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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years ago

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Maybe Movie Theaters Aren’t as “Lethal” as “Experts” Are Telling You?

I was going to write this piece “30-Minute Experiment” style* but then decided to write it offline in case I want to make changes before posting, although this is still mostly being written freeform. I’ve been dwelling on this stuff for months now, and I’m shocked that others who work in the movie business haven’t made even half the effort I’ve made to try and figure this stuff out. Instead, people seem more interested in making stupid jokes or spout the type of doom and gloom fearmongering to purvey the myth that reopening movie theaters will extensively kill people. Not only is this not true but none of these conversations have been even remotely constructive.

I’m here to say that a lot of what is being said is absolute fucking horseshit.

Besides spending more time in movie theaters than many if not most “experts,” including most of New York’s vast film critic base, I also made the time to take the Johns Hopkins course in contact tracing, mainly so that I could learn more about the spread of COVID and how to prevent or stop it from spreading. Sure, this is a constantly evolving pandemic where we’re getting new and conflicting information on a weekly and even daily basis, but there are simple premises in place that has made it possible for places like New York to beat it. Frankly, I have no idea why movie theaters have suddenly been deemed the most dangerous place on earth … compared to airplanes, churches, supermarkets, restaurants, etc. etc.

I can understand why reopening movie theaters has not been considered a priority by lawmakers since moviegoing might not seem essential, but right now, we need movies more than ever. If you look at all the craziness in the world right now, and especially in the United States, it’s pretty obvious that people staying at home in quarantine is like shaking a closed bottle of soda pop. Nothing is going to happen at first but eventually you have to open that cap and soda is going to spray everywhere. In this case, the effects have led to a lot of angry people but also a lot of bad behavior. I won’t go into details but you can see the uptick in violence across the country and wonder if maybe people had the outlet of going to movies.

Before I proceed, I just want to remind anyone reading this that NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO GO TO MOVIE THEATERS!! If you don’t feel safe, don’t go. If you’re a film critic and don’t feel safe enough to go to a press screening of Tenet, don’t worry. There will be plenty of other writers out there who will gladly go and see the movie and write a review and ultimately replace you. There’s plenty of other jobs out there that are far more essential than being a film critic, and most of the film critics I know are so fucking lazy already, that they just want any excuse to sit at home in their bathrobe and slippers watching movies on their giant-screen TV sets. As someone who has reviewed 70 movies since April – you read that right – I’m already sick of watching movies in this less than optimum way and not being able to fully appraise the hard work by filmmakers at their craft. So yeah, I’m partially wanting movie theaters to reopen out of selfishness, but I also think that it can be done safely and in a way that people who need that outlet of escape can have somewhere to go and something to do, as opposed to what we have now…. NOTHING.

Not Everyone You Encounter Has COVID!

This is important, because there seems to be this underlying myth right now that everyone out on the streets, including those who aren’t wearing masks, are COVID carriers and potential spreaders. This could not be further from the truth, particularly in places like New York and New England where COVID has mostly been kept under control. When testing in New York is showing that around 1% of those tested are positive, that’s basically saying that 1 in 100 people currently has or had COVID, and most of them will have recovered and no longer be infectious in roughly two weeks. I don’t think I’ve been around more than 10 different people TOTAL in the last four months, and before that, I can’t remember the last time I was at a screening with more than 100 people (probably Birds of Prey, which was this big premiere/party fiasco in Times Square – I will not miss these).

If someone gets COVID, they may be carriers but they’re only infectious TWO DAYS before their symptoms show up. This is fact, straight from Johns Hopkins. If someone is in contact with someone with COVID on Thursday, but they don’t have symptoms until the following Thursday, they’re not infectious until Tuesday. But that also makes them pre-symptomatic since neither you nor they will know that they’re carriers. That is one of the biggest issues with COVID and why everyone needs to wear a mask… but hey, if you get tested today and you test negative for COVID, I’m gonna assume you’re okay, as long as you haven’t been doing stupid shit like going to COVID parties or hanging outside bars jabbering with other people you don’t know. This is how COVID spreads. Not sitting in a movie theater quietly watching a movie and not necessarily interacting with others you don’t know. I mean, who does that anyway?

Social Distancing

One of the key points to fighting the Corona virus has been for people to stay six feet apart from other people and generally isolating themselves from others. A lot of people have readily complied, because frankly they’re scared shitless of getting the virus themselves. Sure, they’ll say that their concerns are about spreading it to others, but it’s just not the greatest thing for everyone to stay isolated and away from other people. I’ll admit it that I’m getting pretty lonely, because I don’t have any friends who live in my general neighborhood, so I’ve not seen any single one of them in person in four months. It really sucks. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to socially distance in a movie theater. In fact, it’s much easier now more than ever since there are reserved seats, and in some theaters, they have the reclining seats which means they’re spaced further apart back-to-front. There are some issues with doing any sort of barrier or taped-off-seating thing because you have to expect that families or groups of two, three, four or more might all want to sit together, but you’ll still need to space out patrons/groups by two or three seats. On top of that, moviegoers tend to want to sit where they like to sit, so this could end up being somewhat limiting but I have to assume that most theaters won’t be able to be full beyond 25-30% capacity on reopening anyway so there will probably be plenty of space and options. That actually makes me happy, because like most people, I don’t necessarily want to be seated right on top of some person I don’t know… unless they’re very cute.

Mask Wearing

As we now know, wearing a mask is the most important part of preventing the spread of COVID-19, and except for a few people, that hasn’t been a big issue. More importantly, it really isn’t that big an issue inside movie theaters. While you’re in shared areas like bathrooms and lobbies, masks will have to be mandatory. There’s no reason not to wear a mask there, and it’s not hard to purchase and pick up tickets without having that much contact between employees, who also shouldn’t have a problem wearing masks when dealing with customers. (In fact, there’s far less contact between patrons and employees in movie theaters than restaurants where servers need to keep going back to tables and talk to people eating without masks.)

But honestly, once someone is seated, presuming that they’re more than six feet apart from others, they should be able to take off their masks, drink soda, eat popcorn whatever. It’s not like people are jabbering away while watching movies (at least they shouldn’t be, even without COVID), so I don’t think wearing a mask will be that big of an issue once everyone is settled.

Speaking of which, some of you may realize that I had leukemia back in 2013, and some might realize I got a stem cell transplant in October 2013, which basically reset my immune system to zero. I literally did not have an immune system, and I could have gotten measles or mumps or anything that people are normally vaccinated for as toddlers. I was told that if I got a fever or anything, I would be back in the hospital, so I basically was wearing an N95 mask whenever I was out and around anyone besides my mother (who I was living with at the time). That said, less than 30 days after my transplant, I was back in a VERY crowded theater to see Thor: The Dark World, and I continued to see movies. I’d wear my N95 mask when I went into the theater and once I was seated (usually on an aisle next to someone who I knew wasn’t sick) and I felt comfortable, I would take my mask off to watch the movie. When I returned to New York City in February, I rode the subway everywhere, and I continued going to movies including crowded all-medias, always wearing a mask but taking it off once the movie started. Sure, my situation was very different from how COVID spreads, but it’s a similar concept where anyone can contact COVID since there’s no vaccine. One also has to think that the safety measures being taken (as mentioned above) is helping to quell the infection when the rules are followed, and I see no reason why being in a movie theater, socially distanced from others, is any different than riding the bus or being in a store or anywhere else.

Cleanliness

I’ve seen a few comments online about how “theaters won’t be cleaned properly” because according to them, theaters employee underpaid teenagers who aren’t going to take the proper time and care to clean theaters and other spaces to the standards needed for preventing spread. Again, bearing in mind that not everyone who goes to theater is a carrier and just in general, people don’t walk around movie theaters spitting and spraying everywhere under normal circumstances, this is probably the dumbest reasoning I’ve heard. Experts have also said that more people have gotten COVID from it being airborne than it being on surfaces they touch and then proceed to touch their faces. Surfaces will generally have to be cleaned but I don’t think defaming young people is the stance to take on this matter.

Air Condition vs. Ventilation

This is the biggest question in my mind, and so far, I don’t think any of the “experts” have fully agreed. To be honest, a lot of what has been said is completely contradictory. At first, the reason movie theaters were being considered so dangerous was “because the air conditioning can blow the COVID all around the theater” but then, more recently, it was said that the reason why indoor locations aren’t good is due to the “lack of ventilation.” Those things seem to be polarly opposite to me. Either the air conditioning is blowing the COVID or there is a lack of ventilation and therefore nothing blowing around. There has also been talk about the AC systems needing a certain type of filter that can keep the COVID particles from travelling around or that the AC system needs to draw in fresh air from outside vs. recycling the air from inside, which makes sense if there is anyone positive with COVID inside. (And again, that’s a BIG “If.”)

Listen, I have been in a lot of movie theaters, both commercial and smaller screening rooms, and I prefer to have some sort of air or ventilation for it to be comfortable. I would rather have air blowing on me and keeping me awake than stale or “dead air” or worse, a warm and unventilated theater. But I also have never been in a theater where the air conditioning is blowing so hard that it might blow any molecules from out of my mouth into someone else’s mouth or vice versa. I mean, seriously… that’s gross.

I question this entire line of thinking, because I just don’t think there’s anything in the air in a movie theater that’s any worse than the air in a supermarket, a post office, a subway train, a bus or even a hospital. If you think about it, most ER waiting rooms in hospitals are so bad that if someone comes in with COVID symptoms, and for some reason, they’re not wearing a mask, they could literally infect every single person in there, going by the theories on why movie theaters are so bad.

The “2 Hour” Rule

This is something that’s come up most recently with China reopening its theaters but only for movies under 2 hours. So apparently, sitting in movie theater for less than 2 hours is MUCH safer than sitting there for 2 hours and one minute or anything longer? This makes little sense since you’re generally sitting in the same place, and the only way that being there less time may be safer is because, sure, there’s less time for you or someone around you to do something stupid. But that whole time, most of you will just be sitting there watching a movie. It’s not like you’re wrestling or singing hymns or doing anything that forces you to come closer into conduct with someone over the course of two hours or longer.

But there’s a really simple way to avoid people sitting in movie theaters too long… just kill the 20 minutes of ads and trailers in front of every movie. I mean, I prefer seeing trailers this way, and I always get to the movie theater earlier to see them, but it’s not really necessary, and it helps to get people in and out faster, if that is such a big concern.

Easy Tracking and Tracing

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep saying it until I’m blue in the face because PEOPLE DO NOT LISTEN. The key to quelling an outbreak like COVID is through testing, tracking and tracing… plus social distancing, mask-wearing of course… but when someone tests positive for COVID, people need to know immediately who they came into contact with to make sure that they quarantine themselves and don’t spread it further. If someone quarantines for two weeks without symptoms, it’s pretty safe to say they didn’t contract COVID but if they immediately went out and get tested, at least they can quarantine while waiting for the results.

This is the key to why movie theaters are far safer than anyone seems to understand, because it’s far easier to track/trace who went to see a movie in which theater at what time. The person who tests positive for COVID would have to tell the tracer where/when they saw the movie, and then through online and onsite ticket sales, one could figure out who else was in that theater, call them up, see if they have symptoms, make sure they get tested/quarantined, etc. In fact, with reserved seating, you can determine who was sitting anywhere near the COVID case and you can contact them to see if they have shown any symptoms. One major problem right now is how slowly tests are coming back. These results need to be known within two or three days tops for contact tracing to make a difference, but the point is that movie theaters have so many ways to help in the contact tracing process by knowing more about their patrons (even if that information just sits in a database for two weeks in case it’s needed).

The COVID pandemic has been pretty awful, but getting COVID has not necessarily been a death sentence for roughly 95% of the people who have contracted it, and in some areas (like New York), the infection rate is so low you probably spend more time around people who don’t have COVID and maybe never had COVID then you do those who have contracted the disease. But if you get it, and you’re not over a certain age or have conditions that make it harder to beat, then you’ll just have to deal with it.

I find it more than a little funny and ironic that film critics -- one of the least essential jobs out there -- can't seem to drum up the courage to do their jobs, while nurses, doctors, delivery people, supermarket clerks and millions of other essential workers get up, go out and face the unknown every single day. Seeing movies in a movie theater may not seem essential to some people (including film critics, oddly) but movies have brought joy and escapism to millions of people across the world for over a hundred years. To some, watching movies in theaters offers a lot more to them, even if it’s just getting out of the house or getting some air conditioning for a few hours.

If you want to go to see movies in theaters, that’s just the risk you’ll have to take, and if you have diabetes or other conditions that might make it more dangerous for you to get COVID, then it’s up to you if you’re willing to take that risk… but I have a feeling that if you’re at risk, you will be a LOT more careful while interacting with people you don’t know when you go to the movies. You’ll wear a mask, and you won’t get up and up close to people you don’t know who are not wearing a mask. Really, it’s not that hard to figure this out.

(*Incidentally, I did write a 30 Minute Experiment on how to reopen movie theaters literally THREE MONTHS AGO!!)

#TheWeekendWarrior ReopenMovieTheaters

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