LETS GO TO THE MOVIES

Our movies reflect our America, and our America reflects our movies. But what's really essential is what happens when we and the movies meet.

In that other, long-ago generation, there were thousands of little neighborhood movie "theatres," strategically scattered among a few elaborate movie "palaces." Today there are neither. Instead there are hundreds of multiplexes. Sleek chrome boxes in which smaller boxes with screens squeeze in their patrons. Twenty boxes mean twenty different movies going on at about the same times. The management can move patrons in and out at an efficient pace and profit. Especially with their glitzy displays of nickle candy going for a buck, and ten-cents popcorn selling for five.

Well, those number betray me, don't they!

I'm recalling a very different milieu in that very different generation. However, it's not just the prices that were different. The experience was. Come walk with me...

No need for a car, a highway, or a crowded parking lot. Like most, my movie theatre was a few blocks from home. Usually you didn't worry about time, because you sauntered in at whatever time was convenient to you not the management. Meaning you'd watch the double feature from whenever you came in, to whenever it reached that point again. Plots were pretty simple, so seeing it from the beginning wasn't that critical. [How critical it is with today's movies is open to argument]

The point here is the warm physio-emotional way you experienced the movie. The theatre was local...the audience was local...the guy taking the tickets was usually the manager who in turn was usually a neighbor ...the venue was cozy...the seats seemed to fit you from the last time...the plot had good guys and bad guys, and usually you could distinguish...the dialog was more important than the computer...and if the story had to have villains, they were usually human not Vulcan-masked-pretend villains.

I know. Sounds like another grumpy old sentimentalist remembering things better than they actually were. But here's the catch. Maybe they were...! So just maybe today's cool could pick up a few tips from yesterday's warm.