Where Did All the Ushers Go?

I know I'm not alone when I list my wife and I as folks who not only no longer go to movies as much as we used to, we no longer go at all. The curious thing is that of all the people that I know in this group, we still love the things. There are a number of reasons for not going and I think the biggest has a lot in common with what I said in an earlier post about publishers missing the boat with mass market paperback: the cost of movies has crept up past the point of easy forgiveness when the movies themselves are mostly muck. In other words, drop the prices and make better movies, and we'll all flock back to the theaters.

Well, almost. The single BIGGEST problem, to me, is that just sitting in the theater is an exercise in frustration. Everyone talks. To each other, to their cell phones, to the movie itself. When this plague first reached epidemic proportions, I thought the reasons were probably twofold. First, the omnipresence of VCRs had brought movies into our living rooms where we could jabber, poke fun and yell at the dog while the movies played on the small screen. Second, the rise of multiplexes, or sixteen screens where there used to be one, necessitated a reduction of the sound of the movie. When I was a kid, the sheer volume drowned out conversation and made it impractical to be so discourteous for all but a few. And we had ushers, kids with flashlights that made their way down the aisles asking those few to keep it quiet and the rest of us to keep our feet off the backs of the chairs in front of us.

Now I wonder if there's a different reason underlying this behavior. After innumerable ruined screenings and proposed altercations from fellow patrons after I politely asked them to be quiet, I've decided people are just plain rude. Kids, adults, seniors, all of us. Just look at the way we drive on the roads. When did they take the requirements for using turn signals off the drivers license tests?

People will always want to go to the movies. Rather than pony up twenty bucks for two tickets and a small popcorn and soda to share with my wife, we'll pay that for the DVD version and watch it at home. We can be our own distractions, thank you. This isn't necessarily bad news for the studios, either. They make more from a DVD sale than they do on a movie ticket. Of course we'd all like to see good films sweeping across a giant screen with incredible sound systems broadcasting from all sides. They have home theater systems for that, too, but that's another story.

So, Hollywood: to get us back to the theaters, bring back the ushers! Drop your prices! Make better movies! Just in case that doesn't sound easy enough, here are a few of the things people I know would like to elimiate from the Hollywood style book once and for all. They're overdone, repetitive, intelligence-insulting, and take away from the value of your art.

Way back when, I was an extra in the film "Purple Rain." That was when I became aware of the nearly ubiquitous trick of hosing down the streets to give the wet look to all the outdoor shots, especially in the city. It didn't rain. The cars are dry, the people aren't wearing raincoats or carrying umbrellas. It's just supposed to look good for the cameras. A really absurd example is in the Will Smith/Gene Hackman movie "Enemy of the State," but this is done ALL the time. Stop it.

Speaking of that movie (and too many others), the ability exists in movieland to take a grainy image and "enhance" it to a fine level of detail. Sorry, you can clean up images to a degree but not to the point of filling in information that was simply never captured in the first place. Or aren't we supposed to notice?

Who are these computer hackers who can find their way into any computer or network in the world, all from the convenient all-powerful laptops they carry with them wherever they go? EVERYONE has firewalls, encryption and other innovations that disallow exactly this kind of attack. And I'd be with you as far as guessing the occasional password of someone you have a personal relationship with, but not that of a complete stranger. "Did you try their birthday?" "Okay, I'm in." No, you're not.

And what's up with all these scenes where hapless victims find their way in the path of oncoming cars and trucks? Time after time, these vehicles have ample time to mash down on their horns but they never think of actually taking their foot off the gas, actually stepping on the brake, or even swerving out of their lanes. And the people they're going to hit have all the time in the world to look horrified, frozen in the moment of their destiny, possibly even throwing an arm across their eyes to fend off this certain doom. Um, step out of the way, already. It would be time better spent.

Get rid of the stupid one liners like those popularized in (especially Roger Moore's) James Bond movies, later ripped off and multiplied (in quantity and poor effect) by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude van Damme. Stop outrunning machine gun fire. You can't really do it, and those railings can't keep catching all of the bullets.

How about working the slide on an already loaded semi-automatic pistol before going into the dark warehouse or the held up bank? Um, once the clip is inserted, the slide is worked to put a round in the chamber. Without that, it can't be fired. They should be taking off the safety, not working the slide every time they pull their guns. And that metal on metal racking noise that it makes: this is not appropriate in those scenes where the bad guys (or good ones, I guess) simply point their guns at a new target. You pointed, you didn't break down and reload your guns. Cheap sound effect. By the same token not a knife or a sword can be drawn without that delectable metal on metal scraping sound. No leather sheaths for these people.

But the number one most annoying movie practice is the overuse of CGI, or Computer Generated Images. "King Kong" is enjoying moderate success in the box office right now but it will make its money back on foreign rights and DVD sales. I still won't see it, though. I gave up on all Hollywood remakes and seventies TV show adaptations a long time ago. If you can't even come up with new ideas, people... I saw the original "Kong," and it is a classic. What the hell are you going to do it now, make a better classic? Oh, right, you can use CGI effects to create a fake gorilla, a fake city, and fake airplanes firing fake-- Well, you get the idea. Bottom line is that I felt bad for the big fella the first time around and I still wish they'd just leave him alone.

Movie magic has always been about fantasy and showing us things that make us believe we're seeing what we really aren't. But if I want CGI, I'll play a video game, because that's all it is. It ain't the movies I know and love, but those don't play in theaters anymore. And neither do I or many of my friends. Good luck, movie theater land. Hollywood may not need you much longer, either.