I miss you and the movies: do millennials care about cinema houses any more?

Austin Beaton
Sep 6, 2018 · 7 min read

Two estranged friends and movie-lovers write each other back in forth about growing up, what they’ve seen, and what they’ve lost.

The Palm Theater is rare: a cash-only, art house theater (San Luis Obispo, CA).

I miss you, Hunter.

It’s been 3 years since we’ve seen a movie together. Can you hear yourself aging? I escaped you and Eugene 752 days ago. How’s Oregon? My whole life I heard it was crazy to get older and I’m sitting here, in this ‘80s themed cafe near my office in San Luis Obispo, California, thinking: it’s crazy to get older.

The last film we went to was Anomalisa. It fucked me up. But, audiences overlooked it. Nobody I ever talk to saw it (except you). Why? Critics gave praise: lots of nominations, some wins. And that was the year of Inside Out—not even Charlie Kauffman was going to beat Pixar and their Poehler-Kaling-Hader emotions incarnated.

I think people should care about Anomalisa. It’s on my list, Seven Movies If You Watch You’ll Die Anyway. It gets stop-motion to pinpoint being a human. The setting is Cincinnati at a work conference. There’s a Black Mirror before Black Mirror was Black Mirror plot twist.

I remember relating to how the protagonist is confused by romantic attachment. I remember walking on the obsidian wet streets of Eugene after, excited to now be living on a slightly different planet.

~

I miss you, Austin. We saw Anomalisa around the same time that we saw Todd Haynes’ Carol and Marielle Heller’s Diary of a Teenage Girl. While these three pictures aren’t especially similar, they all deal with coming-of-age (of a sort) and finding agency and autonomy. Also, we loved all three of them even though they had trouble finding audiences.

What a peculiar, dichotomous feeling it is to see a great movie that hasn’t been discussed ad nauseum. On one hand, it’s sad because hardly anybody has been able to be moved the way you have after seeing this fucking movie oh my god! and it means so much to you and everything’s beautiful. On the other hand, it’s special because it’s your experience, uncorrupted and uninfluenced. You get to hold onto the movie and squeeze it tight and put it in your pocket because in that moment, after having laughed and cried and sat through it, the movie is yours.

What a special thing to see a picture on the big screen, eh? There are many people in our lives who don’t care about the theatrical experience anymore. I appreciate the ubiquity of TV and movies as much as the next guy; streaming services like Hulu and Netflix and Amazon Prime Video (and more specialized ones like VRV, Shudder, Kanopy and Filmstruck) all fill certain niches and needs. Folks watch shit on their phones, laptops, Apple Watches, Nintendo Switches, you name it. They might not care about the size of the screen that’s providing them distraction and entertainment.

But, what about everything else?

When I walk into a theater and sit in a dark auditorium and prepare to drink in the next two hours, I usually try to make some observations: the freshness of the popcorn, the last-minute whispers of a forgetful couple, the shadows on the wall from the ornate sconces being dimmed by an underpaid teenager who wants to move out of this town but also wants enough pocket money to survive the summer because summers are supposed to be fun and formative (or perhaps dimmed automatically by the digital programming that has been installed to make everything run more smoothly because nothing escapes the inevitability of the modern age).

It’s like an undiscovered world, something that is yours as much as the movie you’re seeing is yours.

~

Fuck, you make me want to go to the movies. One of the first things I did when I moved to San Luis Obispo was find the art house theater. God bless the Palm, which I just learned was the first solar powered theater in the US.

The Palm Theater is a tiny stucco joint with three little screens. On Mondays it’s five bucks and a large popcorn is always 4$ (I know). The walls are painted with caricatures of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean and C-3PO. It’s like the ‘80s in there—cash only with lots of regulars that most of which are older. I’ve seen Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea and many other special flicks there. Don’t Think Twice, Julieta, 20th Century Women. You’d love it.

Mostly I go by myself.

I know a lot of people who don’t go to movies.

Art house cinemas provide more of an experience than streaming services—but do millennials care?

I think people still like it, but only once they’re actually there. It’s the before that causes anxiety. Choosing to commit to anything is tough, especially sitting in a dark world alongside strangers without your phone for two hours. I go most Mondays, a little tradition I started when I was a lonely Oregonian and having lots of panic attacks and needing to ramp down after work.

I know this: memorable art bookmarks our past. So many conversations I’ve had raise this truth. When we saw Carol I was all kinds of messed up in my head. I was experiencing severe depersonalization: a phenomenon where you don’t feel like you’re you. You literally feel like you’re floating outside yourself. Your thoughts are louder than usual and don’t feel familiar.

When people first experience it, like I did, they think they’ve done brain damage. Or that they’re watching the onset of latent schizophrenia reveal itself. It’s usually a byproduct of anxiety or major life changes or drug use. For me it was all three.

When I sat in that theater with you it really didn’t feel like me. I was confused. I craved capital T Truth.

I remember when Cate Blanchett’s character narrates a letter she wrote to her younger, former lover, played by Rooney Mara (I saw Lion and A Ghost Story at the Palm, too) who reads it. I was lulled into a one of those paralyses that sometimes happen when you feel like the cosmos have arranged an exact moment for you to live:

No explanation I offer will satisfy you.You seek resolution because you are young...but you will understand this one day… everything comes full circle and when it happens I want you to imagine me there to greet you.

Blanchett is always so haunting. For a god she provides a master-class at acting human. Remember when we watched Blue Jasmine at my cabin-style studio, its wood shingles roofing us for two hours from the rain and all that was scary about being 22?

Please visit me in California. There’s an old friend who wants to see you. There’re new friends to meet on the screen.

~

Deal.

I believe the last time you paid the Rogue Valley a visit was when you, having reached wit’s end, hopped on a bus and spent New Year’s in Ashland. Does that sound right? Was that three years ago already? Four? I recall thinking how much fun it would be to walk Main Street with you and show off my favorite haunts.

Obviously, I’d take you to the Varsity. Similar to the Palm (and the Bijou), it is an adorable, squalid 5-auditorium theater seemingly operated and managed by a revolving cast of ne’er-do-well 17-year-olds. The screens are often filled with images of love and loss, performance and candor. The bathrooms are clean. The Red Vines are there (do they ever expire?). I’d recommend the popcorn but I think it hurts your stomach.

When I moved to Central Point, Ore., in 2008, I sought out the local arthouse the same way you did in SLO. The only one I found was 25 minutes away in bougie-ass, Shakespeare-obsessed Ashland. I found, of course, that the movies were worth the trip (and the social discomfort). To this day I don’t mind making the drive a couple of times a week.

Over the past decade I’ve experienced beautiful, instant-classic cinema at the Varsity: Blue Is the Warmest Color, Inside Llewyn Davis, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and, more recently, everything from Lady Bird (I won’t reveal how many times I saw this but the number rhymes with “free”) to this year’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (I won’t reveal how many tears were shed during this one, but the number rhymes with “free hundred.”)

Please visit me in Oregon. There are parts you haven’t seen. There are oases of warmth in a place known for its cold.

And there’s a film festival here every April.

Austin Beaton is a poet and essayist that studied regret at the University of Oregon, where he was a finalist for the Walter and Nancy Kidd Memorial Writing Competition in Poetry. His work has appeared in Boston Accent, Porridge Magazine, the Bookends Review and elsewhere. He lives near the ocean in San Luis Obispo and gives nicknames.

Hunter Moore is a film maker that studied regret at the University of Oregon, where he starred in the quasi-viral YouTube video, “Pancakes in Eugene.” He lives in Medford and visits Los Angeles frequently to work on cinema projects.

Austin Beaton

Written by

Poet essayist. Nickname giver. Founder of Dear Person. Editor of Hindsight 20/Something. AustinBeaton.com

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade