A return to moviegoing
What we can learn from those tip-toeing back into Chicago’s theaters
What’s it like to go to a movie theater? As in, right now , April 2021, one year into a pandemic. Like many of you, until the other day, until I started writing what you’re now reading, I hadn’t stepped foot in a movie theater in more than a year. The last thing I saw in a theater was ...
I actually don’t remember. I’m sitting here, trying to recall, trying to recall, and... nope, nothing. It feels much too long ago to remember. The last “Star Wars”? Maybe Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women”? Perhaps “1917”? Whatever it was, I’m guessing it was from 2019, and most likely an Oscar movie. I know I didn’t see a single film last year inside of a theater or screening room, and like roughly 70% of Americans, according to polls, it’ll be another six months before I’m comfortable going routinely.
But then, there is that other 30%. There are people going to movie theaters. Not a ton of people — theaters in Illinois are operating at 25% capacity. But people are going, sort of. And theaters have been open since February, kind of. Similarly, the Oscars, that annual summation of the previous movie year, are happening this weekend. I suppose. Did you even remember it was Oscar Week? Who out there forgot movie theaters still exist? Odd as it is to write, we could all use a gentle reminder: For more than a century, moviegoing — as opposed to moviestaying, at home, on a couch in front of Netflix — was a fixture of American life.
But like rock ’n’ roll, smoking and newspapers, are we learning to live without it? More than 500 species of land animals are expected to go extinct within the next 20 years — should I care whether audiences get to see the next “Doctor Strange” on a big screen?
So last week I ventured into our moviegoing purgatory, to take a snapshot of those souls currently wandering the movie palaces and multiplexes during this most uncertain of moviegoing seasons. And I wondered: Do these pioneers tell us about the future of movies? Or the past? As one usher whispered, “Look, here come the guinea pigs now.”
Many of those I spoke with
were seeing their first movie on a big screen in more than a year. Cinematically speaking, a fair number approached the activity alert and wide-eyed, like Indiana Jones creeping into a cave, torches thrust before them; but they left like the abductees emerging from the mothership at the end of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” seemingly treated well but confused, disoriented — This is ... moviegoing? Oh, yes, yes, I remember ... At the Music Box in Lakeview, a theater employee noted the time and rushed to pop open the rows of doors at the back of its large 750-seat house. No one emerged. A moment passed. Then another. I poked my head inside and saw a handful of bodies standing in the dark, staring at the end credits of
“Godzilla vs. Kong.”
A man stepped out and said he wasn’t here for the movie, he was here for the movies.
He didn’t really care what was playing.
A couple, Matthew Avila and Bianca Alvarez, said they’ve seen “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Minari,” “Tenet,” all on a big screen. “We go to whatever now,” Alvarez said. “Is it weird?” asked Avila, then answered: “Yes. And no. This used to be a part of our life, and here we are, but no people. There’s never a lot of people now. You kind of miss the audience. You start to miss that experience of going to the movies with a loud crowd.”
The audiences I spoke with said many of the same things, again and again, and shared many of the same anxieties, again and again. Katherine Cole, a Chicago nurse, stepped into the lobby with her son Adrien. “While watching ‘Godzilla,’ I started to wonder what was the last thing I saw in a theater and — Adrien?” He shrugged. An “Avengers” movie?
“We’ve taken the pandemic seriously,” she said. “We ate out once in the past year, for his birthday. I was nervous to do this. It would be hard if someone sat next to me now, but the rows are blocked off. It feels safer than a restaurant — I feel better about it now.”
In the lounge next door, Nick Roth and Ben Baylon waited for a few friends to arrive. They rented out the small pocket theater at the Music Box for Roth’s 30th birthday. “I said OK to this but not a lot of people,” Roth said. “So it’ll be five total. I’m vaccinated, (Baylon’s) getting his in a couple of days. I used to come here frequently I would do the 40-hour festival. I’m a movie guy. But to be honest, I won’t be back regularly for a year.”
Baylon: “We’ll go see (the upcoming Lin-Manuel Miranda adaptation) ‘Into the Heights,’ but ...”
Roth: “But then I’m also not sure about a movie theater full of people I don’t know.”
For their screening, they picked the first Harry Potter film. “I said OK, O.G. Harry Potter, but not the first or fourth movie,” Baylon said. “He wanted the first. Nostalgia, I guess.”
At AMC Ford City 14 in West Lawn, on a Thursday afternoon there are more seagulls in the parking lot than cars. But there are a lot of seagulls, and more cars than I expect. What feels familiar is the cavernous quality of a multiplex on a weekday, its silences, its overpriced concessions — $22.78 for a Bavarian pretzel and large drink combo! There are people here, but inside theaters.
Indeed, AMC stock is up. According to several polls, though a majority of Americans will wait until fall to step into a movie theater, the number feeling more confident about the act of moviegoing itself has risen. Hollywood sighed recently when National Research Group (studio executives’ favorite polling agency) reported that at least 60% would be comfortable returning to a theater.
They didn’t poll Ciesta Thomas.
She was headed into — “What is this movie again? ‘King Kong and Who?’ “Godzilla Fights Kong?’ ” — her movie with her arms full. One hand was holding two kinds of Icee, the other was cradling a full canister of Lysol, a push-top bottle of hand sanitizer and extra masks. “I have to say that this is weird to be back. It’s so ... enclosed, you know?”
She said once the weather gets nice, she expects to stay outside.
“But we will come back for ... Space Looney Tunes?”
“‘Space Jam’?”
“Right, ‘Space Jam.’ ”
I was struck by how many people, never mind not caring about what they were seeing, couldn’t remember the titles of the movies they were seeing. Not Ben Maldonado of Kankakee, though. He was leaving “Godzilla vs. Kong” for the fourth time. He describes the absence of movies, for months and months, as if it were a phantom limb, waiting to be itched. “I was in an Indiana theater and they just had too many people to be OK, but when it’s well-spaced? Before the pandemic this was how I escaped things, and through the pandemic, when they were open, theaters actually made me feel more comfortable.”
When I would mention that “Godzilla vs. Kong” is available right now at home, streaming with an HBO Max subscription, moviegoers would often look at me a bit like a philistine. The screen, the simple act of leaving the house, the hope of finding an audience — it all still matters. Javier Gonzalez brought his daughters, 4 and 5, to see Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon” on a big screen. “I wanted them to have that big-screen movie thing still, though you know, they have seen this at home on Disney+ — they’ve seen it like five times already.”
What wasn’t clear was how urgently
these people needed to go to a movie theater. Even for those who went to the movies regularly before the pandemic, even for those missed a big-screen experience, there seemed to be a creeping agreement that moviegoing mattered a bit less now — yet the alternative, not having that big-screen option, was unthinkable.
Many said, considering the lack of options in pandemic America, it was something to do, a distraction, far from an imperative. Others were there on a reconnaissance mission, to report back if it felt safe or weird. At the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Eddie Snolski said he and his kids were at a matinee of “Gorilla vs. Kong” — “You mean, ‘Godzilla vs. Kong,’ dad!” — partly because they wanted “break the ice.” He said the weirdest part was “the part about not being in a theater in a year.”
Still, it is plenty weird out there. There’s nothing normal about a multiplex “deeply cleaned” between showings. Or audiences wearings masks. Or asking the teenage manager about the quality of the ventilation. Or limiting, say, the 900 seats of the Pickwick’s main theater to only 225 customers. There’s definitely nothing normal about limiting showtimes at some theaters, including the Pickwick, to weekends only. In fact, Friday afternoons at the Pickwick are the new Friday nights, said owner Dino Vlahakis. More people seem to be escaping their Zoom-led burnouts to sneak in a couple of hours of whatever. “‘Godzilla and Kong’ shocked us,” Vlahakis said. “It was just a typical prepandemic blockbuster weekend at the movies! But these other films — I defy you to tell me one thing about ‘Voyagers.’ ”
Middling indie misfires, religious movies, stray horror flicks — there seem to be fewer films in theaters now than malapropisms of “Godzilla vs. Kong.” (For the record, I heard: “Hong Kong vs. Kong,” “Jurassic Kong,” “Jurassic Park vs. Kong,” et al.) When I visited the Pickwick, “Godzilla vs. Kong” has been running for a few weeks, which, in TikTok times, is an eternity. Debbie Munro, a manager at Jewel who was headed into “Godzilla vs. Kong,” said: “My concern as a moviegoer has become, is there just anything to see?”
For many theaters, without enough to show, the answer has been old movies, like “Back to the Future,” “Mean Girls,” “The Empire Strikes Back.” Which only adds to the sense of a contemporary theater suddenly acting like a novelty house, an oldies act, nostalgia. (Memo to Gen Z: Multiplexes were so bustling once that floors ran thick with popcorn butter.) On opening night of “Godzilla vs. Kong” at the Pickwick, during the finale, the sold-out house gave a cheer and applauded. Kathryn Tobias, general manager at the theater, said, “When I heard that, it made me feel good for a minute. Just like old times.”
According to the Morning Consult,
a research firm that polled perceptions throughout the pandemic, of cultural activities Americans did before lockdowns, the movies are what we’re most excited to see return to normal, outpacing museums, concerts, theme parks. Which sounds like something of a reminder of the democratizing origins of moviegoing itself — once, for the affordable price of a movie ticket, an audience could receive a grand, fancy spectacle. You could even argue, despite the fragmenting of culture and splintering of attention, more than a song, maybe more than TV, the movies remain the only art that
still unites the widest possible audience around a singular idea.
Assuming that’s true, an antique like the Tivoli in Downers Grove, built in 1928 (and then only the second theater in the country showing exclusively sound movies), might be the future.
Within a half hour of reopening last week, a line formed at the concession.
The gold of the chandeliers cast a warm glow even on a Friday afternoon.
The neighborhood had turned out.
“We finally broke down and got Disney+,” said Chris Broderick with her two sons in tow, “but we also don’t want a place like this to just become some nostalgia thing. We need a place like this to stay a cornerstone. Some movies are made for big screens.”
During the pandemic, the Tivoli added a 31-seat screen, but the main house still holds 1,012. It’s still a cavernous wonder, and nicely positioned: If studios shift more films to streaming, if multiplexes struggle to fill screens, a palace like the Tivoli, showing mainly the big movie of the week, and showing it with class and spectacle — well, that’s a night out. We could be developing a herd immunity to the Oscars and the relatively modest visions that dominate Academy Awards before we develop herd immunity to COVID-19.
On the sidewalk outside a couple walked past and craned their necks at the Tivoli marquee. “We’re excited to return,” said Jan Deal. “We’re not giving up.” She remembered seeing “Schindler’s List” in a theater, but moreover, she remembered the silence as it ended. Her husband, David, nodded. He looked forward the next James Bond film. They needed that communal thing, they said. They’d be back, eventually.