Cinema-verite.

I liked it when the movie theater was the place to see movies. I went enthusiastically, even if the movie was mediocre. It was good to get out. In Annie Hall, Diane Keaton thinks it's great to watch movies in a home screening room (the mansion of the producer, played by Paul Simon). But Woody Allen disagrees. He says it isn't the same if you don't "make the effort" of going out to the theater.

Now we have VCRs. For a measly dollar, I can see a movie in my house without combing my hair or putting on shoes. If the movie falls short of phenomenal, I walk out of the room indifferently. Worse, if I find the movie phenomenal, I'm still indifferent, scratching my belly at the fridge. There's no thrill of "making the effort" and meeting the artist halfway. I don't exit onto a sidewalk. There are no bright lights or drinks afterward, or the chance of running into an old friend in the lobby. (For a few years running I'd bump into a mysterious guy in a trenchcoat in the lobby after viewing foreign films. We'd launch into discussion about the film. I never knew his name.) Watching movies at home has become like the fifth Apollo moonwalk--blase.

It took us three days to watch JFK, because we paused to finish laundry, answer the phone, feed the baby, throw in some more laundry, hacking at the film's continuity. I only listened to What About Bob? but later told people I saw it, which is like claiming to be well-read after reading only the headlines. I hated Heathers because I thought it was too much of everything: horror story, after-school special, black comedy, romance. While my wife tried to watch it, I wouldn't shut up with my dime-store criticism. In the theater, I wouldn't have said a word. I wouldn't have been so full of myself.

As a teen movie buff in the early seventies, I scoured TV Guide for old films. Loud car salesmen in big bow ties couldn't deter me from fighting sleep to see Boris Karloff, Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, and Abbott & Costello. These films often aired in the middle of the night, and where I now set my VCR, then I set my alarm. Yawning, rubbing my eyes, I watched the movies. I made the effort.

I'd also rise at 6:30 on Saturday mornings to watch a film series of classic comedies that were edited to one hour. The choppy editing didn't bother me. I was thrilled that I happened to be there to see them. I met Laurel & hardy, Wheeler & Woolsey, the Marx Brothers, Red Skelton, and a sharper, hilarious Bob Hope I'd not seen on his TV specials. Not because I "rented" them at my convenience, but because our paths crossed. Who knew then, highlighting the TV Guide or waiting for a film to arrive at our local theater, that I'd have the choice of thousands of films, and hate it. Thousand s is too much, like a mile-long buffet line when all I want is a club sandwich.

You should see us at our local video store: I want to see an old Jerry Lewis, but my wife is in front of Beaches. I'm looking at the Marx Brothers, but she sniffs, "Guy stuff." I'm in the mood for a comedy when she's in the mood for a warm drama. She's in the mood for a comedy when I'm in the mood for a foreign film. I'm always, she's never, in the mood for a documentary.

We usually settle for a Hitchcock. You can't miss with Hitchcock. But Hitchcocks, like the sands of time, are running out.

One time we ambled indecisively from rack to rack. The longer we stayed, reading box blurbs to each other, the more of a chore it became. We spent an hour trying to decide how to spend the next two hours. Then I looked out the window into the plaza parking lot.

"Look," I said. A burly man in an overcoat turned up his collar and forged through the falling snow toward his car, the lonely Impala at the far end of the lot.

"He's slipping," my wife said.

"I hope he makes it," I said.

He slipped and slid, looking silly but at least keeping his balance until only ten feet separated him and his car. "Almost...," I said. But he fell, spinning on his bottom like Donald O'Connor.

"Ow!"

"Think he's hurt?" asked my wife.

With the dogged determination of Oliver Hardy, he shook the snow from his coat, tugged his hat, and with salvaged dignity strode the rest of the way to his car.

"He made it!" we cheered.

The snow could've melted off his hot neck. He revved his engine. The headlights, like great spotlights, illuminated the thick, ornate snowflakes, which scattered in the cold wind like chorus girls in a Busby Berkeley spectacular.

"Wow," I said.

"Beautiful," said my wife.

"Coffee?" I suggested.

"Sure."

We left empty-handed.