm sure there are good reasons for that), but in the vein of your story about your grandpa, Jeff, I have a pic of a "Pearl Harbor Survivor #205" license plate on a Honda Civic.
Who’s bullying, though? All the cited instances look more like (attempted) persuasion to me. That’s what ads and op-eds do. You may disagree with their conclusions or with the strength of their arguments (I do—I haven’t been to a theater in close to a decade, for exactly the reasons outlined here), but they’re just trying to persuade you to go to the theaters, not bully you into it.
Good point, and yes, the AMC ad is an ad for AMC so of course they’re pro AMC, I’d say the bullying is the social pressure that exists in LA (and to a lesser extent New York).
I dunno if 'bullying' is the right word, but it's not hard to at times detect a kind of naggy, hectoring tone to some of this persuasion. But that might just be the way that most attempts at persuasion in the 21st century seem to take on a kind of scolding self-righteousness no matter what the topic.
I’m lucky enough to live within walking distance of two independent, historic movie theaters. Went and saw Sentimental Value last weekend, $16 for two tickets, great experience.
Okay but actually we do need to bully people into leaving the house. Streaming a movie in your pajamas may be the right option for you. But there are way too many people for whom Doordashing a burrito and streaming while noodling on their phone has become the default. Just look at all the people who act like it’s a hate crime to suggest they go to work in an office and interact with coworkers.
We’ve sacrificed something human at the altar of convenience. And yes, maybe it’s not fair to put going to the movies in the same bucket as gathering with friends or getting to know your colleagues. But at least it’s a communal experience.
And frankly, seeing it with a crowd makes comedy and horror SIGNIFICANTLY better. Streaming killed comedy.
Now apply literally every argument you just made here to the Sports and Style sections of the Washington Post, and you have a sharp media-crit piece about why most newspapers are shrinking.
It could always be worse. Here in Switzerland, movie theaters break off the movie at a random point near the middle, blare loud disco music, and play a slide show of cheesy local ads. This is supposed to be the “intermission,” to allow the small-bladdered among us to go to the bathroom, but really it’s to encourage everyone to go buy more snacks at the snack bar. After about 10 minutes, the movie resumes, as though nothing had ever happened.
The theater where we saw 1917—a movie whose WHOLE POINT is that it is shot in a single, unbroken take—actually cut off the film midsentence to show a fuschia slide advertising Ladies’s Night, again accompanied by loud disco music. We tried to get our money back and the management looked at us like we were crazy. “We always do this,” they said. Which is why I don’t go to movie theaters in Switzerland anymore.
I'm sorry that happened but also -- hilarious! I'm imagining one of that movie's iconic tracking shots of a corpse-eating rat running along a length of barbed wire and suddenly fuschia disco ladies-night, picture of a bucket of popcorn and a large Dr Pepper, ad for local furniture store, then boom! back to that same rat running left-to-right down that same length of barbed wire as fires burn in the middle distance.
We are really living in the Golden Age of Interruptions.
Jeff--I am about to out myself on several levels, but my wife and I go to the movies almost every week (on Monday, after work, when tickets are half price and we get a free small popcorn). Movies on the big screen are just better. And yes, there is a lot of crap out there but there are also gems. Crime 101 -- if it is like the short story -- will be amazing next weekend. I also like that there are zero distractions at a cinema. So smuggle a flash into the theater and try something highly rated and forget there is a world out there for 2 hours.
This article is spot-on. And I still regularly go to the movies in theaters! And I agree with your general point about the overall decline in quality, but... I also have realized I have a bit of misplaced nostalgia for the Hollywood offerings of my youth (80s-90s). The YouTube algorithm recently started serving me old episodes of Siskel and Ebert, and let me just say... on any given week in the 1990s, the average offerings were 80% total crap: random comedies and thrillers you never heard of, various Pauly Shore and Eddie Murphy vehicles, and various flops. And compare that to today where despite declining attendance we have a strong cohort of working auteurs (Nolan, PTA, Eggers, McQueen, Aster, Gerwig, Lanthimos) mostly being produced by A24 and Annapurna, lots of fine films coming out of South Korea, and the occasional way-better-than-it-has-a-right-to-be mainstream film. If you've got a decent arthouse near you, there's still lots of good new movies out there. But yeah, it's expensive and unless you really love the big screen it's not always worth it to see them in the theater.
I also have good memories of going to movies — I got nostalgic when I walked in the theater! Of course, my memories are of getting dropped off at the theater with $5 when I was 12, my friend and I picking a movie practically at random, and that movie turning out to be Groundhog Day. Combine higher prices (I looked it up: a movie ticket costs almost $3 more now than it did in the ‘90s *after factoring in inflation*) and shittier movies and taking a flier on something makes less sense.
One small part of the problem is that Spielberg and Nolan probably don’t go to regular movie theaters, so they don’t know how bad they are. They’re 1) remembering going to the movies when they were younger, and 2) subconsciously thinking of plush screening rooms, dubbing stages, and the high-end theaters they go to now for premieres, film festivals, Q&As etc
…so you’re saying my plan to usher in a glorious socialist utopia by telling people not to use the magic website with a great interface that gets you almost anything in a day ISN’T GOING TO WORK?
I remember when Gawker and G/O media sites would yell at people for buying stuff on Amazon, but kept the lights on by having a bunch of sponsored posts with affiliate links and somehow didn't realize every comment would call them out on that.
My son is now old enough to take to the movies but every kids movie these days are trash so the only movie I’ve taken him to is when a local theater was showing Toy Story 1 in celebration of its 30th anniversary.
When Uber, et al came to my town the cab companies, rather than clean their cars or develop an app, sued Uber in an attempt to force people to accept shitty, expensive service.
Also: people don't go out in groups as much these days. The cost of the cinema makes more sense if you and your friends get together most weekends and there's a new film you're keen to watch. In that case, it's a communal experience and you spend the next week talking about it. If I wanted to get my friends and colleagues together for something like that now, they would probably need a lot of convincing.
Live in LA and have friends and acquaintances in the biz. And it feels like most have accepted that they're working for streaming now. Around the time that a 4k flatscreen got about as cheap as a half dozen movie nights, even Alamo Drafthouse couldn't save the experience for me. And I used to love going to the movies.
I am also one of those people who just likes going to the movies. I like that I CAN'T pause and rewind, or answer a text, talk to my wife, or grab a snack. I like turning my phone off and just sitting in the moment. My theater does 25-30 minutes of ads, so I just show up for the show about 20 minutes late and I have an assigned seat anyway, and I like seeing a few previews anyway. I like it. I do HATE the savages who don't know how to behave in a movie theater, but the workaround there is that I go at 1:15 on a Wednesday and don't worry to much about that. And for raucous comedies or thrillers sometimes the communal audience experience is kind of nice and I'll tolerate loud reactions or commentary.
Yeah, and if you live in a megacity there will probably always be some sort of theater for the small minority of people like you, just like there are still live concerts in the age of the mp3 and streaming.
Apparently Substack does not yet support including images in Comments (and I'm sure there are good reasons for that), but in the vein of your story about your grandpa, Jeff, I have a pic of a "Pearl Harbor Survivor #205" license plate on a Honda Civic.
Who’s bullying, though? All the cited instances look more like (attempted) persuasion to me. That’s what ads and op-eds do. You may disagree with their conclusions or with the strength of their arguments (I do—I haven’t been to a theater in close to a decade, for exactly the reasons outlined here), but they’re just trying to persuade you to go to the theaters, not bully you into it.
Good point, and yes, the AMC ad is an ad for AMC so of course they’re pro AMC, I’d say the bullying is the social pressure that exists in LA (and to a lesser extent New York).
I dunno if 'bullying' is the right word, but it's not hard to at times detect a kind of naggy, hectoring tone to some of this persuasion. But that might just be the way that most attempts at persuasion in the 21st century seem to take on a kind of scolding self-righteousness no matter what the topic.
I’m lucky enough to live within walking distance of two independent, historic movie theaters. Went and saw Sentimental Value last weekend, $16 for two tickets, great experience.
Okay but actually we do need to bully people into leaving the house. Streaming a movie in your pajamas may be the right option for you. But there are way too many people for whom Doordashing a burrito and streaming while noodling on their phone has become the default. Just look at all the people who act like it’s a hate crime to suggest they go to work in an office and interact with coworkers.
We’ve sacrificed something human at the altar of convenience. And yes, maybe it’s not fair to put going to the movies in the same bucket as gathering with friends or getting to know your colleagues. But at least it’s a communal experience.
And frankly, seeing it with a crowd makes comedy and horror SIGNIFICANTLY better. Streaming killed comedy.
Pro tip: You can’t bully someone into being social. It has the opposite effect.
As someone else mentioned, asking someone to do something is not what bullying is referring to, with kindness.
What if the bullying *is* the point?
I miss Phil Hartman very much.....
Newsradio's Bill McNeil was his Walter White.
😊
Now apply literally every argument you just made here to the Sports and Style sections of the Washington Post, and you have a sharp media-crit piece about why most newspapers are shrinking.
I second that emotion.
It could always be worse. Here in Switzerland, movie theaters break off the movie at a random point near the middle, blare loud disco music, and play a slide show of cheesy local ads. This is supposed to be the “intermission,” to allow the small-bladdered among us to go to the bathroom, but really it’s to encourage everyone to go buy more snacks at the snack bar. After about 10 minutes, the movie resumes, as though nothing had ever happened.
The theater where we saw 1917—a movie whose WHOLE POINT is that it is shot in a single, unbroken take—actually cut off the film midsentence to show a fuschia slide advertising Ladies’s Night, again accompanied by loud disco music. We tried to get our money back and the management looked at us like we were crazy. “We always do this,” they said. Which is why I don’t go to movie theaters in Switzerland anymore.
I'm sorry that happened but also -- hilarious! I'm imagining one of that movie's iconic tracking shots of a corpse-eating rat running along a length of barbed wire and suddenly fuschia disco ladies-night, picture of a bucket of popcorn and a large Dr Pepper, ad for local furniture store, then boom! back to that same rat running left-to-right down that same length of barbed wire as fires burn in the middle distance.
We are really living in the Golden Age of Interruptions.
Ha! That is pretty much exactly what it was like!
Jeff--I am about to out myself on several levels, but my wife and I go to the movies almost every week (on Monday, after work, when tickets are half price and we get a free small popcorn). Movies on the big screen are just better. And yes, there is a lot of crap out there but there are also gems. Crime 101 -- if it is like the short story -- will be amazing next weekend. I also like that there are zero distractions at a cinema. So smuggle a flash into the theater and try something highly rated and forget there is a world out there for 2 hours.
This article is spot-on. And I still regularly go to the movies in theaters! And I agree with your general point about the overall decline in quality, but... I also have realized I have a bit of misplaced nostalgia for the Hollywood offerings of my youth (80s-90s). The YouTube algorithm recently started serving me old episodes of Siskel and Ebert, and let me just say... on any given week in the 1990s, the average offerings were 80% total crap: random comedies and thrillers you never heard of, various Pauly Shore and Eddie Murphy vehicles, and various flops. And compare that to today where despite declining attendance we have a strong cohort of working auteurs (Nolan, PTA, Eggers, McQueen, Aster, Gerwig, Lanthimos) mostly being produced by A24 and Annapurna, lots of fine films coming out of South Korea, and the occasional way-better-than-it-has-a-right-to-be mainstream film. If you've got a decent arthouse near you, there's still lots of good new movies out there. But yeah, it's expensive and unless you really love the big screen it's not always worth it to see them in the theater.
I also have good memories of going to movies — I got nostalgic when I walked in the theater! Of course, my memories are of getting dropped off at the theater with $5 when I was 12, my friend and I picking a movie practically at random, and that movie turning out to be Groundhog Day. Combine higher prices (I looked it up: a movie ticket costs almost $3 more now than it did in the ‘90s *after factoring in inflation*) and shittier movies and taking a flier on something makes less sense.
It’s also just so much harder when you’ve got a small kid at home.
One small part of the problem is that Spielberg and Nolan probably don’t go to regular movie theaters, so they don’t know how bad they are. They’re 1) remembering going to the movies when they were younger, and 2) subconsciously thinking of plush screening rooms, dubbing stages, and the high-end theaters they go to now for premieres, film festivals, Q&As etc
…so you’re saying my plan to usher in a glorious socialist utopia by telling people not to use the magic website with a great interface that gets you almost anything in a day ISN’T GOING TO WORK?
I remember when Gawker and G/O media sites would yell at people for buying stuff on Amazon, but kept the lights on by having a bunch of sponsored posts with affiliate links and somehow didn't realize every comment would call them out on that.
My son is now old enough to take to the movies but every kids movie these days are trash so the only movie I’ve taken him to is when a local theater was showing Toy Story 1 in celebration of its 30th anniversary.
When Uber, et al came to my town the cab companies, rather than clean their cars or develop an app, sued Uber in an attempt to force people to accept shitty, expensive service.
Also: people don't go out in groups as much these days. The cost of the cinema makes more sense if you and your friends get together most weekends and there's a new film you're keen to watch. In that case, it's a communal experience and you spend the next week talking about it. If I wanted to get my friends and colleagues together for something like that now, they would probably need a lot of convincing.
Live in LA and have friends and acquaintances in the biz. And it feels like most have accepted that they're working for streaming now. Around the time that a 4k flatscreen got about as cheap as a half dozen movie nights, even Alamo Drafthouse couldn't save the experience for me. And I used to love going to the movies.
I am also one of those people who just likes going to the movies. I like that I CAN'T pause and rewind, or answer a text, talk to my wife, or grab a snack. I like turning my phone off and just sitting in the moment. My theater does 25-30 minutes of ads, so I just show up for the show about 20 minutes late and I have an assigned seat anyway, and I like seeing a few previews anyway. I like it. I do HATE the savages who don't know how to behave in a movie theater, but the workaround there is that I go at 1:15 on a Wednesday and don't worry to much about that. And for raucous comedies or thrillers sometimes the communal audience experience is kind of nice and I'll tolerate loud reactions or commentary.
Yeah, and if you live in a megacity there will probably always be some sort of theater for the small minority of people like you, just like there are still live concerts in the age of the mp3 and streaming.