Going to the Movies

Going to the movies will make anyone feel old. If you can buy a ticket, chances are you can also remember a time when tickets were so much cheaper, the concession prices so much more reasonable. It's enough to make someone take up desperate alternative methods of entertainment, like reading a book.

Of course, when we were kids our parents probably said the same thing about prices, and their parents when they were kids, and so on. But in recent years, for a variety of reasons, ticket prices — and ticket revenues — have been rising more steeply than usual, even as attendance has declined. According to the Associated Press, 1998 revenues were $6.95 billion, culled from 1.48 billion tickets sold. In 2000, though, theaters sold only 1.42 billion tickets, but revenues rose to $7.67 billion.

Viewers, of course, don't need statistics to tell them that going to the movies is an increasingly expensive affair. A recent evening showing of A.I. in Chicago, for example, cost $8.50 at the door, with another $7.50 for a medium drink and a medium bag of popcorn. Medium drink, medium popcorn. Theaters, of course, have to make money somehow, and ticket revenues go almost completely to the studios, directors and actors. But $7.50?

To go to the movies in America is to experience consumer manipulation in the extreme. The theater provided free refills on any size, yet labeled the extra large drink the "best value" option, and the more human-sized, what-was-a-large-but-is-now-a-small size has been relabeled as "child's." And, predictably, a good number of people went for the "best value." Which is more pathetic: the bald-faced ripoff, or that people buy into it so readily?

The experience continued within the theater itself. Along with the usual previews, theaters now run several ads before the film. Not even cool, Super Bowl-quality ads, but run-of-the-mill jobbies you find stuck between "Will and Grace" and "ER" on any given Thursday. When you consider that most summer movies are now just one part of an enormous marketing scheme anyway, the scale of the entire experience moves towards the absurd — ads within ads, within ads.

Then, in a moment both supremely ironic and utterly patronizing, Anthony Hopkins came onscreen and asked the viewers to donate to the Will Rogers Institute. Of course, there's nothing wrong with encouraging people to give to a worthy charity. But things are a little off when an actor who pulls in millions from even his mediocre efforts asks people who had just paid upwards of $15 to see a movie released by a major studio and directed by a multimillionaire mogul to part with even more money.

What's amazing, of course, is that people still go to the movies at all. It's a lackluster summer if one or more sales records aren't broken. And the faster viewership grows, the higher ticket prices rise. In the film industry, it's always a seller's market.

Predictably, there's a lot of latent anger being generated by outrageous ticket prices. We Can Do This, a grassroots effort launched by Ideatown.com, is promoting July 13 as National Ticket Picket Day.

"Moviegoers do have a voice and they do have a choice," Jonathan Davis, who runs Ideatown.com, said Wednesday. "It's not just the movie tickets that are too expensive, but the prices of the candy, snacks and popcorn."

But beyond the fact that such events as the Ticket Picket are about as close to social activism as most people will ever get, isn't there something slightly ridiculous about a bunch of people turning out to protest high ticket prices? After all, no one made them pay $9 to see Tomb Raider — that was their own bad idea. Maybe things would be different if the average Hollywood product were actually worth seeing. But then, when was the last time people turned out in droves protesting high prices at the Met?

The sad truth is that going to the movies, and the summer movies in particular, has become as much a part of American life as baseball and McDonald's. We feel we have a right to see the big summer blockbuster. We have a right to be entertained, to sit in a cool, dark room and watch things explode. And we don't want to have to pay high prices or sit through credit-card ads to do so.

Thankfully, alternatives exist, as do guerrilla tactics. Sneak in your own snacks. Go see one movie, then surreptitously slip into another theater when that one is over. Keep yourself to second-run theaters. Better yet, patronize smaller, art-house theaters that usually have cheaper tickets and, usually, better films. Use the money you would have spent to buy a book.

— Clay Risen (clay@flakmag.com)