In North America, one of the key rites of passage was owning your first car. Mine was a Buick Country Estate Wagon, green in color and big. On the first day I owned that beast, I rallied my movie loving friends and decided to spend this first evening with this behemoth going to the drive-in. I was in luck, “The Pom Pom Girls” and “Galaxina” were playing in a double bill.

I was excited; this was my first foray into the mysterious world of the drive-in. The car was chock-a-block of clueless males who would descend into anaphylactic shock if a girl spoke to them. On the way to the drive-in the passenger riding shotgun insisted on playing with the electric seat control so he came and left my peripheral vision all the way to the drive-in, it was more than annoying.

We arrived at the drive-in, it was packed. We parked and then immediately made our way to the concession stand. What a concession stand, a weaving parade of exceedingly unhealthy food. Limp French fries that were holding on due to the intervention of a heat lamp. Foil wrapped burgers and hotdogs that were lined up for impulse buying. There were two Cretors Popcorn machines each equipped with 60 ounces kettles. The air was thick with oil and smoke. Lines of cups holding Diet Coke, Coke, Sprite, and Fanta were lined up, filled with chipped ice which was a bit of treat after the soda had been consumed.

The drive-in has a combination of new releases, (it had 4 screens) and exploitation pictures. The first picture would run at dusk and then followed by the second feature around 11:15 PM. When the projector was struck and the light came through the portal, I was in heaven. The first movie showed, it was fun, a hotdog provocatively jumped into an eager bun. I, along with the rest of the Trappist Monks broke into deep laughter. We went to the concession stand again, saw the second feature and then carefully drove home. It was great.

When I was a young movie fan, a lot of movies seemed to be released into the theaters, maybe two or three a week. Thursday I would take the entertainment section of my local paper and scan it hungrily to see what was coming out. Usually there would be a large ad announcing a movie and when I saw what was coming out I would phone the posse to see what we wanted to see. It was good. People lined up, they were excited by what they were about to see. They talked about movies, as they made their way into the movies and as they made their way out. People were engaged in movie going and it was a tenet of our culture.

There was variety on the big screen; romances, science fiction, horror, ribald comedies and drama. There was something for everyone. I was lucky that a brilliant Danish immigrant established an arthouse in my town and he would present the world of cinema to us, In Spanish, French, German, Farsi and Urdu. It was a cornucopia of cinema, where I truly gained my education in the cinematic arts. I had read about Truffaut, but now was given a chance to share Truffaut with a community of artistically curious people. Movies like France’s “Get Out Your Handkerchiefs” and Italy’s “Mediterraneo” provided a view of a world that was previously hidden. The history of cinema was consistently celebrated. “Casablanca” was shown on 35mm as was Hitchcock’s transcendent “Rear Window”. Typically the theater was packed and before the movie the projectionist always played the song “The Weight” by The Band.

There was variety, a variety that has been denied to today’s cinema goers. Let’s face it, the movies today kind of blow. I remember going to my locally owned theater and watching “Avenger’s: Civil War” and thinking, most of this movie takes place in a cockamamie airport and frankly if you remove the explosions, it had the cinematic value of a WWE match….not good. A good part of the audience is being ignored and as a result are looking elsewhere to spend their entertainment dollar.

I kind of did an audit on what movies in the summer of 1988 would now have a theatrical release today using the present day studio perspective,

· Young Guns
· Crocodile Dundee 2
· Rambo 3
· Big
· Who Framed Roger Rabbit
· Coming to America
· Short Circuit 2
· Cocktail
· Die Hard
· A Fish Called Wanda
· Big Top Pee-Wee
· Caddyshack 2
· Mac and Me
Remember “Coming to America 2” had only an Amazon release.

Let’s talk frankly, no matter how you slice it, streaming is the equivalent of those giant dump bins of DVDs that sit in the electronic department of WalMart. There is little organization and the movies as they get shuffled around quickly disappear out of sight. This is the Top 10 viewed titles on Netflix this week.

· All American

· Love Is Blind :After The Altar

· Blood Red Sky

· Virgin River

· Manifest

· Cocomelon

· The Flash

· Never Have I Ever

· The Last Letter From Your Lover

· The Walking Dead

They are all series with the exception of Blood Red Sky, which is a German Vampire movie and for the most part, they are all catering to the new viewing habit of binge-watching. Streaming is not only eroding the economics of movie-going, it is also retraining consumers to binge watch 46 minutes slices. If the community of exhibitors do not offer a challenge to this model then it faces an increasingly dark future.

Theaters have to rebuild audiences by offering diverse content which appeals to many demographic groups. Hollywood has trained theaters to think of only tentpoles. Structures are built one brick at a time, a diverse and engaged business of exhibition will beat out streaming every day of the week. Hollywood really has no interest in you being successful, they simply want all the money……every last penny and they are going to try to squeeze it out of you until there is no more to give.

Often out of habit I leaf through Thursday’s newspaper hoping to catch sight of a movie ad, but alas they are long gone. I know that movies and movie-going are very important. I have long realized what Hollywood has become and just hope that others can plainly see their motives. The world has changed and not for the better. We have moved away from the community and have secluded ourselves in a shroud of technology. I am hoping against hope that movie theaters can once again host hordes of chattering movie fans and that once again we can have diverse and substantive offerings instead of some neutered images that grace our screens now. It is time for movies to call out streaming for what it is, as Barry Diller says, a weird algorithmic process. I long for the day that once again station wagons full of nerds can go to the drive-in and feel part of something.

There is a path forward, but it is not an easy one.

Robert Lenard Lippert was a theater owner. He was president and chief operating officer of Lippert Theatres, Affiliated Theatres and Transcontinental Theatres, all based in San Francisco, who eventually owned a chain of 139 theatres. Dissatisfied with what he believed to be high rental fees charged by the studio, Bob formed Screen Guild Productions in 1945 and started making movies he could show on his screens. “Every theater owner thinks he can make pictures better than the ones they sent him,”he later said. “So back in 1943 I tried it.”

Streaming will eventually bring damage to the large behemoths. I always reflect on this fable when thinking about the relationship between the studios and the exhibitors.

“A scorpion asks a frog to carry him over a river. The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, both would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog then agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why the scorpion points out that this is its nature and there is nothing he can do about it”

Something to think about.