VIEWPOINT: What Happened To Going to the Movies?

By Edward Adler

The Hamptons has become a movie desert. And the drought seems to be spreading.

Going out to dinner and seeing a movie was a way to socialize and bond with family and friends. Seeing a film in a theater was the perfect date.

Now, instead of coming out together, people are watching films at home, and the experience of sharing with others has narrowed. Sadly, the communal experience of going to the movies has almost been lost. And our local theaters are disappearing.

The rickety old theater in Westhampton has been closed a long time and is for sale. The Regal Cinema in Hampton Bays, in a strip mall, is rumored to be sold to a CVS, and the marquee has often stopped listing what is playing. It instead invites you to sign up for a Regal movie pass.

Our iconic movie theater in Southampton that welcomed people to town has been shuttered for years and is rumored to have been sold. Yet it remains closed. The property owner says it will be sold to the highest bidder, whether they want to keep the theater or not.

All that we have left on the East End is the lovely, revived Sag Harbor Cinema, which is now a nonprofit and has had to raise money to show new and classic films.

The East Hampton cinema, another Regal multi-screen movie house, has become one of the last bastions in our community where you can go to see first-run films.

People say COVID and streaming killed going to the movies, but the movie theater business was changing and dying a slow death long before.

The rise of streaming services has indeed contributed to the decline of turnout in theaters. Going to the movies is a beloved experience for many but has become less popular lately.

In 2021, a notably high 61 percent of Americans skipped out on the movie-going experience. The decline in audience continues. I spent fun family time seeing films in Westhampton over the years. Even though the springs were popping out of the seats, it was still enjoyable to eat stale popcorn and then go to dinner in town.

When we moved to Southampton, we often spent gray, rainy days enjoying films at the movie theater with the classic art deco marquee. Going for pizza at Paul’s after the movies was de rigeur. They even had a special giving a discount ticket for the movie with dinner.

At the theater, you would always run into friends who were enjoying one of the movies on one of the many screens.

In those days, the Hampton International Film Festival showed films at theaters from Southampton to East Hampton. The past few years, the HIFF had to use other venues, like the Southampton Arts Center, to show films.

Long before COVID ravaged the world and changed our lives in so many ways, people’s taste in movies began to change. The big studios have invested billions in the big, spectacular superhero films with amazing special effects, which attract a bigger and younger audience. “Wakanda Forever” of the Black Panther series is now attracting record audiences.

What started years ago with “Batman” and “Superman” and “Star Wars” has led to a long list of big-budget special effects movies that play better on the big screen than they do at home. Studios now release far fewer smaller independent films, searing dramas and rom-coms. When is the last time you saw a rom-com or a great gripping film in a theater? These works go quickly to HBO Max, Netflix or Amazon Prime.

The top 10 box office films so far in to 2022, in addition to “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” are: “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” “Jurassic World: Dominion,” “The Batman,” “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” “Thor: Love and Thunder,” “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” and “Black Adam.” Almost all are big-budget heavy metal super technological extravaganzas.

When I was in high school growing up in New York City, my friends and I would choose from so many iconic films that made us think, debate and discuss. Standing in line for a movie — yes, there were lines — could morph into big discussions with those around you. Movies like “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Graduate,” “Annie Hall,” “Carnal Knowledge,” and later films like “Malcolm X,” “Jerry McGuire,” “Something’s Got To Give” and “Wedding Crashers” attracted people to theaters and were box office hits. These were smaller but popular films; some were histories, some comedies and some dramas. And you saw them all in theaters.

Attendance at movie theaters in the United States and Canada peaked in 2002, when 1.6 billion tickets were sold, according to the Motion Picture Association.

Theater chains like Regal, owner of theaters in East Hampton, Hampton Bays and formerly Southampton, have filed Chapter 11 and closed many screens. Other theaters especially in New York City are run down, often empty, uninviting spaces. They are in sore need of renovation and reinvention.

To sell more tickets, theaters are marketing themselves much more aggressively.

According to The New York Times, theater operators in the United States are offering discount days and have also introduced mobile food ordering, expanded alcohol sales, invested in new equipment, offered private rentals, and tried simulcasting concerts and even hosting video game tournaments.

Over the last decade, theater operators have removed thousands of traditional seats and installed roomier recliners, reducing capacity.

I’m hoping that theater chains realize that the Hamptons can still be a good market for films, and that the theaters in our towns can be revived and remarketed as new spaces with worthy films that will make us want to return to the movies.

Hopefully, there is still room for rom-coms and smaller intelligent movies that tell a story and provoke thought and discussion.

With the right changes and committed owners, our theaters can begreat places once again to gather for movies and then go out to dinner. Sag Harbor is trying to do that with some success.

The old dinner-and-a-movie concept, hopefully, is not outmoded. Let’s hope that on the East End we can go back to the movies.

Edward Adler is a partner in a global strategic communications firm. He lives in Southampton and New York City.