Speaking of decline, fewer people are going to the movies
than in years past. Some people blame this on the quality of movies produced (“Nothing
but sequels and remakes! Doesn’t Hollywood have any original ideas?”). This may
be a factor, but if you look back at Hollywood’s glory years, you’ll find that
they produced some pretty lousy movies back then, too.
And they still produce some good ones now. I don’t usually
agree with the Awards voters, but the fact that those voters selected this
movie and I preferred that movie just tells me there are still movies out there
that appeal to people.
A large part of Hollywood’s problem is just culture. Those
pictures they love to show us of a movie theater crowd from the 1940s where all
the men are in suits and ties and all the women in dresses and the theater is
full, what else did those people have to do on a Saturday or Sunday night after
it got dark? No TV, maybe some high school sports or a dance, or sit at home
and listen to the radio. Plus, there weren’t that many theaters in town, so
everyone who wanted to go to the movies was crammed into one or two theaters
instead of being distributed over two 16 theater multiplexes (making it easier
to take a picture of a crowded theater).
Personally, though, I think Hollywood’s biggest problem with
declining theater attendance is all about TV.
And I don’t mean the quality of the TV programming. If the
movies Hollywood turns out are a swamp (and I don’t think it is; as stated
earlier I think there are still some good movies coming out), TV is the
stagnant, vermin-infested cesspool the swamp drains into. 200 channels and, at
any given time, it’s nigh-impossible to find something you want to watch.
No, the problem Hollywood is having with TV is with the
units themselves. I have a family of four, so if we want to go to a movie—even a
matinee—we’re out at least $25. Evening movie it’s almost $40, and if we want
to see something in IMAX or some other fancy format like that, we’re talking
$60 before popcorn. Throw in popcorn and a drink, and we’re closing in on
$100.
Or …
We can wait three months (sometimes less) and check out the
BluRay copy of the movie for less than three dollars, watch it from our
comfortable couch on a large, HD-TV, and we don’t have to worry about unclean
restrooms or (you may have seen this news story in your town) bed bugs. Now,
personally, I hate pausing movies for a restroom or snack break, but sometimes
I give in to popular demand and do so, in which case we can pick up right where we left off. At the theater,
if you gotta go, you gotta miss something.
Don’t get me wrong: I love going to the movie theater. It’s
an event. A two-story screen has advantages over even a 62 inch
HD-UD-UpYours-Whatever, but the cost has led me (and my family) to ask of every
movie that comes out that we are at all intrigued by, “Will this lose anything
on the ‘small’ screen?” And the truth is, even with the movies I have really
enjoyed, the large screen spectacle is rarely enough to make me feel like a $25
outlay is worth it for something I’ll see in a couple months for $3.
