The Decline of the Moviegoing Experience: Program Booklets

Cleaning out some old books in preparation for an impending move, I came across some items that reminded me about how precipitous the drop in the quality of the moviegoing experience has been.

Believe it or not, there was a time when it was a regular thing to get a printed movie program whenever you went to an A-list film. These booklets would have photographs, cast and crew biographies, interviews, and information on the production, music and special effects. Not only did they act as a nifty souvenir, but they increased the appreciation the audience had for the film they were watching and for the art of cinema in general. In a way, they were a sort of analog version of the special features you typically find on DVDs these days.

Movie programs, like so much else that used to play a part in luring audiences to the theater, had largely died out by the time I reached the Age of Attendance in the mid-’70s. But luckily, I arrived at the perfect time to catch a final brief renaissance in the form of the Spielberg/Lucas blockbusters of the late ’70s and early ’80s.

I still distinctly member going to the theater as a 6-12 year old and seeing Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Gremlins and Goonies program booklets stacked up in the lobby for people to buy when they purchased their tickets. Flipping through them in anticipation of the coming screening, looking at photos of the upcoming action, reading capsule bios of the new characters set to appear — all of that was imaginative kiddie crack.

So what prompted movie theaters to stop providing such extras? They couldn’t cost that much to make. Heck, these days they could have a virtual program booklet available on Wi-fi for theater patrons to download onto their iPhones and Droids, complete with videos, music cues, sound effects and nifty wallpaper images to use on your computer, coupons to buy the film’s toy and movie-related merchandise at stores.

To me, the loss of program booklets from the moviegoing experience is just another indicator of how anemic the imagination and creativity of Hollywood has become. Entertainment in the purest sense seems very low on their list of priorities. Ditto for the theater chains delivering the product.

Circa 1978, I recall attending a Star Wars screening in suburban Indiana as a kid, where they advertised personal appearances by C3P0, R2-D2, Chewbacca, and even Darth Vader himself. Us kids didn’t dwell too much on how The Dark Lord of the Sith was happily sharing a stage with the others and signing autographs for us kids without a phalanx of stormtroopers coming in to escort us off to some undisclosed Imperial time-out location. A few years later, when Raiders of the Lost Ark appeared, the entrance to the theater had been dressed up to look like a cavernous South American temple, complete with spider webs and stone façades.

What’s happened to that level of showmanship in the movie business? My local mall megaplex has a hipster bar across from the concession stands, so how come they don’t also have a gift shop carrying books, soundtracks, and toys relating to the latest releases? Heck, even a Redbox-style kiosk in the lobby would do the trick.

As I flipped through my cache of old program booklets, remembering the Christmas-Day excitement of my Dad buying them for me on my way in to see Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time, all of these thoughts crossed my mind. If theater-owners and the studios who provide them with content treat moviegoing as little more than as a loss-leader for selling absurdly overpriced popcorn and soda, they’re going to continue to lose ground to at-home big screen TVs and surround sound systems.