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**OCTOBER 6, 2020**

Meyerson on TAP

If They Build It, We Won't Come

As David Dayen mentioned in Unsanitized

today, Regal Cinemas-the nation's second-largest chain of movie
theaters-announced that it would close its theaters yet again, having
reopened them in August. Turns out people aren't flocking to movies
yet. The decision will idle 40,000 of the chain's employees in the
U.S., and another 5,000 in the U.K.

Theater owners put the blame for the shutdown on the studios. "If the
studios continue postponing all their releases," John Fithian, chief
executive of the National Association of Theatre Owners, told

**The New York Times**
,
"the movie theaters aren't going to be there for those postponed
releases."

For their part, however, the studios have noticed that people aren't
exactly rushing to the theaters when they do release their pictures, and
aren't likely to until the country has been vaccinated against
COVID-19.

What we have is a classic chicken-or-egg-or more precisely,
no-chicken-no-egg-dilemma. Americans aren't likely to patronize
indoor venues-and not just movie theaters-until they're convinced
it's safe. Which is why restaurants now offering outdoor dining
aren't looking forward to winter.

Some movies, of course, have such limited appeal that their release
comes complete with the social distancing built in. With this, I have
some personal experience. In 1972, director Joseph Losey's film

**The Assassination of Trotsky**(filmed in the U.K., to which the
blacklisted Losey had relocated during the Red Scare), starring Richard
Burton as the exiled Scourge of Stalin, was released. As both a
socialist and auteurist, I was clearly the targeted audience, and
hastened to the vast, opulent Bruin Theatre in Los Angeles' Westwood
Village, to see the picture during, I think, the second day of its run.
(The Bruin still stands; in Quentin Tarantino's

**Once Upon a Time in Hollywood**, the Sharon Tate character visits it
to see herself on the screen in a Dean Martin picture.)

The Assassination of Trotsky turned out to have measurably less box
office appeal than the Dean Martin flick. During the matinee that I
attended, I was literally the only person in the theater, which must
have easily seated about 800. In that sense, my presence-or actually,
the absence of everybody else-both reflected the limited appeal that
Trotsky's Fourth International had had, and looked forward to the
imperatives of social distancing in a time of pandemic. Trotsky deserved
better then; we deserve better now.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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Unsanitized: Ron Johnson's Moon Suit

Plus, the uncertainty of the movie business, and a Trump update. This is
The COVID-19 Daily Report for October 6, 2020. BY DAVID DAYEN

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