Off A Cliff

Numbers can be made to lie. Did you know with accounting for inflation it was more expensive to go to the movies in 1971?? Adjusted for inflation the tickets sold (again adjusted for inflation) sold in 1971 sold for $11.92. In 2022 the average? movie ticket was $10.53. These numbers are courtesy of those good folks at NATO’s Cinema Foundation.

?They have also stated that 107 movies are set to be placed in wide release this year, up from 71? in 2022 and only 2 down from the year 2019. This report also released the news that the business had shrunk by 2000 screens.? In 2019 there were 41,172 screens, in 2022 39,007 screens. Things have changed.

?They have changed, but at the same time they haven’t

?One of the things that I do not hear about enough is how audiences are perceiving themselves. The societal, technological, and structural changes have been profound, oh and yes there has been that pesky pandemic. New technologies, structural ideas, and a shift in perspectives change the society we live in. The rise of the internet has deeply shifted the perspective of our society.? It has changed how we communicate and has deeply affected mercantile habits. The reduced influence of religion and faith have also deeply molded our world view.

?Covid 19 has shaped how we see each other, it has re-defined our willingness to experience in closed spaces. The lockdown shaped perceptions and a more rapid adoption of technology. The ideas that were core to the fabric of our society were altered. Our society began to rely less on the tools involved with interpersonal relationships and move towards fully embracing a technological interpretation of the world.

?Community, which is a necessity for any society, was begun to be looked upon with suspicion. A cough, a sneeze, and the wiping of a nose was deemed a potential dangerous act. People were thought of as a danger and our society further eroded the idea of community. One of the interesting things executed by a theater in Cincinnati was to have screening where you had to show your vaccination record to be admitted. The shows featuring this mechanism were sold out. We wanted to be safe but even more we wanted to be a community.

Covid 19 was the final push needed to establish the idea of connectivity with technology. Streaming reinforced this and gave rise to the idea that theaters were kaput. Of course the proponents of this rise of the relationship with man and his various boxes were giddy.? The marriage of streaming and the American home caused? some to enter the doldrums.? The ancestral jungle drums of the community loomed large within the fabric of our humanity.? While we as a human society seem to have an umbilical cord directly into our phones, Hollywood saw this as an isolation but in truth these digital jungle drums' prime directive was to connect us even deeper to each other. We crave these relationships; when we as a species are alone for a prolonged time we fall apart, we erode, and we fail. We, at our best, are part of a discernible collective and we as humans shine the brightest when we transcend self and move towards the simple ideal of us.

?Covid 19 forced us into virtual caves and we did not like it. We love gossiping, chatting, and waving to our neighbors. We need to belong to a community; we need to build community.

?While Hollywood is making overtures to potential movie goers, they are releasing movies like Babylon which has no possible way of connecting with its audience. It's frankly repulsive and diminishes us as a community at every turn. It’s a movie that is filled with corrosive imagery and characters that as humans are seriously and tragically flawed.

?The rebound from Covid made us aware that being part of a community really gives us a sense of strong belonging. A movie audience for a two hour period is a community intent on experiencing the filmmaker's message and opinion. We need this sense of belonging, we crave it. A community can take the form like a theater where physically people connect, or a virtual community that can be accessed digitally and built by a collective sense of vision. Communities bring people with similar intent? together to celebrate a common experience or interest. Communities define themselves and the measure of their success is defined by the attitude of its members.

A healthy community leads to a healthy society. Hollywood must re-introduce itself to the community from which it expects to derive revenue from. Hollywood must serve these communities and give them what they need.

?The fact that you essentially paid more for a movie in 1971 tells us what value these communities have for the movies. Let’s face it, there is a Grand Canyon between Hollywood and its potential audience. Hollywood must rid itself of the arrogance that the audience should come to them…they have to go where the audience lives.