The Incredible Shrinking Box Office

Last night my partner and I went to the movies (specifically Pittsford Plaza) to see Kingdom of Heaven (she's a big Orlando Bloom fan), and I was once again struck by how noisy some of the theater patrons were. As is often the case, too many theater patrons just can't shut up during a movie! This is especially true of younger people. Sometimes I shush people - and repeatedly - but as often as not that just doesn't work. So last night we took early evasive action by moving to the back of the theater just before the film started, so as to get some peace to watch the movie. Fortunately the noisy brats were all toward the front, and it was a fairly big theater. Calm was restored, though at a price.

But things are undoubtedly getting worse with noisy, rude, and ignorant movie audiences. And Pittsford Plaza is in fact one of the less distracting places in this regard. (FYI: If you value audience silence during a movie, and live in the Rochester, NY area, for god's sake do not go anywhere near Regal Cinemas Culver Ridge, in Irondequoit. You will go mad.) But it's not just the kids: last month I even had to shush a older couple during a screening of Downfall (about the last days of Hitler). Now they were German, but that's still no excuse. National guilt about your embarrassing past is all very well, but that doesn't give you leave to blabber about it during a movie. I can watch Gandhi and squirm at the Amritsar massacre scene, but I don't need to announce to the audience, "That's terrible; on behalf of the British state of which I am uncomfortably a subject, I'd just like to say I feel really bad about that." It's not required. I think it's better to keep that to myself. So should you all. No matter how much you feel you have to say something during a screening - unless it's "My husband's having a heart attack, help!" - you really, really don't! Just shut up!

Anyway, I bring this up because this morning I happened to read in this week's Entertainment Weekly that cinema audiences have been consistently down throughout this year, and many in the industry are worried that the future of big cinematic releases (the whole summer blockbuster "tentpole"/3,000-cinema big release thing) could be in jeopardy. Now there are lots of reasons for why this is happening, and EW helpfully gives us the results of an online poll asking respondents "What keeps you away from seeing a movie in theaters?" Here are their results:

28% The quality of movies — most of them suck
22% The ticket price
11% People in theaters are rude and annoying
9% The DVD is out in a couple months anyway — I can wait
3% I hate sitting through all those pre-movie ads
26% All of the above

I think you can guess which of the above options I would respond to (though "All of the above" is also worth seriously considering.)

The fact is, that for people like me, the big suburban multiplexes have become almost uninhabitable - populated with hordes of noisy juveniles who can't differentiate between watching a DVD at home (when some discussion is allowed) and watching it in a theater (when it manifestly is not!) Yet these teens are the very people that the studios chase after with their blockbuster movies. Now I like to see the odd Big Dumb Movie myself - but increasingly, I'll have to avoid them by retreating to the boutique alternative theaters (the Little, the Dryden), or else reconsider the financial necessity of that 42" plasma screen HDTV for the DVDs!

Now, truth be known, I'm way too cheap for that 42" plasma screen HDTV. (Let's reconsider this when the good ones get under $1,000). Fortunately, however, when it comes to Big Dumb Movies, there is one other valid option out there (at least for the summer): Drive-in theaters. We're blessed in this area to have two great drive-ins, at the Vintage Drive-in, Avon and the Silver Lake Drive-in in Perry, NY.

What can I say: I love drive-in movies!