The Movies
I was once introduced to Ron Howard, Opie from The Andy Griffith Show of my youth and the filmmaker of greatest repute of my adult life. His directorial credits include Hillbillies Elegy, The DaVinci Code, Frost/Nixon (Nominated Best Director and Best Picture), Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind (Winner Best Director and Best Picture), Apollo 13, Backdraft, Parenthood and Cocoon. There are few people, other than perhaps Rob Reiner, Meathead from All in the Family and a great film director (Bucket List, The American President, When Harry Met Sally, and The Princess Bride), who got a nomination for Best Picture for A Few Good Men. These two guys got their starts on TV and grew to become great directors of great films. In many ways, no one knows how to tap into the American movie psyche better than they do.
While talking to Ron Howard, I was introduced as a movie aficionado who went to see two or three movies per week. He asked me how I was able to do that and I explained that it was fairly easy in NYC since there were so many accessible theaters with a wide range of movie offerings. That attendance rate impressed him to the point of him saying that he wasn’t able to see that many movies per week himself. That struck me as strange. Movies are his business and yet even he felt that my rate of attendance was extreme.
I have a history with movie attendance that bears noting. Back in 2007, I had a movie blog that was read by many of my friends and colleagues. I would provide a one or two paragraph review of all the movies I went to see. I called the blog Whim of Iron, an expression I have liked since it was mentioned to me in college by my friend Gary Bernstein. The expression characterizes the extreme passion one might have for a certain activity. I thought that was a fair representation of my movie-going addiction. That blog figured prominently in my career history as well. In 2007, when the hedge fund crisis I was shepherding in the spring of that year curtailed my movie watching, I made a note about my distraction on my blog. I said that the hedge fund crisis was like defending Sparta against the Persian Hordes of Wall Street, a reference to the then-current movie The 300 where King Leonids defends the pass at Thermopylae. As part of the Bear Stearns “throw someone under the bus” defense strategy, I was set up for a New York Times interview where I got sandbagged with questions about my blog. That got published the day before I stepped down as CEO of Bear Stearns Asset Management with the implication that it was all justified since the hedge fund debacle was supposedly all my fault. Wikipedia even went so far as to declare that I was the highest ranking person to ever be “deuced”, which meant fired for his blog (which was ridiculously untrue).
At the time, everyone I knew thought the article was funny. I said that if the worst thing I ever got tagged for was going to the movies with my wife for two hours after a fifteen hour Saturday and before another fifteen hour Sunday, I could live with that. I would go on to remind people that I didn’t drink, so hanging out in a cocktail lounge for those two hours was not likely to be an alternative for me as it would perhaps be for others faced with my work dilemma. The point was that even though it was a silly connection to make, my movie going habit was well-publicized as one of my great vices. It was true to the extent that I did go to lots and lots of movies.
And then came COVID. I had already moved to San Diego and had reconciled myself to the reality that, like Ron Howard, since I didn’t live in New York City any longer, it would not be as easy to see all the movies I otherwise might want to see. There are plenty of theaters out here and these multiplexes ran every type of movie imaginable, but for more obscure or art films, I would have to go into San Diego proper to the one obscure urban theater that showed those films. Nonetheless, it was not an impossible situation. Naturally, once COVID hit we all hunkered down and movies were one of the early and severe casualties. For years, we all heard about how On Demand and Streaming were going to kill the movie theater business. It hadn’t to that point mostly because people like me wanted someplace to go out to rather than just stay at home in front of the TV. Now I have an 82” monster Samsung TV, so its practically a home theater and not a bad place to see any movie. It was my necessary go-to once we all stayed home due to COVID.
I was a regular Fandango user to get my movie tickets and that got displaced by On Demand and Streaming fees, including more use of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Apple TV and HBO Max. I used to look up the new movies that were due for release that week so I could decide what I wanted to see that weekend, but that whole program seemed to fade into the woodwork. Now the first thing to check when you hear about a new movie is where it is available. Every once in a while you will see a movie that is being offered only in theaters, now that movie theaters have been allowed to reopen. Up until now, I have ignored those movies. If I can’t see it on my home TV, I wasn’t going to see it. Obviously, that most often is just a timing issue and I think the main reason for promptness in seeing new releases has been to be current with pop culture. Nowadays, you are more out of it if you haven’t seen some new hot TV series than some movie. With everyone fishing for new things to watch while spending so much time at home, that information flies around the way movie reviews used to fly around.
This weekend we have Thomas and Jenna with us and there is a great deal of buzz about the new James Bond movie with Daniel Craig, called No Time to Die. The James Bond franchise began in 1953 when Ian Fleming penned the first of his twelve James Bond novels. Since Fleming’s death in 1964, many other writers have perpetuated the James Bond story and made the James Bond series the longest running film series of all time. It is only the seventh-highest grossing series since the whole Marvel and Star Wars blockbusters still eclipse them, but Bond is still bigger than Batman, Tolkien and Jurassic Park. Most importantly, it shows no sign of abating and I think we can assume this will not be the last Bond film. This franchise is a year older than I am and yet it was my son and his fiancé that were adamant that they wanted to see the latest film, even if it meant going to the theaters.
So, tonight I will break my almost two year streak of not going to the movie theaters to see a movie. I watch movies every day, in fact, several on most days, but not in a theater. I have booked seats for us at the local Angelika Theater (a touch of NYC) and I know they have better food and nice big comfy reclining seats. So, I’m looking forward to the evening, much less because of the nature of the film (I’ve never been a big Bond fan) and more because going to the movies has been such a big part of my life up until 2020. I no longer blog about it, but then again, I guess that is what I’m doing here and now, so some vices never go away.