Going to the Movies Sucks

“Y’all know me. Know how I earn a livin’.” – Quint (JAWS, 1975)

I had an experience this evening that I’ve heard echoed via social media for years, but I’ve not had the chance to experience in person yet. I want to share with you my experience, and then elaborate a bit on how we got here. Apologies in advance, this is a long one, and I’m not known for brevity. I went to the movies tonight. Not for a lm festival, or a fancy premiere, but just for something to do on a Saturday night, by myself, and to a big multiplex that, at one time, was probably a very nice venue.

Now before the internet decides to jump down my throat, allow me to throw my bona des out to chum the waters. I started working at a movie theater when I was in high school. It was a small Hoyts cinema on Cape Cod. From there I doubled at another Hoyts one town over when they were short staffed and also nabbed a position behind the counter at the local indie theater, The Nickelodeon. Of these three theaters, I think only one still exists, and it’s now an independently owned bar & grill-style theater. I’ve worked behind the counter throwing corn in buckets, in the manager’s of ce keeping the books, and in the projection room running cans of lm and stringing reels through projectors. I even worked with the guy who did the repairs and equipment installs for Hoyts across the Northeast. This was all before I was 20 years old.

As an adult I became a lm critic, as movies were precious to me, and I wanted to give disenfranchised indie voices a hand up. That was all well and good until the bottom fell out of the lm journalism industry. From there I was fortunate to move to Los Angeles and run my own department at a movie studio. In fact, I was the lead projectionist at The Culver Studios for a time (now Amazon Studios, formerly Desilu Studios), and I had my own of ce at Raleigh Studios where I was the Head of Post Production, which included running their three screening rooms (the Chaplin, Pickford, and Fairbanks). Needless to say, I know something about running a movie theater. I even worked for a brief time at the now defunct Downtown Independent theater (and if you enjoyed a bag of popcorn there, you’re welcome. I was the one who xed their machine.)

It will be a long time until I go to a movie theater again if this is where cinema-going is at this point in history. I’m sad. The movies were my sanctuary for a long time when I was younger and into my adulthood. The movies are a place to escape more than just reality. They are a place to grab a quick snack, sit in the cool breeze of usually damn good air conditioning, or steal an intimate moment in the dark with your signi cant other. They were what was known as a “third place”, or a public space where teens and friends could just hang out outside of their homes or schools.

The theater I went to was the AMC Framingham 16, which was just remodeled in 2015, had to close during the height of the pandemic in 2020, and is open in the middle of the super busy Shopper’s World and Natick Mall area off of Rt. 9 and very close to the Mass. Pike. Now, if you’re not a MA native, I wouldn’t expect you to understand what any of that means, but what I can say is, this theater isn’t in the sticks, and they dumped a LOT of money into it within the last decade. AMC reportedly spent between $350,000 – $500,000 per theater in updates totaling $600 million dollars across the brand. If they saw what I saw tonight, I’d sue somebody.

I’ll walk you through my experience. First, the self-service kiosks were all out of order, and the front facing ticking kiosk had no one behind the counter. When I nally gured out where to get my tickets, the options in terms of movies, for a 16-screen multiplex was abysmal for 9:30PM on a Saturday night. There were maybe six options available of movies to watch, and most of them were not opening weekend picks. I got my ticket and walked over to the concession stand. There was a fairly short line, but it took forever to get through as there was only one person serving everyone. This person was not only serving up popcorn, but also taking orders for the full kitchen that this location has. All of the self-service soda fountains were also out of order, so folks were condemned to cans of Coke, energy drinks, or bottled water.

As I looked around while I was standing in line, I saw rows of trash piled high on un-emptied trash barrels, popcorn and other detritus littering the ground, and nothing looked at all hygienic. I got a popcorn and a bottle of water and walked over to my screen, number 6.

When I entered screen 6 I was greeted by a musty odor. The air conditioner was obviously not working properly, and some level of moisture was seeping its way into the room, leaving a dank smell that was entirely unpleasant. The oors, speci cally in back of each row of seats was dirty and lled with trash. I don’t know how they pulled it off, but even the leather La-Z-Boy style seats even smelled awful.

I took a bite of my popcorn. It was stale and bland. I knew it wasn’t old popcorn, as I saw the person behind the counter popping a new batch as I walked over to the concession area. My guess is that they either weren’t trained properly on how to make popcorn, or it was mixed with old stock. A couple of times during the movie I saw the distinct shadow of a mouse skittering amongst the footlights.

There were denitely people talking throughout the movie I watched, but thankfully I didn’t experience what many go through, which is having to deal with people constantly on their phones throughout the presentation. I think that would have driven me over the edge. The picture quality was okay. Not super, not horrible, but okay. There was no top/bottom masking, and the left/right masking didn’t move during any of the opening ads or trailers. Not a great sign. The thing that blew me away was how poor the sound quality was. It wasn’t muffled or overdriven or anything like that, but I was just shocked at how tame it was. It was like watching a movie at home using the stereo speakers built into my television.

I’m going to brie y complain about the ticket price, roughly $14.50 for one adult. This didn’t include concessions obviously. This wasn’t an IMAX, 4DX, 3D, or other special presentation. This was a standard screen price. Not exactly ideal if you’re looking to bring in big crowds of blue-collar folks and teens on a Saturday night for date night. What was that experience worth, in my opinion? Maybe $7.50? $10.00 on the high end if the place was cleaner.

If you’ve stuck with me this far you know that I rarely complain about something without giving a potential solution. I hope AMC and every other theater chain is listening. I’m going to say it loud so the people in the back can hear.

THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!

Let’s go point by point on how they can turn this kind of experience around:

1. Hire more people. Hire students. Hire elderly folk. Hire ex-convicts. Get your theaters staffed to the proper levels. This also includes janitorial staff.
2. Train your people to maintain standards. This isn’t hard. Every company like this has SOP’s that deal with cleanliness, product turn, etc. Make sure your managers are regularly checking on and training employees on these. Create good habits.
3. Fix your broken equipment. A lot of these xtures are rst impressions for your customers and greatly impact their experience. It’s not hard, every theater has a number they call for technical and equipment issues.
4. For this particular location, fire your managers. They’re horrible if they think what I experienced this evening was acceptable.

Now, if you’re someone from AMC reading this and thinking “hey, all this costs money and we can’t afford it”. Employees? In this economy? Look, I get it. People cost money, and they should be paid well for the service they provide. But look at where you biggest expenses are! You spent $600 million dollars to take out seats to put in recliners, install full kitchens, and other creature comforts that don’t belong in a movie theater all while ignoring the reason people go to the movies in the first place! You’ve outspent yourselves, you’ve become too expensive for most people to attend regularly, and you’re paying out the ass for your opening weekend films from the studios and distributors. It’s no wonder you’re bleeding money!

So, what are the solutions here? Glad you asked!

1. Take out and sell the leather recliners. This isn’t someone’s house. Add more seats. More butts in seats means more tickets sold which translates to more profits.
2. Lose the kitchens. Or turn them into ghost kitchens for local restaurants, food trucks, or even for the homeless. Again, this is a movie theater, not a restaurant. As a matter of fact, you could use local marketing to partner with local area businesses to create “dinner and a movie” packages. I’ve seen it done before, and it is usually successful.
3. Book more independent and second run lms. Bolster these with event and repertory lms. All of these are cheaper to license, and the theater keeps a bigger piece of the box of ce. Yes, I’m aware that you’re scared of the big bad studios and are afraid of being blacklisted from getting the next Marvel movie. You’ll be ne. Would you rather show ten screens of Thanos and give away 90% of your ticket sales to a distributor in your rst opening month or would you rather take a 50/50% share with an up-and-coming horror lmmaker and take a chance playing their movie along with a Rocky Horror double feature? Get creative. This is business. Yes, AMC is a public company and has a legal mandate to earn money for their shareholders, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do it with some level of intelligence instead of just following the herd. This works for mom-and pop theaters as well. Make some noise. Get involved in your community. You can maximize utilization in so many interesting ways! I’m sure there’s someone out there that will claim I don’t know what I’m talking about, or that it’s more complicated than what I’m saying. But it really isn’t. The thing is this, the company cares more about money than the people they serve. That’s a problem. They care about money because they legally have to (as a public company) but also because they are under the thumbs of studios and distributors who have way more say in the theatergoing experience than they should. Organizations like NATO (not the government one) should make this conversation a priority, otherwise more theaters are going to wind up like the one I went to tonight, or worse, they’re going to end up closed.

You can’t be everything to everyone. But be great at one thing. Be great at showing movies and providing space for people. That’s your only job.