The theater on River Road has ninety seats and one screen. It shows one movie twice a day, at four and at seven, and a little bird lives above the door. The man who sells the tickets also starts the machine and sweeps the floor. (11) A large new theater opened three streets away, with twelve screens and warm seats. Everybody said the small one would close within a year. It did not. (12) people who go there say they go for something the big one cannot sell: a room dark enough that ninety strangers laugh at the same second. (13), the owner now shows old films on Sunday mornings. The seats are still hard, (14) the room is always full.
A film can be watched on a phone on a bus, and millions are. (15) A story works on us partly because we cannot leave it. In a dark room with no clock, two hours pass as the film decides, not as we decide. At home the same film is cut into pieces by a bell at the door and a message, (16) the pieces never add up to the same thing. This is not about big screens. (17), it is about giving one story all of our attention for once. Nobody needs a theater to do that, (18) a theater makes it hard to do anything else.