RIP, the movie theater?

[tonyb]

The old movie house thread started recently has me wondering just how much longer the movie theater as we've known it will survive. Rather than steer that thread off course, i figured I'd start a new one.

Believe me, I don't wish to see the demise of the movie palace, just as I've hated witnessing the death of so many newspapers in recent years. But changing technologies have me wondering how the movie theater business will adapt, or if it will be able to. The grand movie palace has been a thing of the past for some time now, replaced by the multiplexes, with their shoebox auditoriums. (The real value they offer over the old-time movie theater is that a person gets to hear two movies simultaneously! For no extra charge!)

And now there is on-demand cable and HD television sets (with 3D coming soon, or so I've heard) with HUGE screens and gee-whiz sound systems and all. Now all they have to do is figure out how to improve the flavor of microwave popcorn and people are left with little good reason to take in a movie anywhere but the comfort of their own homes.

I suspect that people will be going out to the movies through the foreseeable future, because there remains something special about making an evening of going out to the picture show, and in watching a movie on the big screen. But I fear that will be an increasingly "niche" market. Hope I'm wrong.

 

[Captain Lex]

In my hometown, there are a few theaters that do pretty well for themselves showing retro titles (anywhere from the '40s to the early 2000s) and packing the houses, in addition to current release programming. Not every theater that shows the older films attracts the same crowds -- residential neighborhoods do much better than commercial ones -- but there are still plenty of people left who recognize how special it is to see a motion picture in a cinema, even when it's perfectly possible and perfectly legal to watch the same film in their own homes.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We've had the best summer in the seven years since we reopened, and it's continued thru the fall -- people are realizing that watching a movie at home on a TV, no matter how fancy the TV set, isn't as satisfying as seeing it with an audience on a big screen. We don't have 3D, we don't have digital projection, we don't have any gimmicks -- just good shows, presented properly, and people have been thronging to see them this year. So yeah, the rumors of the industry's demise are grossly exaggerated.

 

[Yeps]

Did the moving picture kill live theatre? Did radio kill live music? Did either TV or recorded music kill the radio*? It will stick around and adapt to the world it is in.


*almost, and now it is killing itself.

 

[tonyb]

Did the moving picture kill live theatre? Did radio kill live music? Did either TV or recorded music kill the radio*? It will stick around and adapt to the world it is in.


*almost, and now it is killing itself.

I once worked for a newspaper publisher who assured me that the Internet posed no serious threat to our business. This was about a dozen years ago now. He was elderly even then, and had been in the business since the 1940s. He recalled people saying that radio was gonna bump us off. And then TV would. But we were going strong. At that time, we were producing more pages than we ever had.

But that was then. That company, and most like it, are mere shells of what they were as recently as the day my old boss and I had that conversation, which isn't long ago at all.

No, movies didn't kill live theater. But in most places these days live theater doesn't pay its own way. It requires support from benefactors and foundations. (How many plays does the average person take in over the course of a year? Or even a decade? And how many movies?) Radio (and recordings) didn't kill live music, but the parlor piano isn't the common home fixture it was a century ago.

I'm not arguing that the movie theater will soon be a thing of the past, and I'm certainly not hoping for that, but I fear that its place in the culture is diminishing. Again, I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Touchofevil]

We've had the best summer in the seven years since we reopened, and it's continued thru the fall -- people are realizing that watching a movie at home on a TV, no matter how fancy the TV set, isn't as satisfying as seeing it with an audience on a big screen. We don't have 3D, we don't have digital projection, we don't have any gimmicks -- just good shows, presented properly, and people have been thronging to see them this year. So yeah, the rumors of the industry's demise are grossly exaggerated.

When quality supercedes flash it gives the world hope. TCM presents at our the theatre gives hope. Trips to the theatre still evoke memories of the magic I felt as a child going to the movies which television and the home theatre cannot replicate.

 

[tonyb]

When quality supercedes flash it gives the world hope. TCM presents at our the theatre gives hope. Trips to the theatre still evoke memories of the magic I felt as a child going to the movies which television and the home theatre cannot replicate.

I'm right with you on that one. But will the audience of tomorrow, today's little kids, harbor similar sentiments? Maybe they will, but I wouldn't bet my own money on it.

On those rare occasions I actually take in a movie in a theater (I frequently drop off my wife at the local multiplex and return a couple of hours later to bring her home), it is typically at a 1920s-vintage neighborhood movie house that's a 35 or 40 minute drive from here. I patronize that place because I dig the atmosphere and because I'm on friendly terms with the theater's sole full-time employee, whom I met quite by happenstance. But this is far from a typical circumstance. And that theater's business model is even more unusual. It's a for-profit operation, but whatever profit it shows is plowed back into the business (keeping that old structure in safe and sound condition is not an inexpensive proposition). For the business owners, it borders on a charitable undertaking.

 

[sheeplady]

Some movie theaters will survive as long as people go on first, second, and third dates. Nobody takes a date to a Netflix on the couch for their first date. If they do, they don't typically get a second date.

My consumption of movie theater movies has gone up over the past decade, predominately because I had the money for such things (which I didn't 10 years ago- I can count the number of movies I saw before that in the theater on one hand); but also because I don't have Netflix or anything like that. Although going to the movies is expensive, I don't go so much that I would save anything with Netflix. I don't have cable either, and I survive. I hope the theaters survive too- sometimes I like to out, get dressed up, eat some expensive popcorn, and let someone else sweep up the mess.

 

[sheeplady]

We've had the best summer in the seven years since we reopened, and it's continued thru the fall -- people are realizing that watching a movie at home on a TV, no matter how fancy the TV set, isn't as satisfying as seeing it with an audience on a big screen. We don't have 3D, we don't have digital projection, we don't have any gimmicks -- just good shows, presented properly, and people have been thronging to see them this year. So yeah, the rumors of the industry's demise are grossly exaggerated.

I wonder how much of this has to do with the recession... although going out to the movies is expensive, it's an escape unlike sitting in front of the television and looking around at your own four walls where it's difficult to forget the bleakness of your reality. It's kind of like how sales of lipstick go up in a recession (and sales of clothes go down)- it's a little treat that doesn't cost that much.

 

[Old Rogue]

After seeing Cassablanca on the big screen earlier this year I sure hope that theaters don't fade away. I can't count the times I've watched it on the small screen at home, but there was something unique about seeing it the way it was originally intended. I was surprised at the turnout also. It wasn't a sellout, but there were enough people willing to pony up the $12 ticket price to fill about 3/4 of the seats. I'm hoping this might lead to more vintage films being shown on the big screen.

 

[tonyb]

Movies ticket sales did quite well during the Depression, or so I've been told, and for the same reason you cite for people of modest means going to the movies during our recent hard time, sheeplady. That's the common wisdom on the matter, anyway, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Movies make for a great first-date outing, for sure. It's typically "safe" for both parties. You're out in public, you don't have to concern yourself with making conversation for the sake of making conversation, and with any luck you'll both at least get a bit of entertainment out of the deal, if nothing else. And it's still fairly inexpensive, relative to many of the alternatives. So yeah, if the movie house weren't there, we'd be all the poorer for it.

At this moment, "The Last Picture Show" comes to mind. Wonderful movie.

 

[tonyb]

Some movie theaters will survive as long as people go on first, second, and third dates. Nobody takes a date to a Netflix on the couch for their first date. If they do, they don't typically get a second date. ...

Maybe he (or she) wasn't looking for a second date?

 

[Rathdown]

As long as there are kids 17-21 (your typical dating couple walk in, in movie parlance) their'll be theatres...

 

[LizzieMaine]

One of the important roles a theatre fills in a small town is that of a community center -- a successor to the lodge hall or the church hall, where community functions and other special events are held. There's a lot more to such theatres than just movies -- but without movies, they can't be maintained. So going to a show for a lot of people is a way of supporting the facility and ensuring it's still available for community purposes. The movie is secondary for a lot of such patrons -- they come because of the theatre, not the film.

 

[tonyb]

After seeing Cassablanca on the big screen earlier this year I sure hope that theaters don't fade away. I can't count the times I've watched it on the small screen at home, but there was something unique about seeing it the way it was originally intended. I was surprised at the turnout also. It wasn't a sellout, but there were enough people willing to pony up the $12 ticket price to fill about 3/4 of the seats. I'm hoping this might lead to more vintage films being shown on the big screen.

I, too, saw "Casablanca" on the big screen, some 15 or more years ago, in a rickety old neighborhood movie house that has since been demolished.

I think you've identified perhaps the "safest" niche for the movie theater -- a special place to see special movies. Old movies, for sure, but also the new ones that just beg to be seen on the big screen, in a dark theater, away from home and all the distractions thereof.

As it happens, on the site of that rickety old theater is now a new (as of a dozen or so years ago) three-screen operation. My understanding is that the theater's owner, the aging scion of a long-established family that had once owned the local horse track, built the new place largely out of a sense of duty to the community and his own love of neighborhood movie theaters. The other property owners and merchants in that neighborhood business district really ought to kiss him. That theater not only keeps the locals in the neighborhood (instead of sending them to the suburban multiplex), it also brings in people from outside. Every restaurant, bar and specialty shop in the district benefits greatly from it.

 

[Shangas]

I go to the cinema rather infrequently, but that said, I don't see cinemas dying off anytime soon.

It's fun to go out with friends and family to have dinner and watch a movie at the cinema (or vice-versa). You don't have to worry about the mess and the tidying up and it's just relaxing. I don't see movie-theaters closing their doors anytime soon.

Hell, Melbourne still has a DRIVE-IN cinema that's STILL in full operation, even today. I've seen people go there (I've gone a few times myself with my cousins) and they make a whole night of it. It's not unknown for people back up their trucks, set up the chairs on the back of the truck and just sit there with the windows open, tune in the radio and watch the movie. Some people even bring those portable barbeque-sets along.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

As long as there are kids 17-21 (your typical dating couple walk in, in movie parlance) their'll be theatres...

That's assuming people still date.
(see the numerous posts and threads about today's hooking up "culture")

 

[tonyb]

I once thought myself a big fan of drive-in theaters, Shangas, but I've come to accept that I was more in love with my memories of drive-in theaters than the modern reality of them.

In recent years I've taken in movies at a multi-screen drive-in near Auburn, between Seattle and Tacoma; and at a Mom-and-Pop operation near Shelton, Wash., which is a 15 or 20 minute drive up Hwy 101 from Olympia. I can't say that I've had such a swell time at either. But if I were 17, and I had a member of the fairer gender in the car with me, and a little bit of whiskey smuggled in under the seat, well ...

I was a young child during the heyday of the drive-in movie theater. We went frequently, during the warmer weather. We had a 1955 (I think it was) Ford station wagon with rear seats that folded flat. The Old Man would summon his buddy Dick (who was but a teenager at the time), grab a half-case of beer, throw us youngsters in the back and take us to the movies. We kids would usually be crapped out before the first movie was half over, leaving Dick and the Old Man (who was himself all of 20-something then) to drink their beer in relative peace. They were both undoubtedly intoxicated (by 2012 standards) as they drove us home. No seat belts, of course. Hell, we weren't even seated, let alone belted into those seats.

 

[Touchofevil]

I'm right with you on that one. But will the audience of tomorrow, today's little kids, harbor similar sentiments? Maybe they will, but I wouldn't bet my own money on it.

On those rare occasions I actually take in a movie in a theater (I frequently drop off my wife at the local multiplex and return a couple of hours later to bring her home), it is typically at a 1920s-vintage neighborhood movie house that's a 35 or 40 minute drive from here. I patronize that place because I dig the atmosphere and because I'm on friendly terms with the theater's sole full-time employee, whom I met quite by happenstance. But this is far from a typical circumstance. And that theater's business model is even more unusual. It's a for-profit operation, but whatever profit it shows is plowed back into the business (keeping that old structure in safe and sound condition is not an inexpensive proposition). For the business owners, it borders on a charitable undertaking.

Unfortunately, I must agree but I hope you are wrong.
My main reason against going to a theatre anymore is the people. Too many in the audience do not realize that it is a shared experience and they are sharing way more than is needed. Happily, since the new theatre was built, there seems to be better manners exhibited and a more concerted effort to maintain appropriate behavior by the staff.

 

[DanielJones]

I do have to say our local theaters are alive and well. The parking lots are packed on a Friday & Saturday night (hard to find parking to go to a nearby restaurant or grocery store at that time). One of them is one of those multiplex theaters. So they have not only the standard theaters but the home style theaters & cocktail lounge theaters for a more intimate setting for a date night. Pretty cool to be able to lounge, eat supper and enjoy a film.
There is even a refurbished theater down town that does a good share of business showing second run films at a discount, plus art house and classic films on occasion.

As far as rude patrons, I haven't encountered those at the new multiplex. They don't seem to bring their crying babies or carry on a long and loud conversation. You might hear the occasional whispered comment about the movie but when the movie comes on conversations stop. And in the homestyle theaters it is even better. It is filled with folks that want to have that home experience without the kids around, so they are super quiet. It's great!

Cheers!

Dan