When was the last time you went to the movies?
What did you see?
Who did you go with?
Did you like the movie or was it more the company… the dinner and conversation that inevitably follows the movie?

Up until 2001 I loved going to the movies. When I was a child my grandmother would recount these stories of how much things were different when she was a child. Whenever we would complain about being bored she would delight in telling us that for 35 cents her she and her sister would go down to the Saturday matinee and watch a double feature and have just enough change left over for a hamburger and soda. I remember rolling my eyes and thinking that was a million years ago gramma, and silent films don’t count.

The first movie I ever saw was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I was 4 years old and I saw it at the Drive In with my Grandparents. From there, my love affair with the movies started. Two years later my father took me to see Star Wars two days after it opened at the Brahman’s Chinese Theater. When I was eight he took me to a double feature showing Apocalypse Now and The Muppet Movie. He also took me to see the rest of the Star Wars trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman 1 & 2, Godfather part 3, the Ghost Busters 1 & 2 and every Clint Eastwood movie made in the 70’s. My mom took us to see every movie Meryl Streep ever made after 1975, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and many, many more. My parents and grandparents loved going to the movies and I got lucky because they always took me and my sister and with them. In the 80’s my friends’ older sister took us to see Blue Lagoon, Porky’s, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, American Gigolo, All the Right Moves and oddly enough E.T. By the time me my friends learned to drive I was going to the movies once a week sometimes twice a week.

It was in the late 80’s when things really started to change.

     By that time they had done away with the Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry Cartoons before the movie started. People no longer clapped when the credits went up, They cranked up the sound as if they were preparing for a geriatric ward to flood the theater. And forget going to the movies hungry, you would need to take out a small loan just to afford the basics, chocolate candy of some sort, popcorn and a coke. They started adding more and more preview trailers. They would go on for so long I’d forget what movie I was going to see. And it was at that time they started building multiplex theaters. For some reason they stopped having people wait in lines and started corralling them in special marked off areas. I passed out three times standing in  these corals went I to see Jurassic Park, Do the Right Thing and Pulp Fiction, all on opening night at midnight at the Cineplex Odeon at Universal City walk  Tickets were skyrocketing. I watched tickets go up from $1.50 to $14.00 dollars. And then my all time biggest pet peeve, the advent of the cell phone. I could on about this… but that’s a whole different blog.  And what the hell is up with the commercials. As if I don’t get enough at home.

Needless to say, I find I don’t enjoy the movie experience like I use to.

Between 2001 and 2005 I saw five movies

Sex and Lucia (2nd date with man I ended up marrying)

Bowling for Columbine (I’ve seen everything Michael Moore has ever made)
Fahrenheit 9/11

Harold and Kuhmar go to White Castle (My little brother begged me to take him see it

The Corporation (Two Words Noam Chomsky!)

In the last six months I don’t know what came over me I went to see
Four movies

Notes on a Scandal, I’m still stunned Phillip Glass got nominated for an Oscar. Volver, It was filmed beautifully and Penelope Cruz is much better in her own language. Pan’s Labyrinth, What was up with the creepy monster with eyeballs in his hands. Catch and Release, Were it not for the hot, hot body of Timothy Olyphant and Kevin Smith’s brilliant delivery I would have demanded my money back. I didn’t buy any soda because at those prices I’m not going to the bathroom in the middle of the movie. I didn’t buy any popcorn because they don’t offer anything smaller than bathtub size. And more than few times I wanted to cover my ears.

So, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is better to stay home with my DVD collection, HBO, Showtime, Video on Demand and NetFlix………When I was a kid I went to the movies with 5 bucks saw a couple of cartoons, a double feature, bought red vines, popcorn and coke and I had just enough money left over to go to the arcade and play Pac-Man with my friends.  

But things have changed, and not for the better