My New Theatre Experience

The son is now one year old and that means a lot of things have changed for me in the last 365 days. The only thing of relevance to The World of Cinema in this regard is that for the most part my film watching habits have become much, much more geekier. The moments that aren't too geeky are so far from geeky that the thought of them makes me smile.

Example: I work at a six screen art house theatre and since I work opposite shifts from my wife to avoid daycare costs and traumas, that means that I close the theatre during the week. This means that once we are closed I can either go home and sleep or I can stay at work and screen any of the films we are showing. Since I nap with the son during the day, I watch a lot of the geekiest stuff around. When the wife and I actually go out to see a film (twice in 2008-and one of those isn't until next week), we usually see crap since we tie a night of drinking on before we hit the multiplex.

So this means that in the same week that I watched Bigger Stronger Faster, I also got to see Baby Mama. When you "go out" to the movies as a parent, it becomes much more of an event (agreeing on a movie, getting the Grandparents to babysit, getting a weekend evening off of work,...). This is both interesting and frustrating.

I would prefer to see any and all films projected on a screen from 35mm film, but this rarely happens. That is frustrating. The rarity of the movie going experience has sharpened my senses to the packaging and marketing of movies coming out of Hollywood. That is interesting.

The conversations that now happen when two college educated individuals (My wife and myself) with vastly different tastes sit down and watch previews and look at posters and try to decide what looks like garbage and what looks intriguing usually leaves us either in stitches, in agreement (the upcoming W. is high on both our lists-only from a curiosity standpoint) or going to the video store with the son to get something to watch once he's asleep.

I currently trying to talk the wife into recording a show about this very topic, so I'll save some anecdotes for that show. If I can't get her to agree to do it, then I'll post some later. In the meantime, if you're planning to "go out" and see something, anything in the neat future, I encourage you to really think about what it is about the movie you are going to see that got you interested. The music in the trailer (that probably isn't in the film), the design of the poster, the subject matter, the actor (or any crew member), genre or whatever. The more you pay attention and can articulate what your tastes are, the few shitty movies you will sit through.

Although, I clearly can't walk that walk as the only movie I've "gone out" to see was Baby Mama.