As Seattle’s movie theaters struggle, independent cinemas carve a niche

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I don't understand why anyone would want to eat actual food in a theater. Popcorn is fine because you aren't using utensils. You can drop it all over yourself, no problem. If I'm eating a meal, I want to be able to see it. When you mix recliners in, that makes it even more ridiculous.

I had a customer for many years in Stoughton, Wi that ran a Movie Theater - Pizza - Ice Ceam Parlor combo. You could order a pizza to eat while you watched a movie, Or pick the pizza up and take it home. I do remember his X-Large pizza weighed 14 pounds going into the oven! Or you could just buy Pop Corn or what ever you wanted.
He had done real well with the original place starting out in an old Single Screen Theater, and after a few years moving into a much larger building and having 5 screens. It lasted 30 years and was shut down by COVID. He and his wife retired at that point. The building is a mall of some sort today.

[Bobby Henderson]

Yes and no. Most of the operas and ballets that are (expensively) staged and/or recorded today were written between very roughly 1700 and 1900. So they are at least pre-recorded and then reproduced in one sense, in the same way that Hollywood tends to do remakes of its more popular movies. Those two centuries were the "golden age" of opera and ballet. Neither went totally away after that, but good luck trying to stage a Ring Cycle and make any money out of doing so nowadays (unless you're Anna Russell).

The written material in an opera or ballet may be centuries old, but the singing and dancing is performed in-person in front of the audience. The shows are usually accompanied by a live orchestra. The experience has a fundamentally different feel than watching a movie.

It wouldn't surprise me if, by the mid 2200s, the twentieth and early 21st centuries were seen as the "golden age" of cinema, a cultural form that still exists, but has settled down to a relatively small but loyal following. Obviously I hope it remains mainstream, because getting out of the house and being part of a shared experience is fundamentally good for people. But I suspect that Chalamet's comparison of cinema with ballet and opera could have more to it than is obvious at first glance.

I think it is very important for people to get out of the house and interact with other people. America has a worsening problem of people choosing to live and work in isolation. It's not healthy. A person can't keep their social skills honed, much less keep their mind in a healthy state without at least a few in-person friends and the kind of mental stimulation a crowd of other people can create. I think a visit to a cinema can, in a way, be therapeutic.

Unfortunately the movie industry has been doing a good job of de-valuing its product over the past decade. First, there's all the sequels, re-makes, spin-offs and other derivative content. The distributors are knee-capping cinemas with these destructively short release windows. Once a movie arrives in home viewing platforms it quickly disappears into oblivion -lost in the shuffle with all the other previously existing stuff in various streaming apps. So many other entertainment options exist in the home environment. Movies don't compete well with all that other stuff. Cinemas are the only proper showcase for movies. But the cinema platform will largely disappear if the number of venues shrinks down to a level comparable with live stage venues. Production lines for all sorts of cinema-specific gear will stop because there won't be enough cinemas to sustain it. The few surviving theaters will have to figure out some other way to show movies.

I think the United States is also in an increasingly precarious position with both its movie and music industries. I won't get into the long list of reasons why. Over the past several decades America has dominated world popular culture via its entertainment. We've gained a lot of economic benefits via that dominance. That could dissipate in a slow, steady manner if we don't wake up.