Movie Going Just Ain't What It Used To Be

Long hours with little kids at the discount movie theater was a mainstay when my kids were younger. Now, with only one high school senior left at home, free times don't automatically fill themselves like they did when we had a full house to raise, educate and entertain. Golf has been great with helping me to establish my post-parenting identity, but I'm still waiting for the Misses to catch the bug. In the meantime, movies have doubled as a time taker and a date maker for two people who have let our children dictate our lives, dates and movie choices for longer than either of us care to admit.

Unsure about his sanity, a Colorado jury was unable to decide unanimously to
execute James Holmes who will now serve life in prison without parole.

In the past year and a half- now that our kids only hang out with us when they crave the comforts of parents- we've seen several movies despite living in Colorado and despite living close to Aurora, and despite the copy cat theater shootings that my wife and I have done our best to ignore given the fact that we pre-planned the movie going commitment a few months before James Holmes tried to place movies beneath golf on our "Don't Do" date list.

I'm not sure when the damn broke or if we ever felt as comfortable as we pretended to feel when carrying on after Aurora's massacre, but lately I have noticed that my wife has to hold the popcorn and eat at it nervously like I used to do when I was the keeper of the corn and concerned that she would eat up my share. As for me, I now take a side posture that offers me a loving view of my best friend for more than a quarter century and I rub her back while I scan the theater and wait for my turn at the popcorn. I gladly take upon my role in our movie preparation process in an effort to lovingly convey that I'm clear on the popcorn pecking order and clear on every suspicious character in the room as well.  In doing so, she gets the comfort of sitting through the entire movie capturing details that I often miss because of that squeamish guy who needs to stand up occasionally for circulation or bladder reasons, so he sits near the exit and moves a lot.

The truth is, a movie had better be really damn good these days to take away the anxiety of enduring the process, especially as copy cat killers keep losing their minds at movies.  My wife silently noticed my uneasiness some time ago yet comforted herself in the fact that I was on high alert so that she didn't necessarily need to be.  Maybe its just coincidence or the fact that people often behave oddly in a really really dark room and we never really noticed before, but it seems to us that we get at least one oddball every time we go to a movie these days.  I don't even think to tell my wife that our own squeamish reaction to other squeamish movie go'ers could categorize us as the oddballs that somebody else is blogging about right now because I don't really think she wants to be seen in that frame of reference.

Oddball become us, especially in light of the fear of film that grows with each theater attack.  If you don't already have a portion of Netflix stock, these theater shootings are a ready made reason for a growth in direct to Netflix productions versus the traditional Hollywood film release that  doesn't feel as safe as it used to feel. Come to think of it, Netflix stock split in July (7 to 1) and I would imagine that board room members from the company have credited the James Holmes effect for increased sales that lead to the historic stock split.

 After 9-11 we fought back hard for our American sense of normalcy, whatever that is for each of us individually.  Despite the horror of seeing our beloved towers fall, we knew that this was an anomaly. A failure in imagination as its become.  This was a lightning strike that kills violently but happens rarely.  If you live and work in a big city with big buildings, you might still be coming to grips with your own failed imagination, and you dream the worst dreams now that  Oklahoma City, Columbine, 9-11, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook or whichever act of terror gave you cause to dream the worst.

Yet nothing seems quite as universal as movie going, and movie going just ain't what it used to be.