1. Do you want to commit a perfect crime? Here's one tactic: you take a natural catastrophe like the pandemic & use it as a cover for a destructive act: i.e. the media giants are currently using Covid as an excuse to kill theatrical moving going. https://twitter.com/GeekEliteMedia/status/1334575591278989314

2. Media giants like Disney, Warner & Netflix clearly want streaming to become the dominant mode of experiencing movies, with theater-going reduced to being one subsidiary "platform" among many. There's also the hope of replacing movie chains with new studio run chains.

3. The war on movie theaters is being conducted on many fronts. There's also Disney making life hard for rep theaters by not allowing them access to its vast catalogue (which now includes Fox). The goal is to squeeze out alternative venues.

4. Well, what's wrong with movie theaters dying off or becoming secondary? Isn't the main thing the content of the movies? Why not let people enjoy movies on home network, on laptops, on cell phones?

5. Like McLuhan, I think the media is the message: that the central movie going experience of immersive viewing with strangers is very much what movies are: it's the experience of being in a collective waking dream.

6. With some help from @aoscott, @ManohlaDargis, @JoSchneller, the late P. Kael, & the late M. Farber, I try to lay out the case for theatrical movie going: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/movies-streaming-covid-theatres/