The Movie Pass Era

Among some of the greatest innovations of the 21st century, for just $9.99 per month, the 2018 subscription service Movie Pass granted me unlimited access to the magic of the movies and ended up with a greater understanding of the impact of film on the human condition. The summer I had access to Movie Pass was a transformational moment that fundamentally changed me as a person.

When my friends and I would enter the theater, we would pull out our Movie Pass debit cards, swiping them as if they were Amex Black Cards and we were the queens of the world. Sure, we couldn’t afford popcorn, but the joy from the cineplex was just as satiating. It was there, sitting with my best friends watching Timothee Chalamet’s touching performance in Call Me by Your Name, that I rediscovered my love for film. And more importantly, when I saw Lady Bird, it inspired me to write for film and TV.

Unfortunately, this realization was ill-timed. I had accepted a job offer with a consulting firm after college and had just a few months off following graduation before moving to Washington, D.C. to start my new job. After graduating with my Public Policy degree and completing several government internships during college, I was almost certain that Washington, D.C., was the place for me. At this point in my life, I was barely writing. I had spent the last four years writing policy memos and research papers. My creative energy was waning. But these sacred trips to the movies kept the spark alive.

This time period in my life was punctuated by solo trips to the theater, a la Movie Pass. Just like during my senior year, I used this time in the darkness of the theater to pause time and escape. The solo trips to the movie theater were always far more emotional than one would expect. After making the long walk through the Atlanta afternoon summer heat to the local theater, I slipped into a screening of Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. Sweaty from the walk and cursing the fact that I didn’t own a car, I sat in the back of the theater. At the time, I was dealing with the existential dread ahead of starting my corporate job on top of a general sense post-grad ennui. When I saw 8th grader Kayla Day overcome her anxiety, stand up to her bully, and record a message to her high school self, I started to cry. In fact, I cried in most of the movies I went to see. Upon reflection today, perhaps I was crying not at the films, but at the fact that I was probably not going to be able to make something like that.

Movie Pass allowed me to rediscover my love of film, but, more importantly, it gave me the opportunity to take a pause. Almost like a meditation, sitting in the theater away from the world and the future, time stood still for me.

While Movie Pass got me into the theater, the escape and immersion came from the filmmakers — the screenwriters — themselves, from Greta Gerwig, and Bo Burnham, and James Ivory. It was through this time, these deliberate trips to the movies, that I understood why film matters at all. The stories pull us away from our lives and closer to ourselves. The stories inspire, intrigue, and, sometimes, make us cry. In this pause, in this vacuum of the theater, we understand not only ourselves, but each other, in a way that we couldn’t otherwise understand sitting at our desks or even in front of our television.

Though Movie Pass did not last, the ways we consume films continue to evolve. In the face of an ever-changing media landscape, the need for powerful stories remains constant, and, with it, the need for powerful storytellers.

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