I was in the drugstore the other day when I saw something that made me think.
It was on the pharmacy counter, an incentive for getting a flu shot or some such thing. An assortment of small packages of candy — Peanut M&Ms, Nestle’s Crunch bars and … wait for it … Junior Mints.
I was a kid in the late ’50s, when stores had candy counters that seemed to go on forever. I can’t remember ever buying Junior Mints. On the other hand, I’m not sure there was a candy I purchased as often from the refreshment counters in movie theaters.
Junior Mints weren’t regular candy.
They were movie candy.
In fact, they were the only movie candy I can ever remember making it into the lyrics of a Jimmy Buffett song.
In “Frank and Lola,” a middle-aged couple is on a second honeymoon in Pensacola, looking to recapture the magic of their earlier days.
“So he took her to this movie called ‘Body Heat.’ She said, ‘The Junior Mints were mushy and the sex was neat. Oh my, Frankie weren’t we better than that before our spat.’ Frankie told Lola, ‘Honey, can’t you see that I’ll jump start you if
you’ll kick start me.’ Frankie and Lola, tryin’ to get together again.”
If there is one thing we’re losing because of the coronavirus that bothers me, it’s movie theaters. I have a feeling that within a few years, the only reason to go out to go to the movies will be for the type of spectacles that can be shown on IMAX-type screens.
Everything else will be streamed into our homes onto our larger and larger television screens. As best as I can recall, I have seen three movies in theaters in the 10 years I have been in Georgia. only two in the last eight years. I just don’t want to sit in theaters kept a little too cold for my 70-year-old bones, getting annoyed at people who won’t stop talking or checking their phones.
And I’m pretty sure I was in California — before we moved here — the last time I purchased anything at a refreshment stand.
And it wasn’t Junior Mints.
When I met my wife in September 1992, movies were pretty much our default position for dates. I can remember the first three we saw — Tim Robbins in “Bob Roberts,” an art film called “Gas Food Lodging” and a goofy dramedy with Dustin Hoffman and Geena Davis called “Hero.”
Heck, we went to a French film on our wedding night.
For about 15 years after that, we generally went to a movie a week. One sort of bittersweet moment came early in our marriage when we had an argument. Her big moment was, “I didn’t want to get married. I just wanted someone to go to the movies with.”
Well, we stayed married. It’ll be 28 years on Nov. 2nd, but we’ve pretty much stopped going to the movies.
Our kids will remember fondly our Thanksgiving tradition. We went to the movies, then we went to a Thanksgiving buffet and finished off the evening with another movie.
Until the late 1960s, I don’t remember there being multiplexes. We had a theater about two miles down the road in Fairfax that was a really big auditorium. I think it held maybe 1,500 people. My first movie date that I drove for was Thanksgiving 1967, when I took Cheryl Newman to see Dick Van Dyke in “Fitzwilly.”
I took Betsy Custis there to see “Midnight Cowboy” two years later.
Of course that theater doesn’t exist anymore. There aren’t even that many one-screen deals anywhere. The two theaters closest to me here in Georgia are 12 screens and 16 screens.
When I worked in Southern California, the giant Ontario Mills outlet mall and two multiplexes. One was 30 screens and the other was 22 plus an IMAX.
The first movie I paid for and saw alone was in 1960, one of the every-seven-years releases of “Gone With the Wind” at the Crest Theater in Crestline, Ohio. The price of admission was 30 cents.
It used to matter so much to me. Once I was grown and on my own, there were numerous times I made a real effort to see films on the first day of their release. Star Wars movies, Indiana Jones movies, some of the bigger Spielberg films.
Now it couldn’t matter much less. Two years ago, I went to a theater to see “Stan and Ollie,” mostly because I didn’t want to wait for home release. But it had been in theater release for two weeks before I went.
In fact, when I sit down to watch a movie, I’m far more likely to watch something I’ve seen before and enjoyed that something new. And I’m far more likely to watch on my 10-inch Kindle Fire than on my 55-inch UHD with curved screen.
Sadly, I think I’m slowing down.
Still, I want to make sure I go to at least one more big-screen spectaculat before I shut it down completely.
Gonna have some Junior Mints too.