The effort to go to the movies

The other night, my wife and I spent the evening out at the movies. We like the big screen and the surround sound. We like the occasion. Given how things for which we have to make some effort tend to be in jeopardy these days, I wondered if theaters would be around for long,

I scanned the backs of all the heads in front of me. Okay, I won’t miss the cel phones and the running comments by know-it-alls and the teenager that keeps kicking my chair.

But I remember seeing Something About Mary in a theater with some buddies and telling my wife how hysterical it was. She had to see it. So the moment it was available on video, we watched it at home and damn, if it didn’t feel like a different movie. Despite me trying to force a laugh and sell the jokes, my wife did little more than crack a grin. There’s something about an audience that has gone out of its way to sit in the dark that made the movie funnier.

I imagine that Something About Mary was made for that theater audience. The writer had his or her college professor echoing in his cortex about knowing who his audience is, instructing him to develop the tone, content and language of the script, tailor it to meet the expectations of that audience. Consequently, the writer wrote Something About Mary for the kind of person who would drive 10 miles to see Cameron Diaz comb man stuff through her hair. Put a crowd of them together and you have a laugh riot. The point is, that while the audience was made for that movie, that audience, to some degree, also made that movie.

So what if there were no theaters? The content would change, at least slightly. As long as the writer is considering different factors, a different outcome would have to be expected. And without theaters, the audience, at home or behind a computer, would tend to become more defined. And with a more defined audience, there would be more cultural filters, more assumptions, more inside jokes.

The films would tend to become less cultural. Think about it. Cultures are not monolithic, but are formed from all the factors that we see in that audience – variations in class, gender, generation, religion and education. Our cultural filter shapes how we view the world and can hinder understanding different backgrounds. Without theaters, the movies would, I think, exercise more of that. Writing for someone watching on a laptop, a writer may be more likely to assume that the audience believes what he or she believes.

 Leaving your home to see a movie makes us more inclined to leave our little worlds. And there is something liberating about joining the fray, hearing a joke amidst the madding crowd. We’re quicker to laugh and more likely to laugh aloud if we’ll only get lost in the din. That’s what happened to me the first time I saw Something About Mary.

And there is something about sitting in a theater knowing that the film wasn’t made for only you, that we are more likely to judge the film objectively. Being more likely to wonder how it affected every one else can be eye-opening.

And there is something about sitting in an audience knowing that an emotion or message actually transcended all differences between people. In making us more aware of each other, a movie in a theater is, to some degree, unifying. It may not be a kumbaya moment, but at least the presence of others is felt. And I think that’s something that should have a place in the world.

I also think that living in a world that assumes art is worth exerting ourselves for is not a bad thing––this from someone who likes to create an occasion for music by setting vinyl on a turntable.
               Oh, and the movie we saw? We saw American Hustle. It was pretty good. If you're a Facebook friend of mine, I think you’d like it.