Ten Bucks

Ten bucks (give or take a little depending on
where you live, what your age is, and the
time of the day) is what they ask you to pluck
down at the cinema box office. Ten bucks for a few
hours of escape from the heat, flooding, depressing
news, and the god-awful eternal presidential
race. In this age of inflated admissions to
everything (i.e. Disneyland, Major League Baseball,
Broadway), ten bucks does not sound so bad. So what
exactly do you get as you go to the movies in the
year 2008:

You get into the theater but still need at least
another ten dollars to sit down with a bucket
of popcorn and a soda.

You get directions from some seventeen year old
usher to go left and then right and then right
again to theater number 29.

You get twenty minutes of pre preview commercial
programming showing you what you could have watched
for free if you had stayed home and put on the TV.

You get upwards of five or more incredibly loud actual
previews that might scare you to death especially if
the trailer is about a horror or murder movie and you
particularly do not care for that type of fare.

You get a message about the venerable Will Rogers
fund and how a portion of the concessions will go
to it even as you remember how empty popcorn
tubs were once passed through the aisles so that
patrons could directly make a contribution.

You get an inane message about snacks being available
even as the actual movie is about to start.

You get more than one message about "Silence is
Golden" and turning off your cell phones while the
guy next to you continues to text message and the
phone light seems as bright as the moon in the
darkened theater.

You get to watch a formulaic Spiderman Marvel
action film with a conflicted hero and his
"Mary Jane" girlfriend.

You get to watch a totally non funny "comedy
hit of the year" film featuring the likes of
an Adam Sandler, Steve Carell, or Mike Myers.

You get to watch an historical epic that in
reality is a video game on screen.

You get hooked into all the hype and may or
may not buy reserved tickets for the blockbuster
that will jam the theater for no more than
two weekends and then play in virtually
empty theaters for another few weeks before
coming out on DVD.

You get to go to the megaplex no more than
ten minutes from your house and miss the chance
to go "downtown" to that gorgeous movie palace
that is the only theater within fifty miles showing
the film.

You get... You get... You get what you deserve.
Movie companies have no plans at all. They depend
totally on how the population responds to their
films. In no other business transaction do consumers
have such power. Those not happy with the current
fare should seek out a higher quality of film. Of
course, with such a large diverse population, the
movie people will almost always go for that sweet spot
of teens and twenty somethings who continually pack
those opening weekends. For the rest of us, see it
on Netflix.