Atop a stretch of glittering Texas asphalt hot enough to grill a steak stands the building where I spent most of my adolescence. Not a school or a church or, say, a rec center where I could have theoretically played sports, but a Regal Jewel cinema that is somehow also called a Hollywood Theater. (Indeed, its gorgeous views of the highway do evoke both royalty and Rodeo Drive.) The Regal Jewel’s interior aesthetic could only be described as “Trapper Keeper,” but spiritually, its four walls and the entertainment held within were something more like freedom. This building is where I spent my summer days when it was too hot to be outside and too boring to be inside and when I was too underfunded to be anywhere else. When I was 13, you could still see a movie for $5, which meant that if you were slick enough and already had a loose enough moral relationship with capitalism … you could see as many movies as you wanted for $5. Typically, that was two movies, more popularly known as: the double feature.
Inside the Regal Jewel was a neon-lit arcade called “Detourz” and a concession counter called “TREATYME,” but they played no part in a double feature. First of all, who had arcade money? But more specifically, a double feature required an immense amount of planning and focus from a brain that spent the last nine months trying to learn algebra. It meant you were arriving at the theater, paying for one movie, and then sneaking into the second movie because two hours of entertainment is good, but four hours of entertainment is better. Plus, there was that amazing auxiliary hour of worrying about getting caught, doing some internal virtue-bargaining to convince yourself that this is an OK thing to do because you’re a child and don’t have any money, pretending to look at your watch and wonder where your friends are because it’s 2002 and you don’t have a cellphone, and logistically coordinating the perfect movie times in order to miss just enough of your illegally obtained second movie to escape suspicion but not so much that you couldn’t eventually understand that Bruce Willis was a ghost the whole time.
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And so, once your initial ticket had been ripped, you were in for a penny ($5), in for a pound (loitering around the bathrooms until your next chosen feature started). You stayed put because The Movies™ were the event—they were the only event for a certain generation of young people looking to watch Bruce Almighty and The Lizzie McGuire Movie on an afternoon when Prime Video was just a twinkle in Jeff Bezos’s eye. When you were double-featuring, you weren’t getting popcorn. You weren’t playing Ms. Pac-Man. You weren’t even really hanging out with your friends, because you had to choose your double-feature compatriots wisely: Anyone too comfortable with rebellion could blow your cover, and anyone too terrified of breaking the rules could ruin your fun. Double features were about one thing, and one thing only: watching multiple movies by way of misdemeanor petty theft.
Twenty-some-odd years later and at least a decade since I’ve run a scam on any Regal theater, let alone a Cinemark or an AMC (may Nicole Kidman have mercy on our souls), a duo of movies has come along to, apparently, redefine the double feature entirely. And just moments ago, while writing this very essay, I discovered that on July 20—the day before Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer make their much-anticipated premieres in theaters across the country—my beloved Regal Jewel will fatefully take its last breath. No one will sneak into either of the films on Friday. Times have changed, and so have we.
The further I get away from being even close to the youngest person in the room, the more I make a real effort to not romanticize the ways of the past just because I happened to experience them. And yet … all this talk around the Barbenheimer double feature has forced me into a mild existential crisis.
The tonal dissonance of the two films is nothing new; in fact, it is perhaps the only familiar thing surrounding this cinematic return to double features. I once saw The Others (a Nicole Kidman performance we simply don’t talk about enough), and before my half-developed brain could absolutely reel from the final twist (no 22-year-old spoilers here, except for the Sixth Sense one earlier), I tumbled right into Rush Hour 2, seven minutes late and ready to laugh and laugh at some problematic buddy-cop dynamics. But when I hear that more than 40,000 people have purchased tickets to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer on opening day at AMC theaters alone—as in two individual tickets to see two different movies—12-year-old me, with a bunch of dollar-store gummy bears stuffed in her pockets, can only think, “I’m sorry, are we all rich now?”
Or when I read about people’s plans to see Oppenheimer in the morning, then go out for bottomless brunch, then head back to the theater for Barbie, then go out dancing in pink-spangled outfits, my mind cannot comprehend the idea of leaving the theater in between the two movies. But then … how will you get back in? Oh, right, with the other ticket. It’s too much to bear!
Sure, it sounds fun to sip champagne and breathe fresh outdoor air while decompressing from atomic warfare, but it doesn’t sound right. Which then leads my old ass to wonder: Do teenagers even bother to sneak into movies anymore? Can they, given most theaters’ reserved seating models these days? Would they, given the ability to watch any number of movies at home on any number of screens that can be moved to any number of rooms? Do we even want them to, given how Netflix’s recent password-sharing crackdown actually increased new sign-ups by thousands instead of increasing torrent usage, suggesting that we have, in fact, become a society of disgusting rule followers? And if they’re not going to The Movies™ for double features during summer break, where exactly are they loitering? Where are they making out? Were Kylie Jenner and Jaden Smith the last two teens in the world to well and truly get caught after macking in a movie theater? Did double features end in 2013?
But in other ways that don’t personally make me think about the march toward death, the reinvigorated fervor for the double-feature experience deserves nothing short of a celebration. In the many months since we’ve known that Barbie and Oppenheimer would premiere on the same day, the unlikely double feature and its catchy portmanteau have become a sort of catalyst for the moviegoing experience. We’re excited that a movie is premiering in theaters again. We’re excited about two movies, full of movie stars, and now all those movie stars are on strike, and maybe if we just see these movies hard enough, we can fix everything. We can double-feature the world back to the way it once was. Right?
If so, I think that, ahead of Barbenheimer saving cinema and making the movies fun again, it’s worth remembering the double feature as the endurance sport it once was, in order to better appreciate this parade of decadence it seems to be turning into.
Would you believe me if I told you that Moviefone—the app you might’ve used to look up and reserve seats for Barbenheimer showings on your laptop, smartphone, tablet, or watch—is so named because it used to be an actual phone number that you had to call in order to learn the movie times for the day? And that was the absolute freshest movie time technology on the market? Before we memorized the codes for our local theaters to dial into the phone, we used the newspaper to look up movie times or maybe just went directly to the movie theater with no idea what movie was playing when—just a hope and a dream to see a motion picture, any motion picture! I seem to recall that it was particularly difficult to find the movie times for the dollar theater in town. (Remember dollar theaters? Another blog for another time.)
Once movie times were obtained via phone, paper, or eyeball, the planning for your double feature truly began. With all the inspiration of a young John Nash, my brain started beautiful mind-ing which two movies could fit together with the least amount of downtime in between but not enough overlap to miss too much plot. Of course, the ultimate coup was to buy your way into a PG-13 movie and then sneak your way into an R-rated movie afterward. Because, despite the fact that I have generally had the aura of a plucky drama teacher for most of my life, I spent most of my adolescence living in constant fear of getting caught sneaking into an R-rated movie while actively looking 40 years old, draped in a pashmina just in case I got cold.
After your double-feature plan was intricately laid out, you still had to remain flexible. If you exited The Fellowship of the Ring to find the security guard lurking outside of Vanilla Sky, you might have needed to completely recalibrate, and let’s hope you remembered more than just the two movie times you planned to see. Because now you’re seeing the middle 30 minutes of Ocean’s Eleven to pass the time (that’s fine, you saw the whole thing last week, and it fuckin’ ruled) so you can catch the full run time of Not Another Teen Movie—a real boon for middle school watercooler talk when classes are back in session—and the first 20 minutes of Vanilla Sky, which you will catch the rest of tomorrow, because your brother is here to pick you up at the time you agreed upon seven hours ago.
Oh, you didn’t realize that showing of Monsters, Inc. was in 3D and that it required a second ticket check at the theater door? (If the stolen movie was more expensive than the purchased movie, that also broke my personal code of BOGO ethics, because I was a child of principles.) Well then, it’s time to start trolling the halls and surreptitiously looking for clues on which other movies just started, because you sure as hell aren’t going to the front of the theater to check the full listings. No, you are seeing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the third time in a month. The theater is nearly empty, and it’s amazing.
Seeing movies—seeing a bunch of movies—used to be amazing.
I recognize that if my tween nephew—who has maybe seen four movies in a theater that lets him buy snacks with a QR code—reads this, it’ll have the particular stench of, “In my day, we had to walk 12 miles in the snow to buy buttons,” or whatever. But frankly, we did. We did have to do that! I had $20 of babysitting money to last the week, so yeah, I was calling on a landline to find out movie times, wearing smart khaki slacks to look like a businesswoman who was totally allowed to see Bad Boys II by herself, and stuffing peanut butter crackers into my Vera Bradley backpack so I didn’t starve over the course of an eight-hour movie day. I wouldn’t dare say it was a simpler time—it was simply a different time. A time when double features were a one-location, all-or-nothing, long-distance run. It was hard work. It took dedication, diligence, and the ability to disassociate “laws” from the human need to be entertained. And the reward at the finish line was that you saw two movies; the high was that one of them was free. And that magic … that magic isn’t lost for you or me or my nephew if he ever finds out that movies premiere somewhere other than Disney+.
Now, I guess, the pleasure just comes from knowing that there are two really good movies you want to actually see in the theater. The treat is that you can see them both, and you can let yourself leave in between if you want to, because you’re an adult now.
The idea that we are planning our Barbenheimer double features weeks ahead by simply booking tickets on our phones feels wildly indulgent. It also feels a little sad. But somewhere around 27, I developed some lobe in my brain that made me feel like if the sun was out, then I couldn’t be inside a windowless building for six hours, and that’s probably a little good and a little sad too. When you’re a kid, you wait all year to have that kind of time to yourself. Double feature kind of time. Signs and Blue Crush and Austin Powers: Goldmember kind of time. When you’re an adult, there’s a constant pressure to spend your time wisely: to balance work and pleasure and make the babysitter worth it, and god help me, why do I keep trying to make relaxing an equally productive activity? Double features may be, like, eight times more expensive now than the stolen double features of our youth, but Barbenheimer still stands as a shining pink and black beacon to shut your brain off for five hours, whether those hours are consecutive, purchased, or interspersed with passion fruit mimosas.
A few years ago, I sold the car I’d had since high school, and when I cleaned it out, I found printed-out MapQuest directions stuffed into nooks and crannies I didn’t even know existed. I felt a quick flood of nostalgia, immediately followed by an immense appreciation for Google Maps. I long for the double features of my youth, but I’m happy for whatever the hell Barbenheimer is too. In 2023, I won’t be sneaking into any movies, because I don’t want Tom Cruise to find me. But I’ll still arrive in the sunlight and walk out at dusk. I’ll still sneak in gummy bears and buy popcorn, because buying candy at the movies is like lighting money on fire, but buying popcorn at the movies is one of life’s great pleasures. Enjoy yourself at The Movies™, friends—they’ve got seats that recline now.
