Crossing The Line

 They used to keep movies in theaters for weeks. For months even. I can remember when Star Wars, which was the title of the movie before it became a franchise-breakfast cereal-TV series-pop culture phenomenon, played at one theater in our hometown for more than six months. Long enough for me to embrace the quantumness of it and order myself a Darth Vader mask and have it shipped to me in time to wear it to a showing where I was allowed to get in for free because I was such a fan. Such a fan, in fact, that a friend of mine and I were once paid a dollar (each) to stop repeating the lines before they were spoken onscreen. This allowed us (both) to rush up to the concession stand, buy some Junior Mints and come back to different seats where we continued our repertory. 

This was not a singular event. Once upon a time, before the clone wars, theater owners who had a hit on their hands would make an advertising point out of a movie being held over for the "seventh smash week!" Your entertainment dollar was being carefully herded toward what became blockbusters. Theater owners would keep showing whatever was keeping lines going around the block. Or at least filling a matinee. 

Of course, this was a time before home video. Before HBO was making their own movies. Before movies were reduces to a little plastic box containing a spool of half inch tape. Before they became shiny coasters. Before they disappeared completely and started appearing magically on the ridiculously large flat screen in your living room. This was another time. 

We now live in an age where we can decide if we would like to wait the week or two for a film to become available on a streaming service, or pay the nominal fee to have it even sooner. 

Without ever standing in line. 

I remember, before the COVID, going out late in the evening to stand in line to see the first showing of the latest Marvel, or the "last" Star Wars. There was a cultural cachet to those experiences. I continue to hold personal pride in being an opening weekend kind of guy. I want others to ask me what I thought before they go out and don't have to stand in line. They don't because it's not there. The line that is. It will be on Netflix/Hulu/HBO/Apple/Roku/AskJeeves before you know it anyway. At which point, feel free to watch these films as many times as you'd like. Memorize the dialogue. But don't expect to get paid to shut up.