The screen's not so silver anymore

I don’t watch movies anymore. I really don’t. Well, not much anyway. And I never actually go to the movies. The last time I was in a movie theater, in all honesty, was when I went to see The Passion of the Christ back in the spring of 2004. Since then, there have been very few movies that could get me excited enough to think about leaving the comfort of my own home to head out to the multiplex. And with the rare few that could elicit that excitement, I still never made the time. Even after those movies came out on DVD, even then I rarely had the get-up-and-go to rent the stupid things and watch them at my leisure. Friends keep trying to sign me up for free trials of Netflix, unaware of how useless it would be to me. In the past two years, I think I have maybe watched a dozen new movies from beginning to end, maybe… and two of those movies were Smokey and the Bandit 1 and 2, which were merely new to me.

In the overall storyline of my life, this is really a heavy statement. Movies used to be my life. In high school, in college and in my two years in L.A. there wasn’t a month that went by when I didn’t see at least one new movie in the theater and several others on tape. I mean, I guess that’s just part of the package when you think you want to spend your life making movies – watching new movies is just something you do, and do a lot of. But no more.

There are several reasons for my downward turn in screen time. Most notably, of course, was the birth of my daughter, which also happened in the spring of 2004. Since then, free time isn’t something I come by easily. But that’s not the entire story, because absence hasn’t made my heart grow fonder for the stuff Hollywood puts out every year. On those occasions when I do find myself with a couple hours of uninterrupted time, I rarely feel the urge to run out to Blockbuster and catch up on all the entertainment I’ve missed. I certainly have no desire head to the movie theater with my precious hours. These days, I honestly have trouble working up the desire to devote two straight hours of my life to sitting in one place. When I do watch a DVD, it’s usually of a TV show, which only requires a half-hour or less, and even then I’m usually antsy to do something else by about minute fifteen. In most every situation on most any evening after my daughter has gone to sleep, I find I’d rather be doing pretty much anything other than watching a movie: working out, checking e-mail, blogging, working on my back-burner writing projects, paying bills, balancing the checkbook, playing board games with my wife, having an actual uninterrupted conversation with my wife, reading (gasp) a book. If a movie is on in my house, nine times out of ten it’s one that’s already in our collection, that Lauren and I have both seen a million times, and is merely providing background noise to something else we’re doing.

Now, I’m not saying all this to sound all high and mighty, like I’m somehow a better person who has better things to do than all the couch potatoes and film geeks who revolve their lives around movies. To be perfectly honest, when I really sit down and think about it, I do miss it. I miss getting excited about movies. Whenever I read the blog of a friend from L.A., where they’re talking about how pumped up they are over the opening night screening of the latest blockbuster, I feel pangs of longing, because I remember how pumped up I used to get over the same thing. When you’re a movie person, and all your friends are movie people, going to the movies was an event. It was an experience. Especially when it was the opening night of a particularly well-anticipated movie. We’d all meet up at the theater, wait in line sometimes for an hour or more, sit in a packed auditorium before a gigantic screen (we always went to theaters with gigantic screens), with several hundred other people who were just as excited as we were to see what we were seeing. For two hours, you and these other strangers acted as one giant unit. You all laughed at the same time. You all screamed at the same time. You were all dead silent at the same time. And with a really good crowd at a really good movie, you actually all applauded at the same time, just as though you were acknowledging a live performance with actors who could hear your adulations. [I can still remember one of the most awesome movie-going experiences of my life, the midnight opening of the Bruce Willis flick, Armageddon on the gi-normous main screen of the Cheri in Boston (may it rest in peace), and some minor character, in a throwaway line, mentioned M.I.T. Apparently a decent fraction of the audience had made the trip over from Cambridge to see the movie, because all of a sudden the entire theater erupted in applause.] When the movie was over, you sat through the entire credit sequence hoping to see the name of somebody you knew. A lot of times the group of us, or at least some of us, would go out for drinks or dinner or some other form of post-movie entertainment before dispersing for the night. The next weekend, you’d do it all over again.

It never got old.

And yet somehow, for me, it has. And it isn’t because I have a family now and feel I’ve got better things to do with my time than go see every movie that comes out. It isn’t because I’ve turned snobbish over steady stream of crap that Hollywood has put out lately. I’m sure the ratio of gold to crap is the same now as it was back then – though it doesn’t help that all the films people keep raving about to me, that I actually do take the time to see, end up sucking. (Sideways, people? Really? Wedding Crashers was the funniest movie you ever saw? Anchorman? Are you shitting me? You get the idea.) And it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that ticket prices are out of control. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what a movie ticket even goes for these days, but I’m sure the amount it costs compared to my annual income is about the same or better than it was during my entry-level-assistant days back in L.A.

I think I’ve traced my lukewarm feelings toward the cinema to two specific factors. The first is the fact that I haven’t been able to watch a legitimate blockbuster in a long time. I love my wife dearly, but I somehow married a woman who cannot handle any kind of violence, suspense or scariness – all the things that make for the best kinds of movies in my opinion. Finding a movie that we can both agree on is never an easy task and I’ve had to sacrifice a lot of movies that I really wanted to see in order to spend an extra couple of hours with her. Spiderman 2, X-Men 3, The Return of the King, the final Star Wars installment, just to name a few. I partially blame my wife for this, but with the crazy schedules we’ve been working coupled with a daughter who just does not sleep ever, I’ve considered it a pretty mild sacrifice to forgo these flicks in favor of spending more time just drinking coffee, talking with and making love to the woman I love (who is always much more happy and willing when she hasn’t just had the bejeezus scared out of her). In the last two years, there are only four new movies I’ve seen that I have actually liked enough to watch more than once and would recommend to a friend. They are decidedly non-Blockbuster, and I’m a little embarrassed to admit liking them, but I will stand by and defend these movies to anyone who speaks badly of them: School of Rock, 13 Going On 30, What the Bleep Do We Know, and Mean Girls.

So yes, I think the fact that I haven’t seen the type of movie that is created for the express purpose of getting people excited about movies is part of the reason for my general Hollywood malaise. But I think the other reason is the real clincher. I no longer have a group of people to get excited about movies with. While going to the movies alone or with just one other person is great and wonderful and something I did a lot of back in the day, it was always the big group outings that really generated excitement for whole movie-going experience. Experiencing a movie with a band of friends who were just as passionate about it as you were, and who could talk intelligently about what was great and what sucked, was such a big part of what made going to the movies great. But beyond that, the thing that will always make going out to the movies far superior to watching one in your own house (no matter how sweet your home theater system is) was good movie crowds. Like I described before, there’s something inexplicably wonderful about sharing a simultaneous laugh, gasp or moment of silence with several hundred other people. And when that many strangers break into spontaneous applause for no logical reason… as freakishly overdramatic as this sounds, it does makes you feel like you’re a part of something. And unfortunately, since moving out of L.A., I have yet to experience another good movie crowd.

Not once. I know that no other city on earth has as many “movie people” in one place as Los Angeles. But out here in the sucking creative void that is New Jersey and Pennsylvania, it’s like people go to the movies simply because it’s something to do – not because it’s the thing to do. I can’t tell you how many times between 2000 (when I moved out of L.A.) and 2004 (when I stopped going to the movies altogether) that I was the only person in a semi-full theater laughing at a really funny scene. Teenagers and grownups alike showed little remorse in carrying on conversations during key dramatic scenes. On the few opening nights I went to, the theaters were never packed, and you certainly didn’t have to show up two hours early with a pack of friends to secure your tickets. And not once did the crowd I was a part of ever break into spontaneous applause. Not once. Is it any wonder I have felt no compulsion to go back?

Like I said though, I don’t really miss it – save for nights like this when I really sit down and think about it. Other things have come into my life that have not only filled that void, but overflowed it, so much that I rarely think about how great going to the movies used to be. To be honest, the only times that it really sucks is when some movie of the political nature comes out: Fahrenheit 9/11, Syriana, An Inconvenient Truth. Devoted followers of these films’ auteurs assume that I’m refusing to see them because I’m simply a close-minded Bush supporter, when the real inconvenient truth is more along the lines of: “Hey, I didn’t even go see the last Star Wars in the theater, so why would I spend money on this piece of shit?”

But please, dear friends, don’t let this blog stop you from recommending these films to me. Even though on most occasions over the last two years your recommendations have sucked quite largely, you do sometimes get a rare gem through. And if I ever eventually find more free time at my disposal, I do intend on seeing them all… though it will most likely be on a small screen, forty-five minutes at a time in between diapers, novels and my wife constantly asking, “Is he going to die? Is he going to die?”

And to my L.A. friends, if I ever find myself out your way for a few days, please take me to the movies. Somewhere big for something loud. Help me to remember how it used to be.