Leadership Quote by Dan Glickman

Glickman’s line is nostalgia dressed as prescription: a claim about how movies should be watched that’s really a claim about what kind of public life we’re willing to keep funding. The repetition of “big” is doing heavy rhetorical lifting. It’s not just scale for scale’s sake; it’s a drumbeat for shared experience, for the minor civic ritual of leaving home, buying an overpriced snack, and sitting among strangers who agree to be quiet together. “Big bag of popcorn” is a shrewd tell: he’s not arguing for pure artistry, but for the whole commercial ecosystem that makes theatrical exhibition viable.

Coming from a politician, the intent reads less like cinephile snobbery and more like constituency talk. Movie theaters are jobs, main streets, tax bases, and a form of social infrastructure that quietly competes with isolation. In that light, the quote is a soft-defense of an industry that, in the age of streaming and algorithmic personalization, has to justify itself as more than a delivery system for content.

The subtext also carries a gatekeeping edge: the “only way” phrasing draws a hard line against living-room convenience, implicitly casting at-home viewing as lesser, solitary, even indulgent. That absolutism is the point. It turns preference into principle, because the theater isn’t merely a screen; it’s a public commons with rules, friction, and a little bit of ceremony. Glickman is selling the idea that movies are not just watched; they’re attended.