Are Movie Theaters Fading? Ctd

Hollywood screenwriter and director Paul Schrader revives a Dish thread:

Films were never communal just because people wanted a communal experience‒it just happened to be the economic model that made the most sense. You could sell a lot of tickets and show the film at the same time to everyone. On a nickelodeon, of course, which predated movie theaters, only one person could watch the movie at a time. Nobody said, ‘We want to sit in a hot room together!’ That’s just how it was. But it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. You know, this myth that people will always want to go out to the movies, they’ll always want a communal experience‒I don’t know that that’s necessarily true. … I always prefer to go to an empty theater‒I’d rather go to an eleven o’clock matinee than an eight o’clock show, so I don’t have to be there with all those people. The seats are uncomfortable, when there’s lots of people there you can’t get up so easily, so I prefer to go with less people there.

Many readers know my thoughts on this:

I’ve effectively stopped “going to” the movies, because TVs are as good, if not as giant, and because I don’t like crowds, can stop the movie at home to take a pee or grab some munchies, and rewind parts I didn’t quite catch.