For much of my life, it wasn’t a matter of whether we were going to see a movie on the weekend but which one. When I was a child, that meant leafing through the movie section of the local newspaper to see what was playing; as a teenager, I’d dial 777-FILM (“Hello, and welcome to Moviefone”); in my 20s, I’d check websites such as Fandango. But through it all, moviegoing was the default activity. If our first choice was sold out, we’d just see something else. Even if nothing was playing that we particularly wanted to see, we’d choose the movie with a showtime that worked best.
As I got older and took on more responsibilities, it became harder to get to movie theaters as often as I used to. Even as the activity became less a part of my own life, though, I took it for granted that a younger generation of moviegoers would carry on, and that theaters would always be there for me whenever I really wanted to see a film on a big screen. Sadly, I’m no longer confident that this will be the case.
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