There was a time when the viewing process hit rock bottom. I don't know if they had any "bowling alley" cinemas near you (I called them that because they were long narrow corridors where the center seats were taken out and the screen at the end of the corridor was barely twenty feet across; plus, the lights were never turned off! An abysmal affair! The appearance made me think of a bowling lane by its configuration). There were a plethora of them built in the early 1970's when most one-screen movie palaces collapsed and urban decay - which had started in the mid-1960's - closed most of them. In the suburbs, these bowling alley cinemas sprang up with the worst possible viewing experience imaginable. The popcorn used to arrive in big long phallic-looking plastic bags - popped the day before! Until the early 1990's when "stadium theaters" brought back the semblance of a decent viewing experience, these theaters were responsible for the fall and decline of the film industry and nearly dealt cinema a death blow.

Thanks, Chris on the update that movies were still being shot on 65mm stock. I had no idea some directors were still using the format (either Vistavision cameras, which run sideways/horizontally or SuperPanavision 65 cameras, which run the film vertically but with huge magazines that usually held only seven minutes runs at best - about two or three takes of a normal shot). No fuck-up laughter on these takes, please, as one magazine alone costs hundreds of dollars just for the negative stock alone. I would literally kick an actor's ass who messed up a take with that much money on the line (not Bobby DeNiro of course as he could kick my ass easily, hands down).