Once, people joined in a big room to experience being together in a grand environment and seeing spectacle, human life, and feel-good truth as a organic whole. Smaller theaters, lefty movies, and gum under the seats have driven those people to discover that for a moderate investment, you can avoid high ticket prices, overpriced popcorn, cell-phone interruptions, and noisy morons who talk during the film, just by staying home. (You can watch in your pajamas, the popcorn is superior, and if you want to see the rest later, your projectionist is always on duty.)
Many of the same movies are still watched, but people are making a conscious decision to pay $5.00 for virtually unlimited viewing vs. $20 plus overprice snacks, plus gas, plus sitter, plus hassle. And now competing with the Liberal pap Hollywood has produced for decades is an unlimited supply of reheated video, both from today's TV and from classic reruns that didn't want to teach you a pompous lesson...they just wanted to make you laugh. Why the heck would I pay $50 to see Al Gore's nagging global warming movie when for the same price, I can get a season of classic original Dick Van Dyke reruns that my kids love and watch over and over...just because they are funny.
Hollywood will always be there...but a lot of movie theaters won't. You'll see Tinsel Town making Direct-to-DVD movies on a much smaller scale. But I guarantee you...they will never learn that the reason "pictures used to be big" is that Goldwyn and his fellows kept the stars where they belonged...under his thumb. Ah, for the days when if an actor was a Lefty poofdah with a bad leather fetish, the press agents hid it like last week's garbage!
"I'm ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille!"
Depending on where you live, this definitely has a lot to do with it. I really don't like coughing up $9 to see a film, then have to put up with the rude, self-asborbed, inconsiderate, mouth-breathing morons who make it almost impossible to enjoy the movie.
Years ago, people actually knew how to behave in public, and how to be courteous and considerate towards others. Those days are long gone.
I recently invested a considerable chunk of change in a new home theater sound system, and it was worth every penny. I still need to get the big screen TV (I currently have a 1998 vintage Sony 32" tube TV!), but I'm waiting for the TV technology to settle down. I'm not sure if I should go with plasma, LCD (which is gaining on plasma), or maybe even wait for DLP to mature.
One thing is certain though, I refuse to pay a lot of money to see most of the crap coming out of Hollywood anymore, or to have to listen to some idiot's cell phone, or some other idiot's running commentary during the movie.