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I got to thinking about movies today and the easy availabity almost everywhere. You can buy them, rent them(I just signed up with Netflix), watch them on television(with cable and dish service) on innumerable channels, whether On Demand or just old movie channels. Oh, and mustn’t forget theaters and drive-ins(my little town has one of the few drive-ins in the south and a booming business they do in the summer).
One wonders how long those last two will last. Probably forever, but at a must reduced rate. With the advent of big screen TVs, DVRs, and just the sheer easiness of watching a movie at home with all the creature comforts within a hand’s reach, I think theater going will gradually slow to a trickle. It will probably take a while, though, until us dinosaurs all die out.
Even now, I myself watch all my movies on TV. Being disabled, It takes a huge effort, and help, to get out to a theater. It’s just so much easier….
When I was a child, there was only three channels( four when the weather conditions were right:PBS).
I can still remember seeing my first movie in a theater. My Mother took my two sisters and myself to see THE LONE RANGER AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD. That would have been the summer of 1958. I was nine at the time, the oldest of the three siblings. I don’t even remember much about the plot.
It’s the experience I remember. The seedy lobby of The Balmar Theater, that glorious smell of the popcorn, sitting in the dark with the family watching The Lone Ranger! It was a totally new adventure for a small boy and the last for a long while.
There wasn’t a lot of money back then. Mama was raising the three of us without any help from dear old dad. But that’s another sad story. I know she must have scrimped and saved just to give us that theater visit.
I wonder how many people can remember the very first movie in a theater?
That kind of thing is starting to disappear. Even when I was still seeing movies at the local cineplex(they rarely call them theaters anymore), It seemed like so many of the young people were more interested in socializing than actually watching the movie. Thank God I stopped before cell phones grew so huge. I’ve heard horror stories from friends about endless conversations behind and in front of them. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.
The world has changed a lot since I was a boy. Not all of it good to my way of thinking.
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I’ve probably written about this on my blog, but the first movie I remember seeing wasn’t a movie but a serial, a chapter from THE PHANTOM. I remembered one scene so vividly that it stuck with me for 60 years or so, and when THE PHANTOM finally became available on DVD, I bought it just to see if the scene was really there. It was, and it was almost exactly as I remembered. I’m older than you are, but for me the movies were a kind of magic when I was a kid. Cost about 12 cents to get into the double feature on Saturday afternoon.
that ‘s very intersting!
My first movies: Daddy Longlegs and Dumbo, the Flying Elephant. Both sensational.