A theater owner in Hoopeston, Illinois has shut down his entire theater for two weeks in order to avoid having to show Jackass 2, according to The Associated Press. The guy's name is Greg Boardman, and he calls the recent crop of new releases "drivel". It's not just Jackass 2 that he's boycotting, but everything. When they reopened on Friday, his theaters showed Invincible and Open Season.

Boardman insists this isn't him trying to send a message to Hollywood or pull some sort of publicity stunt. Which is good, because as messages go this is a pretty muddled one. What has he really accomplished by shutting his doors? If he doesn't like Jackass 2, show something else. If he doesn't like any of the new releases, try showing old movies. Dust off some classics.

Come on Boardman, what have you accomplished? Nothing. He's lost money. That's about it. He says, "The movies are so bad and I don't need the money ... I just didn't think I should use my high-quality facilities to show people vomiting on screen." I agree with you sir, but DO something about it. Give audiences a choice! Show something better! Don't just shut your doors and go home. Doing that proves nothing. Whatever contractual agreements you might have with the studio, you have other options. And if you don't, then perhaps he shouldn't have signed the contract.

To me, this sounds like a cranky old theater owner too lazy to do anything but whine about what he sees as a problem rather than get up off his ass and do something about it. Theater owners are always quick to blame Hollywood for all of the industry's ups and downs, but they're the idiots agreeing to show these movies, and for a lot of theatergoers the way they run their end of the business is half the problem. This is just another symptom.