Love (& Movie Theatres) in the Time of Covid
This is a guest post by Tina Kakadelis
I’ve thought for a long time about writing this. How to write it, where to begin, if it matters. In a way, it feels more personal than anything I’ve ever written and sharing it feels a bit like letting someone read my melodramatic poetry from high school. I’m sharing something that has always felt a little sacred to me. That probably sounds foolish to you. How can going to the movies feel sacred?
For starters, I have rituals. I’m always early. If you make me miss the previews, it is unforgiveable. I believe that middle back row is the best place to see a movie from, a full view of everything. I can be bullied to sit in the dead center of the theatre, but the back row is number one in my book. I like coffee and Junior Mints with my morning movies. Popcorn or soft pretzels for the evening. I find peace going to movies, in my routine, in this little hideout from the rest of the world.
The first movie I remember seeing in a theatre was Max Keeble’s Big Move. Maybe this movie in particular stands out because I saw it with a friend and her family. A taste of freedom of sorts. Everything feels a bit like freedom if your parents aren’t there when you’re young. Still supervised of course by her parents, but it was one of my first memories of the magic of being in a movie theatre. Where everything feels funnier, brighter, bolder. The weightlessness it can bring. It was my first real taste of it.
The Regal Hunt Valley was where I saw movies for most of my teenage years. There was a core group of friends, five of us. Over the course of my high school years, you could always find me at the movies with some combination of those five. Sometimes all of us, like when we saw Case 39 on my seventeenth birthday. I was the last one to turn seventeen and wanted to celebrate with an R rated movie. Two of my friends forgot their IDs at home and missed the first thirty minutes.
The movie was bad, I remember bugs of some kind coming out of Bradley Cooper’s nose. The company, though, I loved. In the specific way you can love your friends as a teenager. Ferociously, loudly, totally. I wish I told them that more often.
Sometimes, it was just me and a friend. The two of us watching Knowing for her crush on Nicolas Cage and watching Black Swan for my crush on Natalie Portman. She drove a forest green Oldsmobile that never passed a single emissions test. A Depeche Mode CD always in the stereo. She’s married now, a lot of those friends are. I haven’t spoken to most of them in ages. I don’t know if they drive past that theatre and think of us. Think of the drives home down the Beltway when we wanted to go fast and the drives down York Road when we wanted time to slow, to linger on those nights a little longer.
My very first date was at a movie theatre in Roanoke, Virginia during my freshman year of college. It was with a pretty girl I had spent a good portion of fall semester crushing on. We saw The Devil Inside which has one of the worst endings ever committed to film. I’ll save you the Google search and tell you the ending: as soon as things are getting good, when they’retrying to outrun the demon, they get hit by a train and the movie ends. Fades to black, credits rolling. The rest of the theatre was a flurry of boos and anger, but I remember thinking how much I loved this. A pretty girl holding my hand and resting her head on my shoulder. How lovely to have someone to share popcorn with.
There was the Salle du Soixantième in Cannes where I saw Inside Out and promptly broke down crying within the first five minutes because I was alone in a foreign country for the first time, because I hadn’t seen my family in months, because I was proud of myself for getting to work at my dream film festival. Because I was wine drunk in France and I was so happy.
There was the Pacific Theatre at the Americana in Glendale, California. A place that charged $16 a ticket no matter the time of day. A place I could only afford because of the magic months of Moviepass. A place I sprinted across city blocks to get to a 6:15pm showing of Game Night because the girl I had a crush on offhandedly mentioned she was probably going to see that movie at that time. And even though I got off work at 6pmand it was a total longshot, I’d be damned if I was going to missthe possibility of it.
There’s the Violet Crown in Austin, Texas with the fancy recliners and the heavenly pizza where I saw American Honey on my twenty-third birthday with one of my very best friends. I danced with her at her wedding this year and it took me back to that birthday weekend. Me, drunk in the backseat of her car, being given a cheeseburger from P. Terry’s, feeling all the love in the world.
There’s the Cinerama Dome on Sunset in the pit of Hollywood where I saw my last movie in a theatre in 2020. Portrait of a Lady on Fire. It was the third time, but that didn’t make it any less devastating. I had just gotten out of a relationship and took solace in this movie. In the quiet yearning of a woman painting the woman she loved. What it meant to be regarded. What it meant to fall in love. I broke apart during the final scene as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons crashed on every time. It’s hard to place my finger on exactly what I was feeling that last afternoon. Little did I know it would mark an ending for me. The end of my time living in LA, the end of my relationship, the end of normalcy as we knew it.
Those darkened theatres have been the places I’ve run to as a balm for a multitude of feelings. In the days after the 2016 election, I saw Moonlight, desperate to feel something other than sadness. I saw Tomb Raider three times in theatres because sometimes it’s just nice to watch pretty people save the world. I saw Lady Bird for the fourth time on a really bad day because they were repaving the sidewalk in front of my apartment and I couldn’t get home, and Lady Bird was as close as I could get to feeling at home without actually being there. My friends picked me up from the airport after I got back from France, having been awake for more than twenty-four hours, and took me straight to see Pitch Perfect 2. In my delirious, sleep deprived, jet laggedstate, surrounded by my friends, I had never seen a more perfect film.
I saw Lean on Pete two nights in a row because I couldn’t stop thinking about it and needed to see it again. My friend and I drove 45 minutes to the closest theatre that was playing Freeheld because we’re both gay and wanted to learn our history. I saw 45 Years at a tiny theatre surrounded by weeping willows in a swamp in Florida because they served really good pizza and I just wanted to disappear from the world for a while. I had a quarter life crisis after seeing Skate Kitchen and fully considered buying a skateboard at twenty-five. I saw a midnight double feature of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset because I was in love and nothing felt more romantic than that.
I love these places. I love the soda sticky linoleum floors and the vinyl seats that squeak with every movement. I love the way my neck hurts if I’m sitting too close to the screen. I love the palpable excitement of a sold out, Friday night, opening weekend crowd as the lights go down. I love the way the walls rumble in action movies and the way you can hear every shaky breath in dramas. I love watching the credits through to the very end and seeing all the names that contributed to this labor of love. I love the slow amble out of the theatre, the buzz you get from seeing a really great movie for the first time. The feeling that you’re a little less alone in the world.
Purely and simply, I love movie theatres. They are where I wish I could be now. My IKEA couch doesn’t have the same feel as a theatre recliner and popping my own popcorn tastes nowhere near as good, but it’s better in a different way. I’m FaceTiming movies with friends and there is a special joy in seeing someone watch Gone Girl for the first time, watching their jaw drop as the Cool Girl Monologue starts. I’ve discovered my dog pays full, rapt attention to Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. She has no interest in the subsequent sequels, though; like mother, like dog-ter. Instead of having to wait for another showtime, I can just restart Booksmart from the beginning as soon as it ends. I’ve discovered that Frances Ha’s final moments hit a little differently in a quarantine. Especially at 2 a.m.
When it’s safe, I’ll be back in those vinyl chairs with my Junior Mints, and that first movie, whatever it may be, will be perfect.
Be sure to visit Tina’s website Burn Before Reading and follow her on Twitter: @captainameripug
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