People who don’t go to the movies for total immersion are people I don’t want to be with in the theater. I have a friend I won’t see movies with anymore; she talks through the trailers, the opening scenes, and even on into the plot’s development. I have learned — I keep my eyes and my focus ferociously attached to the screen, ignore anyone trying to distract me, and if need be, I tell them to hush. I am also extremely careful about movie partners for another reason: watching a movie together can be a surprisingly intimate experience. I saw The English Patient with a good male friend, a colleague, before I divorced my first husband. After the credits had finished, the screen had gone blank and the cleaning crew arrived with their plastic bags and carpet sweepers, we slowly turned to each other; his face was as tear-streaked as mine. We hugged on the steps before walking out to our separate cars. Weeks later, he said, only half joking, that somehow it didn’t feel right seeing that movie with “another man’s wife.”

Sometimes while waiting for an evening screening to begin… I think… How much we all want to extend further than we do, live longer than we can, make a difference. Be noticed. And have someone’s fingers interlaced with ours as we silently face the enormity of the screen.

Maybe part of what I love about the movies is the chance to sit next to someone, right beside them, for ninety minutes or more, as you both focus on the same thing for the same duration. Like inviting the one you love to look at geese in flight, or a moon with a halo. After we moved to Tucson in 1951, Grandma and Pop visited during the winter. Grandma and I would sit side-by-side on the sofa of their small apartment, gazing out the window framing the Catalina Mountains, the light changing them minute by minute, as she stroked my fingers, my arm. In the theater we watch the lights flickering, the story unfolding for an hour and a half to three hours, and nothing else calls us away.

Maybe this is why I actually prefer the evening promotional screenings, even with their interruptions and razzmatazz. I like the warmth, the bustle, the sense of company, the expectation before the movie, the increasing hush as the lights go down. I like the sensation of being in the dark alone facing the film, yet safely surrounded by others. I look forward to greeting the regulars, the promo folks and the critics, even the garrulous one who snores. We exchange reactions and tidbits about titles, both recent and upcoming. It’s a whole family of us, multiplied, and occupying a much bigger space than our Ford in the fifties at the Frontier Drive In.

Sometimes while waiting for an evening screening to begin, as the movie’s publicist strains his voice to reach the crowd, advertising the sponsoring radio station, posing trivia questions with tee shirts and posters as prizes, I think how insubstantial, how fragile this struggling human being seems in contrast to the amplified lives we will be watching in a few minutes. How much we all want to extend further than we do, live longer than we can, make a difference. Be noticed. And have someone’s fingers interlaced with ours as we silently face the enormity of the screen.