I didn’t go to the movies much in 2019. I had the year staked out for other things,pain and eroticism for long-term projects and self-improvement regimens that I thought would make the years after 2019 easier. My friends would ask me if I wanted to see a movie on a weekend and I’d shrug them off, insisting I was too busy to waste an afternoon watching something I could catch streaming a few months down the line. “This is a groundwork year” was my mantra while I worked on my first novel, barely dated, focused on my work, and otherwise acted like a superior little asshole-hermit with no time for fun things, “do this now and 2020 will beso much better.”
To my credit, my 2020 started out well. I finished the first draft of that novel, threw my first party in years, and snagged one of the Alamo Drafthouse’s coveted season passes in their first drop. With it, I could see as many movies as I wanted at my favorite theater in Brooklyn for a reasonable (for New York) monthly fee, and I had big dreams on how I was going to use it. I imagined myself sipping Avengers themed cocktails at a showing of Black Widow, inviting friends I’d hardly seen in 2019 to shriek at Nia DaCosta’s Candyman, and convincing my mom to drive into Brooklyn so we could finally see In The Heights together. How social I would be! How sparkling! Movie beers on me, friends, let’s bask in the theatrical experience!
That did...not work out. I used my season pass exactly once in 2020, to see Emmain February. It was great. It was also one of the last times I left my apartment.
Like many others, I did not expect the coronavirus pandemic to last quite this long. I appreciated it when the Alamo Drafthouse automatically cancelled further payments on my season pass but assumed that I’d be able to reactivate it by late spring, then perhaps by summer, and by early autumn I had given up on going to the movies this year entirely. Most of the films I would have liked to see have been pushed forward into 2021 or released on streaming, where I watch them the same way I watched almost all of my movies last year: alone in my apartment.
Warner Bros. recently announced that their entire theatrical release calendar for 2021 will debut on the streaming service HBO Max as well as in theaters. This includes huge potential tentpoles like Wonder Woman 1984, Dune, and The Matrix 4. While I’m sure everyone hopes it will be safe to visit movie theaters by the time those movies come out, the concurrent release model will likely shave audience numbers by an unknown and possibly large margin. Theaters are already struggling financially and so hang their hopes on both the coronavirus vaccine and massive turnout after the pandemic. Some theater chains may not survive long enough to reach the vaccine’s eventual widespread effectiveness; others may die on next year’s vine from a lack of blockbuster-level draw.
Whenever another movie gets pushed, a holiday is skipped, or another friend’s birthday passes by on the calendar, I repeat a new mantra: fuck feeling ready.
I believe that movie theaters as a concept will survive the pandemic, but part of me still worries that I may have missed my chance to be a Person Who Goes To the Movies a Lot. I was counting on that fantasy to keep me going through a year I felt was productive and turned out to have been a 365-day joke I played on myself. I put so many elements of the world on pause to focus on things I could have prioritized better because I had faith that the world would be there for me when I felt ready to return. Whenever another movie gets pushed, a holiday is skipped, or another friend’s birthday passes by on the calendar, I repeat a new mantra: fuck feeling ready. Do the thing while you can.
The Alamo Drafthouse application with my paused season pass remains on the home screen of my phone and I haven’t been able to bring myself to delete it. The rounded corners of its cheery, goldenrod icon taunt me and at this point, it feels better to let it taunt away. This was the year I was supposed to go to the movies. There was supposed to always be time, later, to go to the movies.