“Another way for moviegoers to find value”
By Joseph Lavers
Good morning 🐣
If you were getting worried you weren’t spending enough money at the movies, you’re in luck! AMC Theatres is introducing new pricing that factors in where your seat is located. Unlike concerts, plays, and sporting events, movie theaters have always been one price fits all, save for the occasional age-based discount. Now if you like sitting in the middle, expect to pay more than someone a couple seats down from you.
According to Eliot Hamlisch, executive VP and CMO at AMC Theatres:
[It] more closely aligns AMC’s seat pricing approach to that of many other entertainment venues, offering experience-based pricing and another way for moviegoers to find value at the movies.
What a mouthful!
It’s interesting that I (and surely many of you) had an instant reflexive reaction to this announcement, whereas it’s a commonly accepted phenomenon for most other forms of live entertainment. And it makes me think of how moviegoing has changed over the last century-plus, from single-viewer Kinetoscopes to mass-audience Nickelodeons, from double features to casually buying a ticket halfway through a movie and watching the second half before the movie starts over and then you can catch the first half (how did you animals ever live like that?).
Moviegoing has actually been a pretty fluid, ever-evolving activity, especially whenever the industry has had to defend itself against other forms of entertainment and technology, e.g., television, home video, the Internet. So I guess this doesn’t really surprise me. What really sticks in my craw though is the whole “another way for moviegoers to find value at the movies” — the only value I need at the movies is a quality movie with a live collective experience. Maybe focus more on that? ¯\(ツ)/¯
A brief intermission 🍿
Happy Early Valentine’s Day!
Now watch this 👀
“Fire of Love” is a beautiful documentary by Sara Dosa that premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. (I’ll be writing more about this year’s fest next week.) The editing on this thing is incredible because it’s compiled almost entirely from pre-existing footage filmed by the late French volcanologist couple Katia and Maurice Krafft. Dosa is able to tell a clean, compelling, insanely watchable story all thanks to the Kraffts’ love for the camera and the singular relationship of Katia, Maurice, and volcanoes, the ultimate throuple.
These two traveled the world, chasing volcanoes in the ’70s and ’80s and documenting everything they saw with cameras. Their research and celebrity were revolutionary in their field and forced people and government officials to take volcanoes more seriously. We watch them document the tiniest observations while dancing in the face of death, teetering on the edge of lakes of fire and geysers of lava, equally full of awe and playfulness, transcending self-preservation.
But what exactly drove them to this?
After growing up in the post-war ruins of Alsace, they went on to attend anti-Vietnam War protests in Paris and ultimately got into volcanology because they were disappointed with humanity.
After getting married, Maurice declares: “From here on out, life will only be volcanoes, volcanoes, volcanoes.” We see him frying eggs in a pan on top of cooling lava, then complaining that “it’s not great. I usually make them better than this.” They are both cavalier AND deeply respectful of these god-like bombs. One minute they’re wearing full protective gear, the next they’ve pitched a tent in a volcano crater while lava is splashing in the background. “It will kill me one day,” says Maurice, “but that doesn’t bother me at all.”
While we watch gentle, rolling waves in an ocean of lava, we hear Katia’s words in voiceover: “We contemplate, lying at the edge of the abyss. The phenomenon, relentless, makes us shiver. Maurice says we are crazy to stay here. And yet, we remain. Curiosity is stronger than fear.” Later she tries to explain their fascination a little more: “Because there is the pleasure of approaching the beast. Not knowing if it will catch you.”
As the narrator, Miranda July, explains, “You fall hard for what you know. Harder for what you don’t.”