Movie-Avoiders

Regarding “Price Hike: Coming to a Theater Near You?” (by John Voland and Elizabeth Hayes, May 28), I’m a serious moviegoer, and I would be more than happy to pay $6.50 to see something like “Rambo III” in a theater with ultra-high quality sound and picture, rather than wait a year for the film to come out in video and pay $2.66 for the privilege of renting a finger-print-smudged, grungy cassette that looks like it has been hurled off a tall building.

The problem of higher movie admission prices is that it makes dating relationships more stressful. A man who has a girlfriend who is extremely good-looking, who demands that, as a condition of their physical relationship, he pick up the tab for everything, may have to spend as much as $50 on movie tickets and restaurant bills.

Every time restaurant or diner prices go up, he has to decide if his girlfriend is really worth all that money, the standard rule being the amount of money spent on a girl is inversely proportional to how good-looking she is.

Maybe movie-ticket prices are one of the great social issues of our time. After all, they indirectly affect dating relationships, which affects how many people get married, which affects how many families are started, which determines how many kids are going to be born into our next generation.

MATTHEW OKADA

Pasadena