Hands down the best movie experience I've had was this old refurbished theater in my hometown in the 90's and early 00's. Two weekends each month they showed an old movie. Classics from Casablanca, Laurence of Arabia, Fiddler on the Roof, to The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet and War of The Worlds.
Tickets were $4-5, boxes of popcorn and soda's of reasonable size were a $1-2 each, all movies lead with a cartoon and had an intermission.
Best of all the ushers. They would kick you out if you made too much noise and wouldn't let you take your seat if you got up too often.
It's a real shame that movie studios have cut the theaters margin on movies so thin that the theaters can't bring their snack prices down, nor offer a better experience (like kicking people out who can't shut up).
This is exactly the reason I love Alamo Drafthouse. Zero tolerance policy on noise and cellphone screens (which they've actually enforced when I've been there).
Food prices are comparable to other theater chains, but the _quality_ is much higher. Real food (not concession stand quality), adult milkshakes, etc. Seats are lazy boy quality recliners.
Plus the ushers shimmy around on the floors to come take your order and bring it to your seat. You get these little menu cards you can fill out during the movie. The ushers look for folks who have a card ready and come grab it.
I'd actually like Alamo Drafthouse more if they skipped the whole dinner thing.
I mean the dinner thing is great, but I do find the extra movement distracting. The drafthouse I typically go to doesn't have stadium seating so it is noticeable.
Film rental has actually gone down a lot since the studios forced all the chains to go digital from 35mm film.
It wasn't uncommon for 80-90 per cent of ticket sales to go to the studios in the first week of a blockbuster's release, which would drop down to about 50 per cent in the fourth week or so. It was around 35 per cent for second run.
The average rental since the switch to digital has been about 50 per cent, although it's been a few years now since I was last running projectors in a real cinema.
You are a little too understanding of the general population. What percentage of people will quietly apologize and change their behavior instead of becoming combative for being confronted for their assholery? In my anecdotal experience it’s probably like 75% of people in general become combative and you need staff to deal with them.
It's not too much to ask for people to act appropriately in certain situations. During a movie, or stage production, it is not too much to ask for people to shut up and stay off their damned phones. If you can't be relatively quiet for a few hours, maybe going to a theater is not for you.
The one time I can recall where I was annoyed enough with a fellow theater goer to engage them at all, it resulted in the obviously drunk wife berating me in the lobby for ruining her "date night" with her obviously embarrassed husband.
More generally, I have approximately a 0% success rate getting people to change their bothersome behavior. Loud neighbors are far more common and know they're being loud and don't give a shit in every single experience I've ever had.
I'm not afraid of confrontation, I just don't see the point when it literally never works in my experience.
Tickets were $4-5, boxes of popcorn and soda's of reasonable size were a $1-2 each, all movies lead with a cartoon and had an intermission.
Best of all the ushers. They would kick you out if you made too much noise and wouldn't let you take your seat if you got up too often.
It's a real shame that movie studios have cut the theaters margin on movies so thin that the theaters can't bring their snack prices down, nor offer a better experience (like kicking people out who can't shut up).