Good day everyone and welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, a day where I begin my week’s writing with one piece of gratitude I have in my life, which for today is for a company named MoviePass and for all the movies it helps me to see in theaters as well.
While I know this might sound like a strange thing to be grateful for, it’s really not if you knew how important going to the movies is to me. I probably head to the theater on average about twice a week and usually alone at that, but more on that in a minute, as I want to highlight where this hobby actually began.
Going to the movies started playing an important part in my life ever since I was a little kid. I can actually remember seeing films as far back as 5 years old when my family began driving us all in our station wagon to one of the local drive-ins (my hometown had five of them) on a Friday or Saturday night. We used to bring McDonald’s in with us and play at the playground there until the first feature began. When I became more able to sit still in a crowded theater, we started going to the many other theaters in the area as well and making family outings of it, especially when those James Bond movies hit the theaters. By the time I was 17, people started regularly seeking me out to ask what movies I recommended because I was seeing so many by that point. Up until my mid 20’s, I tended to favor watching straight up action, comedy, and horror movies more than not, but that all changed when I hit my 30’s and began to gravitate more towards dramas, romantic comedies, and much artsier fair. These days though, I’ve become rather open to seeing just about anything in a theater, so long as it’s not a film that over glorifies gun violence, bloodshed, nudity, or racism.
Nevertheless, in light of that, obviously you can see now why I’m grateful for my theater-going experience, but why MoviePass you may wonder? That’s simply because its program has helped me to save me an incredible amount of money in this weekly hobby. If you’ve never heard of MoviePass, it’s really no different than Netflix, other than it deals with watching films at a theater versus at home. All in all, it’s essentially a movie club that you pay either a monthly fee or a yearly one, which in doing so gives you the ability to see a movie per day in almost any theater for free (other than that monthly or yearly fee that is).
I was skeptical at first when a friend of mine signed up for this company because I thought it must be a scam. But when I discovered the owner was one of the co-founders of Netflix, which we all know how successful that’s become these days, I decided to sign up by paying a one-time $90 promotion that was running at the time. That was just around Thanksgiving last year and since then, I’ve seen more than 27 movies as of this writing and probably by years end, will have seen close to 100.
If I was to add up how much money I might normally spend out of pocket for the number of movies I see every year in theaters, it would be close to $1000 or more actually. With MoviePass though, I only had to spend that $90 up front and haven’t had to shell out anything else for a film since then. So many people have asked me how MoviePass makes money and ultimately it comes down to advertising opportunities and the company also tracking our statistics of the films we see, which for me I honestly don’t have any problem with either.
Regardless, while this may seem like such an odd thing to be grateful for, especially because I try to frame this blog as spiritual in nature, I do consider my movie going experience spiritual in nature as well. There have been so many movies over the years that moved my heart and soul so much so, that I actually cried and prayed to God under my breath while the movie was still running. Thus, I am incredibly grateful for my movie-going experiences because anything that helps to draw me closer to God is extremely important to me, especially in light of how challenging I have found it to be these days connecting with God due to my ongoing battles with chronic pain.
Hence, for a guy like me who isn’t able to work right now and not bringing in any type of weekly income, the emergence of something like MoviePass has been a God-send in my book. I don’t feel guilty anymore going to the theater as much as I once did, because I’m not spending dollar after dollar like I used to, to support this weekly habit.
So yes, I’m very much grateful for all the movies I’ve seen and continue to see in theaters and for the company MoviePass as well, as each has played a valuable part in helping me draw much closer to God on plenty of occasions, and that is truly something to have gratitude for if you ask me…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
