I miss the movies, the especially the smell of popcorn. I love to stand by the snack counter and watch the popper at work. The stainless steel tub rotates as it stirs the oil and unpopped kernels. When the oil reaches just the right temperature the staccato sound of popping begins. Slowly at first, it gathers in speed and intensity until  it sounds like a hundred firecrackers exploding all at once. Popcorn begins spilling from the lid of the tub in an avalanche of white, slowly filling the clear rectangular box that the tub sits inside of. The twin aromas of warm butter and popped corn kernels are simply intoxicating to me. Of all our senses, smell is the strongest activator of memory. Whenever I smell freshly popped popcorn, I’m immediately transported inside the comforting confines of a movie theater.

My mom always worked at the movies so I basically grew up inside a movie theater. She began as a ticket taker and candy girl and gradually worked her way up to theater manager. Up until I moved to California as an adventure seeking 22 year old, I never once paid to get into any movie theater in our area. All my mom had to do was call the theater manager and I’d be on the guest list. 

Like most small towns in the 60’s and 70’s, my hometown of Caldwell, NJ had a single screen movie theater. The Park Theater opened in 1925 and was a classic example of the movie theater architecture of that era; plush carpet, cushy seats, ornate ceilings. Saturday double feature matinees at The Park were a staple of my childhood and a rite of passage for me, my older brother Ray and our friends. Throughout my life I’ve had many a magical experience at the movies, but none stands out as much as the one I had on a cold and grey winter afternoon in 1965. 

The Sound Of Music was the big hit movie at the time so my mom took me and Ray to see a matinee screening at The Park. It was a couple of weeks before Christmas, we were greatly anticipating the upcoming holiday and the first snow of winter that we hoped would precede it.  I don’t recall much about the actual movie viewing experience that day but I’ll never forget what happened afterwards. When the film ended, we stepped from the darkened theater into the light of the afternoon and were amazed at what we saw; it had snowed while we were inside! It was slightly more that a dusting but just enough snow for everything to be blanketed in a thin layer of white. The magic of that moment and the magic of the movies are forever linked in my mind.

A year earlier, The Park was the scene of another seminal movie moment for me. Ray and I screamed and sang along with a couple hundred other kids while The Beatles frolicked their way through A Hard Days Night. We loved The Beatles so much and this was the closest we’d ever come to seeing them live. Our dad sat stoically beside us, not sure what all the fuss was about. I remember thinking at the time how cool it was that dad had taken us. Sadly, The Park Theater was destroyed by a fire in 1974. A bank now sits on the site.

The entire movie going experience is still magical to me. Entering the dimly lit theater, the low murmur of conversation, the anticipation of the feature film, the larger than life aspects of the giant screen and surround sound. Most people leave at the end of the film but I stay until the last credit rolls and the house lights go on. Some directors add little surprises during or after the credits and I never want to miss any of those. I’ve carried the love of the movies with me all my life right up to the present day.

Ever since the arrival of the VCR and video stores, movie attendance has been on a slow, steady decline. DVD’s came along and home movie viewing improved both in quality and ease of operation. The ubiquity of online streaming services has nearly rendered the movie theater obsolete. Why shell out $10 a head to go out and see a movie when you can now watch virtually any film ever made in the privacy of your own home?

The existential horrors of COVID-19 have forced movie screens across the country to go black, further accelerating their decline. Hopefully it will once again be safe to sit inside a theater and watch a film. When that day comes, I wonder if there will be any theaters left to go back into? What a devastating loss that would be, another shared experience with other human beings gone as our society becomes more and more insular.

I’ll leave you with this thought.  If popcorn is popping in the lobby of some future movie theater and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?