It is a little bit interesting to hear from these people who are supposed to be literal, rock, gods of our times (the directors and actors of our times; who make way too much money anyway) praying publicly to the studios.

Interesting.

The reality is that for most of America, going to the movies means dealing with escalating ticket prices, sticky floors, morons who don’t shut up, texting, Cracker Jack box sized “theaters,” piss-poor projection with everything from underlit screens to improperly framed movies that leave boom mikes in the shot, and an irritating amount of commercials before the actual movie we paid for.

This is why I\’m so happy I live in Austin, where we have the Alamo Drafthouse. They don\’t fuck around there. Strict no talking, no texting rules, no commercials before the movies, no one brings the baby — it\’s awesome. When a theater is run by people who are clearly in it for the movies and not just the money, you can tell the difference!

Hollywood really needs a pay cap. $5 mill tops. That\’s good enough to buy another summer home in this market.

There. I just fixed everything.

No, I\’m not 90, I\’m 35, and I love going to the movies. I love the theatre. The smell of popcorn, (even though I don\’t eat it) the big screen, the communal gathering. I can\’t imagine it all ending. I tend to watch more independent films than big budget studio films, so I don\’t know where, other than places such as this site, I\’m going to hear about my new possible favourite film.

However I do believe that things could be improved at the theatre\’s. A cell phone ban would be nice, and prices are a bit high especially with so many commercials being shown, but other than that I don\’t think that you can watch a movie in a better way than going to a theatre with a group of people and experiencing it together. Hearing the laughter and seeing the tears of others, it shows us we\’re not alone. It\’s a cultural experience watching our stories and history together. Go to any film festival and you\’ll know what I mean. I would hate to see these movie houses close simply because people don\’t want to get off the couch.

There are bigger theme\’s to discuss here, but I won\’t get into them on this blog. I\’ll just say that the golden age of cinema happened because people experienced films together. The lazier the audience becomes the harder for the artist to get films off the ground, and the more quality will suffer because film makers and exec\’s will be scared to take a chance.

The answer isn\’t to put the screws to the consumer and force them to wait 4 weeks for videos to become available on Netflix and Redbox (with the hopes that they\’ll say \”UNCLE\” and buy the $35 Blu-ray instead). Like you said, the theater-going experience sucks. I can\’t stand on the side of these theater-owners, who took their control over the marketplace for granted. They wouldn\’t streamline the quality of their locations or put their foot down on talking & texting during movies, while jacking up the prices to ungodly levels – why is the matinee price literally twice as much now as it was when I saw Sin City, six years ago?.

Like I said, it\’s easy to say fuck the theaters, fuck the studios, fuck the artists, I\’m watching a movie for free tonight with my girl because I have no job and live off of Bugles and PB&J sandwiches. Piracy\’s kind of a scary problem that they need to handle (without blowing it like the RIAA did and make even my grandmother say \”fuck those guys, I\’m downloading this shit like it\’s cool!\”).

This is key here. I don\’t feel any sympathy for NYC theatres charging $13 for a movie (with no matinees after noon) regardless of what shape their theatre is in.

Good write-up!