That's entertainment

The first movie I saw in a theater was Three Ring Circus, starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. It was showing at the Park Theater in Worcester's Webster Square, so in my

neighborhood. We didn't have to go downtown to the Capitol, the Plymouth, the Warner, the Lowe's Poli. My father took me and my sister Kathleen. It was 1954, so I was somewhere in my 4's. 

I found the movie hilarious, and absolutely adored Jerry Lewis.

My second trip to the theater was to see the Disney cartoon Cinderella. This was released in 1950, but it was either re-released or got to Worcester way late. From Cinderella, Kath and I glommed onto a nickname for our brother Tom: Gus, after Gus the mouse. (Tom is still known to his Worcester friends, and occasionally to the family, as Gus.)

While it was only occasional - and a really big deal that involved getting dressed in Sunday best and was always with my father - from the get go, I loved going to the movies. 

My movie going was heavy on the Disney, and by the time I was 9 or so, it no longer meant going with my father. (Unless it was a family adventure to the drive-in where, among other gems, we saw Jerry Lewis in The Bellboy. By this point - 1960 - I was no longer quite so enamored of Jerry Lewis.) When a new Disney opened in Worcester, my sister Kath and I, along with our friends, got dressed up and took the bus downtown to see films like Darby O'Gill and the Little People and The Parent Trap. 

By junior high, I was outgrowing pure Disney, and my movie repertoire expanded to include films like PT-109 and Ben Hur, and musicals: The Music Man, Bye Bye Birdie. I wanted to go see West Side Story, but - alas - my mother spied the Legion of Decency rating in the Catholic Free Press, which declared the film off limits ("morally objectionable in parts") for pre-teens. So, unlike everyone else I knew, whose mothers were more laissez faire, I couldn't go.

When I was in high school, I was an irregular movie goer, but always enjoyed the movies, and went to everything from popular "bestsellers" like Dr. Zhivago and Goldfinger, Georgy Girl and To Sir with Love, to Beatles flics: Hard Day's Night, Help. And artier fare like David and Lisa and Séance on a Wet Afternoon, which were shown at the Fine Arts Theater. Going to the Fine Arts made me feel very sophisticated. 

Onto college.

I didn't go to a ton of movies, but pretty much saw all the biggies: The Graduate, Love Story, the college student biggies like Zabriskie Point, Five Easy Pieces and the foreign biggies: brainy films from Bergman and Truffaut. 

I do remember that the very worst film I saw during college was A Walk with Love and Death, which starred a very young Angelica Houston and a very gorgeous (at the time, anyway) Assaf Dayan. 

During my twenties, I went to the movies all the time. For years, I didn't have a TV, so off to the movies I went. Sometimes even by myself. 

But over the decades, I went less and less frequently. Especially once you could rent videos. (By now I had a TV - and a VHS player.)

I went to a movie theater on occasion, but mostly I waited until something was available on video. My husband and I would hit one of the two close-by video stores on Friday night, and pick up a few movies for the weekend. 

Cable and streaming made trips to the theater even less frequent. 

During my twenties, I probably went to the movies once or twice a week. Now I probably go to the movies once or twice a year.

The last movie I saw in a movie theater was The Banshees of Inisheerin. (The last movies I saw in my den were Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis.)

What every one of my trips to the theater had in common was that, once I bought my ticket, I could sit anywhere I could find a seat. 

That's about to change. 

Profession sports does it. Broadway does it. Now AMC will ask movie viewers to pay a premium for the best seats in the house.

The movie theater chain, which runs some 950 theaters, announced this week that it will price tickets based on a seat’s location, charging less for seats in the front row and more for those coveted center seats. Prices won’t change from current standards for the remaining seats, AMC said. (Source: Washington Post)

Predictably, AMC's new initiative has met with hue and outcry.

Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood described it as undemocratic — a move that “would essentially penalize people for lower income and reward for higher income.” 

Well, yeah, Elijah's got a point. But the same goes for ballgames, concerts, and live theater. Life, as they say, is unfair.

If you have a bleacher budget, you don't get to sit in the box seats. (Unless the game is an undersold dud and you sneak your way into an upgrade.)

Here’s how the AMC plan will work.

Tickets will be priced in three tiers — value, standard and preferred. “Value” seats will be offered in the front row, cheaper than standard pricing priced at a discount and available to the members of the theater’s rewards program, including its free membership. Seats in the middle of the theater will be priced at a “slight premium” to standard prices unless a customer has a “Stubs A-List” membership, which can be used to book the preferred seats without an additional cost. The rest of the seats in a theater can be purchased at what AMC described as a “traditional” rate.

I'd pay extra to sit in the middle. And I can't imagine how steep the discount would have to be to get me to sit in the front row. 

It'll be interesting to see how this works out - other than that it will mean more work for ushers, unless or until they can use technology to "rope" sections off. 

Maybe by the time I make my annual foray to a movie theater, it will be in place in Boston and I'll be able to check it out.

Meanwhile, at home, I can sit on the loveseat OR in the recliner at no extra cost.