“For more than a century, movie theaters have been a refuge, a communal escape, a place for popcorn-chomping-dreaming-with-your-eyes-open transportation away from everything else.”
—Jake Coyle
In coronavirus shutdown, a glimpse of life without movie theaters
Major League baseball stadiums are unusually quiet for this time of year. Theme parks are quiet. And movie theaters, night after night, are indeed a quiet place, too.
Today is May 1, 2020. One thing that means is I did not see a single movie in theaters for the entire month of April because of COVID-19. I can’t think of a single month in my adult life where I didn’t go to at least one movie in theaters in any given month. And even if there was a month here or there, there haven’t been many.
Because the weather is warm here in Florida I thought about going to one of the drive-ins within a two hour drive that are still operating; Ocala Drive-In , Silver Moon in Lakeland (playing Stand By Me and Field of Dreams tonight), or the Ruskin Family Drive-In south of Tampa (that allows dogs).
I don’t know how many of the 300 drive-in theaters in the United States are currently open, but it seems like a cool retro thing to do now—especially if you’ve never watched an outdoor movie in your car.
The Washington Post reported that The Family Drive-In in Virginia sold out tonight and tomorrow. (I wondered when the last time that happened.) But it still wouldn’t qualify as going to a movie in a theater. Even as some movie theaters open in May, (Today, after being closed for 43 days, Santikos theaters in Texas is opening at 24% capacity.) I’m not sure I’ll be rushing to see anything. (Others say don’t expect most movie theaters to open until at least July.)
“MGM and Universal led the pack in the decision to move the latest James Bond pic, No Time to Die, from early April to late November. Paramount Pictures pulled A Quiet Place Part II just a week before it was set to land in theaters.”
Variety, “Hollywood Braces for Coronavirus Financial Hit That Could Change the Industry Forever“ (March 18, 2020)
I can’t imagine going three or four months without seeing a movie in a movie theater, but it’s a possibility. Back on April 8, Variety published the article After Entertainment Venues Reopen, When Will the Public Feel Safe Enough to Return?—That’s a big question.
I hope it is safe to see A Quiet Place Part II soon. Writer/director John Krasinski says the movie is one that should be experienced with a big audience. Who knows when that will be? At first he wasn’t interested in doing a second film based on the successful 2018 film A Quiet Place. But then he had an idea.
“[Emily Blunt] was like, ‘No way, don’t do a second one,’ and then I pitched her my idea and she was like, ‘So you’re definitely doing that.’ She said, ‘But it’s not a sequel. It’s the second book in a series,’ she said, ‘It sounds [like] semantics but it’s true, it really is—you’re not doing anything that’s like, alright I’m gonna take all the things you love and just kinda repeat them but in a different way.’ It’s not A Quieter Place, it’s sort of an exploration of getting to live in the circumstances, and that’s really fun.”
—John Krasinski
The Big Picture Podcast via Collider
P.S. After extensive edits to my book based on my blog, my new goal is to have it available before A Quiet Place Part II is in theaters. So the coronavirus at least bought me a little time to hit that goal. I now think I could write a book about writing a book based on a blog. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be to condense 3,000+ posts (based on hundreds of quotes from screenwriters and filmmakers) into a concise 250 page book.