4 Ways My Moviegoing Habits Changed After I Grew Up
#2 — Leaving “Leaving the House” Behind
I wasn’t exclusively a hermit back in the old days.
Those Woody Allen movies I’d grown up watching had promised me that when I moved to The Big City, I’d finally meet people as witty and sophisticated and intelligent as I thought I was — and I did. Our gang went to all the “cool” opening nights — a new Tim Burton film was a must-see the day it came out, along with anything starring Nicolas Cage, Winona Rider and Johnny Depp.
We also gathered mournfully at my place the day the news about Allen running off with his step-daughter broke. Somebody cried, but I can’t remember whether or not it was me. I never went to another Allen film again, with my friends or anybody else. I didn’t realize until later that that event marked the beginning of the end of my lifelong movie mania.
When Pulp Fiction arrived to great fanfare I was the last person I knew to go see it — and I wasn’t impressed. Tarantino was just “quoting” a bunch of movies I’d already seen.
Then Hollywood came down with sequel-itis, for which there seems to be no cure.
Almost all Toronto’s rep cinemas are closed now. So are most of the beloved downtown venues like the Eglinton, the Uptown, even the one-time world record holder for “biggest multiplex.” (Canadians were instrumental in inventing and developing the megaplex.)
All were torn down to make way for more condos, with higher profit margins per precious square meter.
(And in the case of art-house theaters wedded to old technology, the cost of printing and shipping 35mm films around the country is ten times the cost of a digital print.)
But would I set foot in any of these cinemas now, even if they were open?
I honestly don’t remember the last time I saw a first run film in a theater. Between the awful selection of “new” movies (mostly remakes) and other people’s cell phones, to the idiots who — this happened when I went to the 2000 theatrical re-release — bring screaming toddlers to The Exorcist, I don’t see why I should bother.
How much longer will movie theaters of any kind survive?
Excellent column!
My movie habits have changed, but it wasn’t a slow progression. It seems like I went from being a moviephile one year to not caring a whit the next. I don’t know what caused this change. Sure, I could blame it on the abysmal fare offered in cineplexes and on cable movie stations, and that blame wouldn’t be far wrong. But that’s not all of it, and I can’t quite pinpoint the other mitigating factors.
Up until about 2004, I went to movies at least four or five times a year. Sometimes I’d go see one movie multiple times. I’ve always prided myself on being able to go into a movie theater with few if any preconceptions about the quality of the movie I’m about to watch, and in that way I rarely end up disappointed. But these days it’s impossible to maintain that separation. I go into a movie nowadays wondering how much CGI I’m going to see; how often the heroine is going to act with her hair; how much of a boring troll the protagonist will be; how laughably inconceivable the villain will be; how wooden and recycled the script will sound; and most importantly, how often I’m going to glance at my watch to gauge how much longer I have to wait till the credits roll.
Movies aren’t FUN anymore. They’re a two hour slog through swampy debris in the vain hope that you’ll find a diamond hidden amidst the schlock. I find that I can only watch most movies these days if the guys at Rifftrax, Red Letter Media or Half in the Bag have already taken it to task! When the humorous critiques of big budget films, indie hits, and B-movie cheese are more interesting than the movies themselves, you know something is broken in the industry.
>>Movies aren’t FUN anymore.
I don’t find that to be true. I posted below about the change in my moviegoing habits — how I go for escapism and fun now. Maybe it’s just a matter of taste, but I’d say R-rated summer comedies are fun, teen vampires are fun, gay pirates are fun, anything with Bradley Cooper is fun — well, I could go on.
I have been sweetly rewarded during my 5 decade love affair with stories. I started reading novels when I was in the second grade and have loved going to the movies since I saw my first film at the tender age of 4, It was “The Sword and The Stone,” seen at the Westchester Square Movie Theater in the Bronx. We were poor so I didn’t get to go often, probably less than once a year. When I was nine, I lied and got a job delivering the New York Post. I was making $25 a week when grown men were making a $100 a week. After that, I went whenever I could.
As an adult, I continued with my passion. I like going to the movies in the morning. The first show is best. More often than not, I am usually the only person in the theater, a fact that is helped by my offbeat taste in cinema. One of the advantages of working seven days a week is that you can disappear for hours and no one even notices.
Now, as an avid reader, I keep abreast of what is coming out and will travel far and wide to see something that catches my interest. Since I rarely sleep more than 4 or 5 hours a night, I see many films late at night, which is when cable shows the different stuff. I also used to know a nice lady in the bootleg business who would steer me to indie films and foreign films.
For me, it was never the experience. Sitting in a darkened theater never held the allure it does for many. As a writer, it is the story. I refuse to live my life without stories.
I never was much of a movie goer, but basically stopped completely in the 1990s when I got tired of the Marxist propaganda being spewed out.
Since 2000, I only saw three movies in the theater – Hotel Rwanda, Last King of Scotland, and LOTR – Fellowship of the Ring.
This column brought back some great memories of the Princess Cinema in Kitchener-Waterloo. It was a tiny little independent movie house with tons of character nestled in the Heuther Hotel building, which was built in the latter 19th Century (back when Kitchener was called Little Bratwurst).
John Waters’ movies were always a treat. I always loved his intense weirdness, and the very un-Hollywood nature of his films.
But Kathy is right — weirdness is now so mainstream that it’s practically normal.
A friend of mine received a fan mail reply from John Waters around the time “Hairspray” came out. It was typewritten on a postcard and read; Thank you for the nice letter. The whole world seems like Mortville these days”.
Growing up, I preferred John Waters’ books to his movies, because in his books he recommended other better films and books, and I couldn’t get all the gay jokes in his early films. Still, my 16th birthday was a showing of “Pink Flamingos” at home.
It wasn’t until I spent a student semester in Paris that I got heavily into watching old films in a theater as I was lucky enough to live in an apartment that was only a 5-20 minute walk away from movie theaters that were constantly showing films by Joseph Losey, Fritz Lang, Pasolini, Tarkovsky, Oshima, and a lot of American noir. It was great! Just imagine “The Dreamers” but without the orgies. I was too terrified to go into nightclubs, so my routine after class was to check Pariscope for what was playing that night, get a crepe for dinner and then go to the movie house. Then I moved to New York and at one point I had full year memberships at three different film repertory theaters.
But with opera and classical music tickets now swallowing up most of my entertainment budget and a mortgage, I only go to movie theaters 6-10 times a year (new films and revivals combined) and now try to see as much as I can on my DVR, TCM and Netflix because spending $13 on a bad to mediocre movie makes me crabby and depressed. Sometimes even the good ones create duds— “Damsels in Distress” the latest by Whit Stillman is one of them, I’m sorry to say.
Last year, two very talented directors – Polanski and Cronenberg, each made boring and unwatchable films.
On the other hand, I listen very carefully to what you, Armond White, and Steve Sailer recommend. My boyfriend and I enjoyed “Seconds” recently, for example and Sailer unearthed a mainstream gem with “Bad Teacher” which was miles better than the other raunchy chick flicks which the media preferred to hype.
Your line about no longer enjoying going to the movies alone once you had a decent apartment is absolutely correct.
The one person I know who goes to the movies alone and with great enthusiasm is a 60 something spinster who can’t stand a quiet night at her tiny apartment. She refuses to get a DVD player or basic cable for herself even if she could very well afford them, maybe out of fear of liking the convenience.
At this stage in my life I eschew movie theaters due to the overwhelming prevalence of boorish louts infesting the seats. Well, that and the prices imposed versus the value provided.
I haven’t been to the theater for a commercial film since The Passion of the Christ. I have seen some of the kid fare since then, but all on DVD. I agree with Kathy about the children (something I rarely say!:)). I didn’t understand parents who took toddlers to rated R movies when I was working at one at the age of 21, and I don’t get it now. Don’t even get me started on cell phones. I also agree about the sequels. Can we possibly make something new? It sure doesn’t seem like it.
The good thing is that since adult fare is so terribly trashy, trying to out-gross each other regularly, kid fare has gotten better. Pixar makes excellent movies in most regards, and re-release of classics on DVD makes them more accessible to my kids. I love it that they can appreciate The Sound of Music and the Princess Bride as much as I did as a child. I just wish the theater experience was one I actually would want them to have.
Ah, apparently you have still another revolution in movie watching to come – wait until you have kids. During one long, long, long winter in the north, my 3 year old daughter forced me to watch Beauty & the Beast no less than 150 times. To say I am familiar with the oeuvre Disney as characterized by Beauty & the Beast is a gross understatement.
My habits have changed too. Used to be I’d watch the latest action hero flick, sci-fi thriller, what have you.
These days all action heroes are Angelina Jolie or a clone of her. Seeing a 110lb stick figure girl kick a 210lb man through a wall kind of exceeds my capacity for suspension of disbelief. Science Fiction has been pretty much destroyed by James Cameron and his Apocalypse Now with blue cat people. argh.
So now I only go to see movies of comic books or animated ones. I’m looking forward to The Avengers movie because it will be -fun-. Its got the Hulk in it, what’s not to like right? And since I’m paying $14.00, I should at least be largely spared the screechy preaching of Hollywood for one movie.
I’m a former Hamiltonian too, Kathy, now residing in Japan. How awesome to read about The Broadway — I can still taste that hot apple cider. Mmmmm, and they had Nanaimo bars, too… And do you remember its precursor, the Dollar-Fifty Delta?
Thanks for an intelligent column, celebrating the past while recognizing that life is a fluid thing. Let’s hope that some form of movie theaters survive for a while. Much as I’m thankful for my bigscreen high-def and Apple TV in my living room, there’s nothing quite like that Big Wow in the Dark that movies in a theater deliver. Thanks for bringing back some great memories.
These are great comments!
I agree completely about John Waters’ books: much better than the movies.
I began reading early. Being born in the early 1950s television wasn’t all that wonderful except for cartoons and the Mickey Mouse Club. I fell in love with movies at the drive-in. Our family went often. Dad loved westerns and we kids loved B-grade monster & Sci-fi movies. “King Kong vs Godzilla” sort. We saw the Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello beach movies, the Disney movies of the era such as Mary Poppins and grand westerns like “True Grit”. We also saw gutsier movies like “Hud” and “Spartacus” and “Atlantis, the Lost Continent” or George Pal’s “The Time Machine”. Of foreign film there was little, other than the monster movies. We watched the great movies of the 50s and 60s, as well as fun, family movies such as “The Great Race”. I agree that Hollywood hasn’t seemed to have had an original idea other than the Harry Potter and Tolkien “Ring” movies in the last 15 years. I stopped going to the movies when they became preachy (and unoriginal). I go to a movie to be entertained, not lectured. The last movie that made me laugh so hard I almost wet myself was the first “Home Alone” movie. Nowadays, with the dearth of drive-ins and disgusting human behavior in cinemas, I wait until a movie is out on DVD and watch it at home in my nifty home theater, in my recliner and with my own cheap and delicious popcorn at hand.
Kathy, you and I are exactly the same age, and, like you, I watched “art” movies by myself when we could still smoke in theatres. I’m also torn on Woody Allen. Thanks for the memories, not least bringing dry toast to screenings of ‘Rocky”.
Maybe I’ll bump into you at Steynamite next week.
It’s a sad commentary on modern movies, when the best ones are usually Pixar animated films, and even those are hit-and-miss.
I began losing interest in movies in my 30s (around 10 years ago) when I noticed how often I left the theater of movies I had been eager to see with a vague sense of disappointment. Eventually, I would hear about new movies and figure they weren’t worth a visit to the theater, but I would certainly rent the DVD – only to lose interest long before the DVD hit rental store shelves. At this point, I don’t even bother if it’s free on cable.
These days, I see one or two new movies a year (and even those are Pixar films watched with my daughter). I have Netflix, but I use that to stream television shows.
Frankly, I don’t see how Hollywood survives. The “blockbusters” that support the industry as a whole aren’t that good anymore, and quality is so hard to find, it’s not worth the investment of time and effort.
Your best thing yet, or near. I miss movie theaters –real ones—but that
technology is pretty much over now. The best were derived from old
“live” theaters. Call it sexual sublimation, but I loved the ones that
had curtains demurely concealing the mysterious screen, especially if they had 2 sets: one that rose, and another that parted.
“…curtains demurely concealing the mysterious screen…”
Yes, I loved that too. The movie theater in our rust-belt town had those curtains. It added to the thrill, along with the ushers dressed up in formal clothing.
As a nerdy high school kid, I looked forward to watching movies from Janus Films that the local PBS station showed on Friday nights: “The Seventh Seal,” “M,” “Ivan the Terrible,” etc. And back then, in the 60′s and 70′s, the other local TV stations showed a very good selection of classic American and British movies–another example of the widely available “middlebrow” culture that has been lost. Without the luxury of VHS, DVD, etc., I would clip out the TV Guide listings of my favorite movies as souvenirs. Recently I came across my yellowed clipping of “The Knights of the Round Table” which was one of my treasures.
As a college student in Pittsburgh, I loved going to “art” and classic movies at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, where you could see a different movie each night. And the nearby Pitt libraries offered another way of losing one’s self to the world, in the many books on film there.
The closest thing I’ve seen to an art movie for some years now is the documentary “The Amish,” which was on PBS recently, and which was excellent. Like others here have already said, I just got tired of having my beliefs assaulted, especially by degenerate, wealthy pseudo-intellectuals. Now, I tend to read more than one review before forking over hard-won dollars at a movie theater.
Adam, come up and say hi at the Mark Steyn event in Toronto. I may be wearing my DUKE LACROSSE hoodie but in any event, I’ll be up near the front row.
Egil, good point about PBS. They also ran good movies that hardly anyone else did. “Our” closest affiliate was/is WNED Buffalo, which wasn’t quite as artsy as yours, though.
Yabanjames, amazing to hear from you! Yeah that hot apple cider was unique. But I don’t remember going to the Delta. Was that near Gage Park? in which case I think my mother took me there on the bus all the time for Disney movies (which I should’ve mentioned in the article.)
On September 12, 2001 I wanted to get out of my miserable, sad, disgusted, despairing head, so I figured I’d go to a movie. The best prospect for lousy-morale-busting on the local menu was Rush Hour 2. It worked! Ever since then, I’ve gone for escapist entertainment. (Mind you, escapism has to have a modicum of smartness or it won’t work.)
I probably would have never surrendered to the Pirates or Twilight franchises (swooooonnn!) if it hadn’t been for that.
n.b. September 12 was also the day I left the left.
Yeah, used to spend a great deal of time in movie houses as well. With the advent of VCRs and all the format died.
The last time I watched a movie in a theatre was in 1999 or 2000 ( “Artificial Intelligence”.
The experience was horrid. The image was dim, people’s cell phones were ringing, they charged extra for butter on popcorn that wasn’t even real butter and the movie sucked.
And even if there still were some classic movie houses operating, I doubt I,d frequent them on account of the lousy movies Hollywood has been chrning out for a good 12 or 15 years now.
I grew up in Manhattan and the two movies theaters in the 1970s and 1980s that showed old movies were either the Regency on Broadway or (my favorite) The St. Mark’s Place Cinema in the East Village. Two outstanding movie theaters that showed old movies and movies you would never see in other theaters, like John Ford movies or Hitchcock movies. And for only $3.00 you would always get a double feature. The best were either Joan Crawford nights, Bette Davis nights, or musical nights with Judy Garland. Trust me, you do NOT want to see a Judy Garland double feature in the East Village. But you went just for the show in the audience. Between all the people singing along with Judy’s songs and all the gays feeling Judy’s pain, well, it was an experience you’ll never forget. Anyway, those two movie theaters did show some great films, things that you rarely saw on TV before Turner Classic Movies came along.
What I can say is that movies HAVE gotten a lot worse over the years. And I don’t say that as a guy who has slipped into middle age. Many of these movies actually had decent plots with compelling characters (either good or bad) and you always knew that you would get a decent movie if people like Bogart, or Montgomery Clift, Gable, John Wayne, Bette Davis, and many other were in them. They were a brand and these monumental actors always delivered with the goods. Today, you get used to one or two actors and then you never see them anymore. There are precious few exceptions, like Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood, but for the most part, actors today are very young kids who make one or two films and then disappear. Hollywood seems to think they get too old and then throw them away for the next crop of kids.
And I do mean kids. That’s what I liked about the older movies. They had grownups in them and the movies were made for grownups. Not “tweens” or teenagers. In the old days, kids looked up to the older actors as role models or at least adults they could admire or relate to. Today, it seems like only kids are in movies and they have to appeal to other kids. The adults get left out in the cold. You get one or two movies each year ment for adults, and these are the ones that usually get the Academy Awards. As for the rest of them, it’s either superheroes, monsters, scary/bloody murder thrillers, or animated junk.
Well, at least we have DVDs and a large library of what movies USED to be like. Who knows, maybe the new movies are the ones you’re going to see on HBO or Showtime, programs that at least are geared towards adults rather than the people who ride on school buses.
Essentially, my movie likes and dislikes have remained a constant since my High School dayz in the mid 70′s.
My biggest peve has always been the Character Shift in order to move the plot forward, (i.e. the Gun Nut leaves weapons lying around so they can be disarmed toward the end of the film, or the Village Idiot suddenly becomes a Genius to solve a situation – For an Excellent Example of Characters remaining ‘who they are’ throughout the film see Tremmors).
I have a greater affinity for older (yes Black and White) films mostly because the writing is far better than what you get today. (Older film writers were raised on Hemmingway and Shakespere – more recent writers are raised on Brady Bunch and Good Times and it shows)
Every now and then some good writing slips through the Hollywood filter and you get a Second Hand Lions, but it’s not quite as often as I’d like.
My rep-cinema history goes all the way back to the legendary Original 99-cent Roxy on the east side of Toronto in the ’70s. I began getting my movie education there because, as an underage teen, I found it was easier to get into a Restricted art flick by Bergman or Fellini on a weeknight than a Restricted horror flick or rockumentary on a weekend. Ticket-rippers never asked for ID cuz it never occurred to them that anybody under 18 would WANT to see “Cries and Whispers” or “The Conformist” or “If…” or “Tout Va Bien.” But I did, and I had two or three buddies from my high school who did too.
(I pay tribute to my old nemesis, the Ontario Censor Board’s “Admittance Restricted” warning, in T-shirt form, here: http://hollywoodloser.com/shirts/Restricted.html)
On long holiday weekends, the Roxy used to run midnight-to-dawn quintuple- or sextuple-features. Once I even attended a 24-hr movie marathon there — all for 99 cents. (It was at one of these all-nighters that I smelled marijuana for the first time: inside the 99-cent Roxy not only could you smoke, you could smoke ANYTHING.)
The Roxy’s managers were two fun-loving guys who later went on to become the alt-rock booking agents known as The Garys, who brought many a fine cult and/or semi-popular musical act to the nightclubs of Toytown in the ’80s.
That same decade, the post-Garys Roxy joined the Festival Theatres chain of rep cinemas mentioned in Kathy’s article. Here it is during those days:
http://toronto.openfile.ca/files/files_toronto/imagecache/multimedia_zoom/files/toronto-photo-assets/016%20Roxy%20Cinema,%20Danforth%20Ave.,%20Toronto,%20May%201987,%20Kodachrome%20slide%20by%20Alfred%20Holden.jpg
And here is its sad state today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shutterbugdean57/3939171275/lightbox/
My habits have definitely changed — I don’t go to theaters anymore. Haven’t sworn off them, just almost never see a trailer for anything I really want to to spend the bucks to see. It really isn’t that entertaining now. Used to be nice, especially in the summer, to grab a friend and go sit in an air-conditioned theater on a weekday afternoon. That thrill is pretty much gone.
We have no rep theater within reasonable driving distance of me, but I don’t know how much I’d go if we did. Indy and foreign films area very mixed bag.
My biggest rep theater days were spent when I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. Anyone who’s lived there probably remembers the Naro. Fun place back in the ’80s and ’90s. I can’t imagine seeing Rocky Horror anywhere else.
A million years ago in the early 1970s, I worked (ass’t manager) for 20th Century Theatres in T.O., at the Downtown on Dundas Square, the Towne on Bloor just east of Yonge, and the Uptown itself, when it held five auditoriums.
At the Uptown, we played Billy Jack for God only knows how long, as it traipsed its way through the auditoriums until reaching the smallest, the Backstage 2. That flick packed kids in every weekend; popcorn sales (with real butter!) went through the roof.
A friend, however, had a terrible gig: his house (I forget which it was) played 2001: A Space Odyssey, two shows a day, for three years straight. Between the dopers in the auditorium and the sheer boredom of repetition, he just about went nuts.
On the whole, being fresh out of college, I sort of relished the night-oriented workstyle. However, at one point it dawned on me that the only people I knew were other theater people because our work schedules weren’t congruent with anyone else’s.
I switched to working in public libraries. The staff there would complain about having to work one Sunday in a month; I just looked at them and said I’d come from a job where you got one Sunday in four off. And each week you worked either Friday night and Saturday afternoon, or the inverse.
But you know, working at the theater job just about killed any interest I had in movies as movies. Something about moving all that “product” turned it sour.
I’m glad you had good movie years — I’m thankfully freed of it.
Good article, good comments about the change in movies. It seemed like a lot of “lesser” movies were very good long ago. Seeing “Zorba the Greek” on a rainy afternoon is a great memory for me. My complaint about today’s movies: not enough cowboy movies. “Open Range” was a good type but for some reason cowboy movies are rare. Too bad.
Kathy, that was wonderful, and gave me an amusing flashback as well.
During the early 80s here, the Rocky Horror Picture Show played every Friday at midnight. It’s fans, being well, fanatics, would arrive fully costumed and spend the showing shouting out lines at the appropriate times.
Well, a roommate of mine was the projectionist for that showing, and he utterly loathed them. In a similar way to the guy who had to show 2001 over and over, he finally lost it.
He began to bring a blowgun into work, and made darts using q-tips and modelling clay. And spend quality time during those evenings stalking one person per/evening, persecuting them with the carefully aimed darts. Never hurting them, just letting them know he had them in his sights.
No one ever figured out who was doing this, and he did so for perhaps a year.
So if any of you were ever targeted at the old Exeter Theater in Boston in the early 80s during showings of Rocky Horror, well, the “Wombat Man” lives.
(Btw, the “Wombat Man” is happily married and lives in New Hampshire now. And he has retired his blowgun)
Hi Kathy, yes I was that freaky kid doing bouncer duties at the Broadway. I hasten to add I was not the -only- bouncer, just the most maniacal looking one. There were four of us if memory serves, because Hamilton being what it was back then Rocky Horror night could get a little rowdy from time to time. Too many goofs bringing beer to the movies some nights.
It was fun though, and a couple bucks in my pocket for gas in the old motorcycle.
What’s happened to….Acting?….where is it?
Where’s Hitchcock?….good scripts? The Barrymore-type faces?
We need more of what we used to call the “Legitimate Stage” experience in our movies…..”Presence” in a voice, “Presence” in an actor’s body language….or, actRESS’ expectant “look”. The subtle hand gesture?
Where’s the versatility of an Alec Guinness? The strutting brass of an Ethel Merman?
Nowhere to be found except at “Wonder Books And Video” rental shops.
All I can say is thank God for Netflix. On those rare occasions that I’ve gone to the movie theater in the past couple of years the primary emotion I feel when leaving is disappointment.
Oh come on guys – this all sounds like a bunch of oldies complaining that “things are not as good as they used to be in the olden days”. Of course the cinema experience has changed. The world has changed and you are older. You are no longer the target audience of movie makers because you’ve seen all the plotlines before (there are only so many possible) and you are now understandably too cynical to get any basic enjoyment out of 2 hours of mindless pap. The youth of today haven’t seen what you’ve seen over and over again.
I used to love going to movies in my 20′s and early 30′s but now I don’t for all the same reasons already mentioned – annoying cell phones, expensive heart-attack food, repetitive junk, etc. I’m pretty sure it’s simply because I’m getting older and more cynical. Recently I watched a Hitchcock boxset of 20 or so films (all released well before my time as an adult) and despite trying to convince myself to the contrary they weren’t really that good. The actors are wooden, the plots too linier and the endings are all reasonably predictable. Everyone namechecks the old classics but quickly forget that there was plenty of turgid nonsense churned out at the same time.
The advent – and subsequent overuse – of Computer Generated Images has killed off any interest in the movie biz.
I’m done with car chases…..
If I’ve already said this before, I apoligize, and blame my Internet connection for double-posting.
I used to go to the movies at least once a month, until my financial situation took a big hit about 4 years ago. The $8 admission and 25-mile trip to the nearest theater became harder to justify.
Still, when I do go, I like to play “Spot the homages.” This consists of identifying which old movies are being ripped off. It kept me interested through “Inception.”
Loved the nostalgic critique and the conversational thread!
Brought back memories, even a photo of the old Broadway. I used to go there as well, around the same time frame, and also moved to Toronto, later than you, in the early 1990s, and attended the Toronto theatres. I miss it. I agree that my movie habits have changed, but I still would want to go back to the theatre, that is, if it was still open. I also find the quality of film is down – there are more commercials than ever, and the films to choose from seem targeted, more than ever, at teenage boys. I miss the Broadway, as run down as it was, it was special.
When I was sixteen, my favorite movie was “My Name Is Nobody.”
It had replaced “Harold And Maude,” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” before that. I lived in Europe at the time, and can not report a real affection for any one movie house.
What I miss is not a place, or an age. I miss a sense of surprise. I do not think that is asking too much of a movie, or Hollywood. I think the best way to surprise an audience, is for a writer to surprise themselves. And then, if they are not a director as well, hope the director does not blow it.