When I was an extremely awkward teenager growing up in Hanover County one of the most prominent forms of social cohesion and assimilation was to be found at…the movies. Except for the days when you played ball, Friday and Saturday nights belonged to a collection of movie theaters scattered around Ashland and Richmond. These were the places where dates happened. Two tickets with popcorn and a fountain drink ran you around $6.
We would eagerly await the green section’s arrival in Friday’s News Leader, where all the showtimes and movie reviews were listed. It wasn’t a question of if you were going to the pictures, it was only a question of which one and with whom.
There was the Ashland Theater which had the advantage of being down the street from Mayberry’s Ice cream and close to my home in Elmont. But if you wanted to go where the action was that would mean driving into Richmond. The wider variety of movie joints meant a better selection. There was Broad Street Cinema, Ridge Cinema, Willow Lawn and the Byrd Theater. But my go-to place was the Westhampton which had the even greater advantage of being right next door to Phil’s Continental Lounge, which sounds much more high class than it actually was. However you could get the best club sandwich in Richmond for less than 3 bucks.
What I remember the most about the movie experience back then was the almost complete absence of annoying ads before the movie started. There would normally be maybe three movie previews and if you were lucky a hilarious cartoon. But that was it.
Today, everything has changed. The overwhelming majority of movies Pam and I have seen over the past decade or so have been enjoyed from the privacy and comfort of our sofa. The popcorn is way cheaper and the floor isn’t sticky.
If you put a gun to my head at this moment and asked me to name five movies that have been released in the past year I couldn’t do it. The only one that comes to mind is The Odyssey, and the only reason I know about that one is the fact that it has managed to do something that hardly any film does these days—it has penetrated the zeitgeist, becoming part of the interminable culture wars of our time. Still…you couldn’t pay me enough money to go to one of our cineplexes to watch the thing. Too much goo on the floors, confiscatory concession prices and annoying movie-goers on their cellphones. Besides, in a couple months I can watch it at home.
But we have lost something along the way, the shared experience of the cinematic moment, the magic of the big screen…and I miss it terribly, just not enough to fork over fifty bucks to bring it back.
Although this morning I saw a preview online of a movie due to be released November 2nd…a biopic about somebody other than a pop musician—“Jimmy”, the story of Jimmy Stewart and his rise to stardom and his decision to serve his country in WWII, not as a publicity prop but as a bomber pilot over Nazi Germany.
For this…I will risk sticky shoes.
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