I'll Have a Large Popcorn and a Dry Martini

Every Sunday, my whole family would go to the movies. While the good Mormon families of Utah would do whatever good Mormon families do on Sundays—perhaps playing basketball or patching up their Mormon underwear—we would be munching popcorn and taking in everything from Star Wars to Barry Lyndon.

Now days, I rarely go to the movies. I love the experience, but somehow I rarely make it past the front doors of the multiplex. There are a variety of reasons: my friends aren’t into the same movies I am into; the movies suck; it’s easier to watch DVDs at home; tickets are pretty expensive; and there are so many other things that attract my attention.

The movie offerings are pretty sad indeed. Sequels, especially third and fourth installments are pretty dreadful, but studios love ‘em. This summer we have sequels to Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, Bruce Almighty, Shrek, Harry Potter, and The Bourne Indentity. Of which I have seen none. We’ve also been treated to another Michael Bay schlockfest, Transformers. I’d rather bathe in hot coals than see a Michael Bay film. Anyone who has seen action done so beautifully in a Hong Kong action films cannot sit through the close-ups and quick cuts of a Bay brain ache.

Apparently few summer movies have legs and they drop in sales considerably after the first week. A lot of this is due to the huge amount of blockbuster films released every week. How many blocks can you bust when you’re gone from the theater in a week? Of course this is business and the money supposedly lies in catching the attention of teens and twenty-year olds.

Thankfully there is another way of thinking. There is a theater in Los Angeles that might be on to something:

The lobby contains a restaurant, a bar, and a book-and-gift shop. Before the movie, people hang out and have a drink or leaf through a hot new novel or a movie-star biography. The rest rooms are spotless, and the concession stand serves delicious coffee. All the seats are reserved, and they are plush, with plenty of legroom. The steeply raked auditorium is dark, and insulated from the sound of the other theatres in the same multiplex. Is this some sort of upper-bourgeois dream of the great good place? A padded cell for wealthy movie nuts? No, it’s an actual multiplex, the ArcLight, on Sunset Boulevard near Vine.

The idea of user-friendly theatres may be catching on. Sumner Redstone’s daughter Shari, the president of National Amusements, the family-owned theatre business, has vowed to convert half the lobbies of the chain’s hundred and nineteen theatres to social spaces with comfortable lounges, and to build more. Martinis will be served; newspapers and magazines will be offered. If theatres go in this Starbucks-plus-cocktails direction, the older audience might come back, with a positive effect on filmmaking, and the value of the movies as an art form and an experience could be preserved. After you are seated at the ArcLight, an usher standing at the front of the auditorium tells you who wrote and directed the movie and how long it is. He promises that he and another usher will stay for a while to make sure that the projection and the sound are up to snuff. There are no advertisements following his speech, and only four coming attractions. The movie begins, and you are utterly lost in it.

This is the way to go. I would go to movies a lot more often if they served martinis with Hendrick’s gin. It becomes an experience. I think people are hungry for social spaces, especially in suburban areas where isolation comes too easily. This is why Starbuck’s coffeshops are so successful; people crave that social area. And if movies theaters have good coffee (unlike Starbucks), good food, good drinks, good books and good movies, Hollywood would find their movies sprouting legs and running marathons.