Inspired by comments in another post, it feels like 4th of July is a good time to share stories about the experience of going to the movies.

I have lots of stories, but I always think of going to one of the last shows at the State & Lake in Chicago and seeing Gremlins with my 2 pre-teen nephews, who had not experienced the “urban moviegoing experience” before. No one had told them, they could talk to the movie before this, so they spent most of the show watching the audience instead of the movie.

Or my first R-rated movie, “Pete & Tillie,” which featured semi-nudity by Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett. My dad kept taking me to the candy counter when he thought a sex scene was about to start. And invariably, it wouldnt actually happen until he’d walked me back into the theater… at which point I got eye muffs.

These were the same two boys that I showed Reservior Dogs at 10 & 13… Not very good judgment there… But that’s a DVD story….

What memories do you have?

Roger Ebert wrote a piece called Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, about the right to die, Jack Kevorkian, and the HBO movie, “You Don’t Know Jack.” Steven Drake attacked Roger for making assumptions in the piece.

Thing is, as a very focused, long-involved activist on this issue, Drake has more facts in his head about it than Ebert. And Roger may have overreached or been sloppy on a couple of things. Conversely, Drake’s facts may lean to spin at times.

But what both men have, which cannot be fact-checked away, is a strong opinion.

Ebert could acknowledge, if it’s true, that every fact Drake claims he had wrong was wrong… and yet, I don’t imagine that Roger would find the arguments of detail ones that would change his feeling about people being free to control their own physical destinies over the state or doctors or any outside force (assuming faith if an inside source).

Likewise, I don’t imagine that a perfectly fact-checked article from Ebert on his position would ever elicit agreement from Drake, whose mind seems clearly made up.

Of course, Drake is a bit abusive about all this and Roger was simply expressing his own opinion and experience. But let that pass…

Don’t we have to find a way to talk about the real ideas that separate us and not just the typos or real, but irrelevant, factual errors, if we want to progress as a civilization?

It’s much harder, but so much more fulfilling.

So… a blogger smartly took a look at DirecTV and Home Premiere showings a couple of months after the program launched… and found that there were none of these $30 a pop, 60 day after opening, VOD films available as we head into the holiday weekend.

However, DirecTV is offering discounting on multiple VOD purchases at the $5 price point.

We’re a couple of weeks from Bridesmaids hitting 60 days. Will Universal offer it up for Home Premium?

No one will be too surprised that this failed. The question is, how will the studios that were so comfortable telling exhibitors to shut up and do as they were told respond to the failure… Withdraw or Double Down with a shorter window and/or lower pricing?