Save The Movies And The Theaters

Movie ticket sales have been dropping for years. Part of that can be laid at the feet of Hollywood because they decided to go woke and started making preachy movies that no one wanted to see. So what does one of the ‘Hollywood’ magazines, Variety, suggest as a way to solve the problem?

Allow patrons to smoke pot and text during the movie.

Really? They think that will fix the problem rather than showing movies people actually want to see? This, just when I thought they couldn’t possibly get any stupider.

“Imagine how much better Barbie or Deadpool & Wolverine would be if you could see it” while smoking a joint, asks Variety rhetorically. “Selling weed could bring fresh revenue and new customers to theaters.”

What?

Both of those movies were monster hits, the top grossers of their respective years. Who in their right mind believes allowing pot smoking and texting in the theater would have improved their box office?

Granted, Variety’s idea is to have exclusive screenings for potheads and texters. Nevertheless, the entire theater will still stink of that crap.

Here’s Variety lobbying for texting: “Although cinephiles might object, if movie theaters want to attract younger audiences who refuse to give up their devices during the two-hour running time of most films, they might need to stop banning phones.”

Of course Variety does ignore something that would stop the smoking of pot in theaters, that being that smoking in theaters, be it tobacco or pot, is illegal in most states. But what they’re really trying to sell us is that the only way to make gawdawful movies palatable is if the movie patrons are stoned. However, I have an ever better idea.

Start making movies that people actually want to see rather than the crap that’s been coming out of Hollywood over the past few years or so. Then the theaters would be full, the concession stands would be doing well, and the studios would stop losing money.

As I have mentioned before, Hollywood fell into a similar trap back in the late 60’s and unto the mid-70’s. They started making so-called ‘message’ movies that tried to preach to their audience rather than entertain them. The moviegoers stayed away in droves and the studios lost money on those stinkers. Then they stopped making those movies and returned to entertaining their audiences with great movies. One of those was Star Wars which came out in 1977 and was an absolute smash hit.

The ‘message’ movie was dead...until woke Hollywood decided to give it another go. It seems like it will have to learn the same lesson it did back in the 70’s, but with a modern twist. That lesson?

“Get woke. Go broke.”