The Cost of a Movie

Most people I know find it pretty amazing that I haven’t been out to see a first run movie in eight years.  And in truth have only seen maybe a couple first run movies in theatres in the past decade or more.

I’ll grant you, Hollywood isn’t living large off of me, and we would hear less foolishness from what passes for “stars” these days in the papers and at political rallies if they had to actually make a living based on what I am willing to pay to go see them.

But that is the fault of their greed and poor quality workmanship, not my Dutch penny pinching heredity.


You see, I can remember going to a matinee as a boy with $ 1.25 in my pocket, paying for the show, buying a popcorn, and a soda, and having enough left to buy a candy bar on the way home.  And yes, you are right “but a dollar isn’t worth the same”, so to be perfectly fair, let’s sort this out shall we.

According to the best information I can find, a dollar in 1968 is worth between $ 5.24 and $ 8.53 (depending on what the commodity is) in 2013 dollars.  So that $ 1.25 I used to pony up would be somewhere between $ 6.55 and $ 10.66 in 2013 “movie watching” dollars.

Well you say, you can hit a matinee these days for $ 7.00.  True, but what about the popcorn, soda, and candy?  In a theatre popcorn goes for $4.50 and up and a coke is $5.25 and up.  So ticket, popcorn and soda is at least $ 16.75, and heck, the candy bar?  Well, too much sugar is bad for you anyway, right?.

So, that movie theatre trip today costs somewhere between 1.6 and 2.6 times what it did back when I was a kid.


But wait, there is a bigger picture here if you don’t mind my using the pun.


My $ 1.25 back then got me a whole afternoon’s entertainment including;
A couple cartoons to start instead of a bunch of local business commercials
The full length “Companion feature” (a lesser known release usually a western or adventure)
Several more cartoons during intermission so we could hit the bathroom without missing out
And of course the feature film

Fully two plus times the entertainment that you get today.

So, let’s re-total today’s cost shall we?:  $14.00 for two movies, and we will ignore the lack of cartoons, plus $ 9.75 for the soda and popcorn, and let’s throw that candy bar back in shall we at $ 1.25.  Updated total then is $ 25.00 or somewhere between 2.4 and 3.8 times the cost of a movie when I was a boy.

Is it any wonder that I feel ripped off?


And yet like a nightmare that just won’t quit there is more involved still.


Back when I was a kid there were ushers in movies.  Those people served a purpose.  They shut up, shut down, and when required threw out the noisome and sundry nitwits who were determined to take away everyone else’s enjoyment by variously throwing stuff, moving around, talking over the picture of whatever other nuisance they decided to make.  And those ushers actually cleaned the theatre between showings, including mopping the floors to prevent your shoes from sticking and checking each seat for spills and gum and melted candy.

Nowadays?

Tie your laces extra tight, or expect to get to you seat without shoes or socks.  Bring a flashlight to make sure you aren’t about to be sitting in something unpleasant.  And a container of alcohol wipes, because, you really don’t want whatever that was soaking into your skin; and honestly, this warning is coming from a guy who guts pigs, cleaned babies rears, and has eaten untold years of boy scout cooking.

In other words, either put up with all that crap or walk out on your $25 investment.

Oh, and one more thing, there were no cell phones going off back when I was a kid.


I recall sitting and watching Star Wars when it first came out at the Vine Cinema in Livermore with Kevin and Jim and Megan and Karen (several high school friends).  After the show, we all walked over to the ice cream parlor and set down to talk about it.

If you hadn’t lived through what passed for “visual effects” prior to Star Wars, you can’t possibly understand the “wow” factor of that movie to us all.  We were simply stunned with the grand scale of the thing.

But as we talked about the special effects, I remember that we all came to realize that the future of movies was going to change.  The “wow” factor that Star Wars had etched would be chased and surpassed by others.  It would be developed, stretched, and advanced, until the art of telling a story was going to become a secondary concern to the visual tapestry of the special effects.

And thus it has become.  Movies are 90% visual effects these days.

In truth, seeing a fine red mist erupt when someone has been shot, really doesn’t advance the story, or help us understand the characters and what they are going through any better.  Nor does a computer generated scene of a car rolling over 45 times before exploding in a fireball the size of a small thermo-nuclear device.  Or even a beautiful near naked girl dancing through the very air, feet seldom touching ground as she beats the tar out of a hulking muscle-bound villain.

Those effects cost money to include in the film, and take up precious time as well.  They not only increase the cost of the film to make and see, but they also decrease the investment available for a really well-crafted story.  They distract from development of a complex story, or the growth and change in a character or characters’ relationships.

They also have a cost in imagination.  

Is it any wonder then that Hollywood has sunk to cranking out the 5th or 6th sequel to a storyline that I read as a kid in a comic book that had fewer than 15 pages of one-liners some 45 years ago?

Is it any wonder that I refuse to pay $ 25.00 for what I used to buy and read and imagine in greater detail than the movie can show; all for 10 cents as a boy?

©Copyright 2013 Marty Vandermolen