— चार हजार नौ सौ अड़सठ —
Well, I did it. I went to see a movie in a theater yesterday. First time since February 23, 2020. It had been about fourteen and a half months.
A lot about it was very weird, and for surprising reasons. For the most part, what one might expect to be the weirdest part about it really wasn't. But, far more than anything, it was wonderful. Holy shit did I miss that. Probably more than anything, I missed the very environment of it, the ability to completely lose myself in a movie on the big screen in a darkened room with no distractions. It makes all the difference in the world.
But, still, let's go through the weird parts. I had certainly never sat through a movie with a face mask on before, and I did that last night. I did remove it for a few minutes during the trailer to eat the dinner I brought with me, but once I finished my leftover potato casserole, I put the mask back on and kept it on for the duration of the movie. It wasn't a big deal, which was what made it annoying that the one other guy in my row, at the far end to the right maybe 10 seats away from me, sat mask-less for the entire film. This is the kind of thing that is both predictable, and will certainly keep some from returning to theaters for far longer than it took me. I mean, theaters are saying masks are required, "unless actively enjoying food or drinks in the auditorium." That allows for a shit ton of gray area there, doesn't it? There's no real enforcement going on there, and people like that guy at the far end of my row can easily just go the whole movie without putting a mask on at all.
Maybe he's been vaccinated. Then again, maybe he hasn't. Vaccination has long been the general threshold I've given myself for returning to movie theaters: I wasn't going to do it until I was fully vaccinated. And even then, once I did, I would gauge how it felt and decide whether I would keep going back. And, the unmasked people in the auditorium notwithstanding, right now for me the benefits, which are huge for a film lover like me, outweigh the risks, which are drastically minimized by my vaccination status, with an extra level of protection by my own mask worn the vast majority of the time I was in there.
There's also the limited capacity thing. This screening, 4:55 on a Wednesday afternoon, fell far short of even what the 50% capacity allowed. I was one of five people in the theater for this movie. Two different guys were there alone, the one at the other far end of my row, and one roughly in the same seat as mine two rows ahead—that second guy kept his mask on the whole time. There was a couple two rows behind me, and I glanced at them on my way out at the end of the movie. One of them had a mask on and one of them did not.
Even before vaccination, the statistical risk of that scenario was low. On the other hand, before vaccination, if one of those two unmasked people had been infected and spent ninety minutes in that enclosed space with the rest of us, the risk of infecting everyone else in the room was much higher—especially high if no one were wearing masks. I believe everyone else wearing masks might have offered some mitigation of that risk, but not enough for me to have considered it worth the risk if I weren't vaccinated, and not even with only five people in the room. But, five people, three of them masked, probably most of them (maybe even all of them) vaccinated but especially being vaccinated myself? For me, that's entering territory where I'm generally still feeling comfortable returning to a theater.
Given a choice, I would have returned to the AMC Theater at Pacific Place, in which case I would have finally reactivated my monthly membership. But, they weren't offering any showtimes before around 6:30, and they also weren't showing any movies I was especially interested in. The Regal Meridian 16 over by the Convention Center was, though: both a movie I wanted to see, at a perfect showtime of 4:55 so I could go straight there when I finished my work day.
I still had two discounted Regal Cinemas tickets purchased at Costco in 2019 in my wallet. I tried to scan one at one of the self-help kiosks but it wouldn't work. I asked the young man standing in the lobby, who attempted to help me but had to call in the manager, explaining to me it was his first day. The guy looked like he could have been in high school, had thick, long curly hair, glasses, and a beard under his mask. I wondered about how many fully new employees they have hired after all the layoffs they had to do last year. This kid otherwise just spent his time standing alone in the lobby, because as you can imagine, business was very slow.
The guy who took my ticket and checked my bag, though? This was a middle-aged Black man who had been employed before—I remembered him, and he remembered me as a regular from before: "Good to see you back!" he said. It warmed my heart a little.
But here was the part that was absolutely the weirdest: the movie trailers. Several of them I had not seen before, for mostly horror movies that looked truly horrible. But a couple of particularly notable ones had been playing before movies frequently before theaters shut down in March of last year.
A Quiet Place Part II, and
Ghostbusters Afterlife, were both trailers I had seen several times already, but had not seen since February 2020. It felt like I was in some sort of strange time warp, like within that room the past year had just never happened. This is of course because most of the big studio movie releases were postponed a year rather than being released on VOD, so now they're just picking up right where they left off with release schedules.
Even the movie I saw, an action movie starring Bob Odenkirk called
Nobody that was a blast, was filmed in 2019. I can't imagine we'll be seeing a lot of movies whose in theaters whose production was any more recent than that for a while.
Nobody is also available on VOD currently, by the way. It just costs $20, which I refuse to pay—it literally saves money to see it in a theater (about 25%). Of course, I already had the Regal ticket so I still didn't have to pay anything at all yesterday. And I'm tempted to say a big part of my wanting to get back into theaters is to support theaters, except they make their money on concession sales rather than ticket sales, and I brought my own food like an asshole. Side note: if they offered better concessions I might be more tempted by them, but the major theater chains in particular just offer garbage. So that part's on them!
Nobody has been out since March 26, incidentally. But, I deliberately waited until the requisite two weeks after my second shot before venturing back into a theater. My two-week mark was Tuesday of last week, my Birth Week, and I had no time for movie-going last week. Yesterday just became the most ideal time for it thereafter. This movie has never hit #1 at the box office, but it has consistently been #2 or #3 each week since. In the future, I'll be unlikely to wait that long to see a movie after its release, but I'll probably still choose showtimes likely to have less people in the theater, for the time being at least.
I thought of Barbara while I was in that theater. She always hated the Meridian, calling it "the ghetto theater." It never would have been my first choice for return, but it's how it worked out. I used to be very defensive on its behalf to Barbara, and then looked around a couple of years ago and thought, this place has gotten a little grimy. Certain areas looked the same still, but to its credit, the theater and seats were very clean. Still, I was careful not to touch my face during the movie, especially after I had handled the trays that swing over your lap. I actually washed my hands in the bathroom there both before and after the movie. Granted, I had to pee both times anyway.
Then I walked home, made some chai, and had a great time writing the review. In my ongoing "film log" each year, including the 2021 one currently in draft status, I have been putting an asterisk next to every movie I reviewed that I had watched streaming or VOD. The last movie review for which I did not use one of those asterisks was
The Photograph, which I saw on February 23, 2020. And with the exception of my review of
Onward streaming on Disney+ which I posted April 11 last year, I wrote no reviews at all between that February one and my dive back into reviewing that started September 5. Even with that break, between
The Photograph and
Nobody, I reviewed 94 movies, all of them with that asterisk—all viewed streaming or VOD.
Strangeness and occasionally minor frustrations aside, I am so glad to be able to go to the movies again.
— चार हजार नौ सौ अड़सठ —
— चार हजार नौ सौ अड़सठ —
Aside from that, Shobhit had a later work shift yesterday—another thing that made it easier to decide to go see a movie—and did not get home until around 9:00. He actually fasted all day, having finally decided his weight had gotten too high. I had chai waiting for him though, and he did drink that. I also watched Joy Reid's interview with Elizabeth Warren before I went to bed.
Oh, and my plans to go to Fort Ebey State Park on Saturday as a postponed plan for my Birth Week with Claudia . . . scrapped. Good thing I texted her about it last night. She texted back with,
Oh fucking shit, and then told me she's headed out to Colorado today, to see her mother who has dementia. Now, her double booking last weekend before realizing she had already made a commitment with another friend was slightly more frustrating. But clearly her mother is the priority, so I had no problem with having to cancel the plan this time. Now I don't really know for sure what I'll be doing with my weekend, though. I have some ideas.
— चार हजार नौ सौ अड़सठ —
And as for today, I just finished my first FaceTime lunch of the month with Karen. A lot of the call was kind of unusually chaotic, because her cat had just gotten out her front door before we started the call, and as a wheelchair user and being home alone, she had no means of fetching the cat from under the bushes in the front of the house. She just left the door open and talked to me until the cat finally wandered back inside—but not before Dave had called her back and said he would come home and try to get her. Karen texted him that he didn't need to come home after all, but only a few minutes later I saw him come in through the back door behind her.
In addition to that, I told Karen all about my experience yesterday afternoon at the movie theater, sharing basically all the same details I shared here, which was a lot. That alone probably took up maybe two thirds of the hour. I also updated her on Shobhit's family getting vaccinated in India, and we talked a little about the currently dire situation over there. I'm not sure yet how the state of things there right now compare to China in the earliest days of the pandemic—specifically Wuhan—but I get the feeling that if it hasn't already, India's current wave will soon become the most horrible picture of this pandemic's devastating effects since it began.
And here in the land of privilege, I just read this morning that experts currently expect transmission rates in the U.S. to "drop dramatically" by this summer. I assume that will be due mostly to our widespread vaccination program. Probably what the entire world needs now is a global shift toward ending the pandemic worldwide. It's not like we can be truly isolationist here; we live in a time when we really rely on each other. And not just for things like, say, tourism dollars. I mean really essential things, from pharmaceuticals to agriculture, etc. Even that's a gross oversimplification, I'm sure.
Still, I think "think globally, act locally" is a pretty good slogan generally speaking. And I'm about to get super local in my actions because I need to post this and get back to work.
— चार हजार नौ सौ अड़सठ —
[posted 1:06 pm]
