April 4, 2013
Riva Brody
7544 Evergreen Dr.
Goleta, CA 93117
Metropolitan Theaters Corp.
Customer Service Representative
8727 West 3rd St, 3rd Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Dear Customer Service Representative;
I am Riva Brody, a thirteen year old at Goleta Valley Junior High and I am writing to express my disappointment in your theaters. Last year, we received a message from our local Santa Barbara theater company that some of the theaters were going to now have captions on their movies. My dad was thrilled! As the daughter of a deaf dad, we don’t really get to go to the movies that much, because of the one thing standing in our way--captions.
These captions have not happened yet. This email was sent out in December, and now it’s March. How would you feel if you weren’t able to enjoy a movie with your kids? How would you feel if you couldn’t enjoy the pleasure of walking into a theater and listening for a movie for pure entertainment? You would think that enabling and setting up captions would bring in more people, now letting the deaf community enjoy movies too. More money is always good, right?
Every week for the past couple months we have been driving over to the theater (it’s practically impossible to contact them over the phone, trust me, we’ve tried) and asking them if they had the captioning services available yet. Some weeks it has been “broken”, some weeks it has only been available in one theater, some weeks the lady at the ticket counter has no idea what’s going on. My only question is, why haven’t you enabled it yet?
It really couldn’t be that hard to set up, and even so, it wouldn’t take four months. Both Oxnard and Ventura theaters have installed some form of caption. Whether it’s on glasses, or straight on the screen, we really couldn’t care. All I want is for my dad to be able to enjoy movies with me, instead of sitting there in the dark, trying to piece together the soundless movie and figure out what is going on.
My whole family would really appreciate it if you could reply as soon as possible. The new Jackie Robinson movie, “42” is out and we were really hoping that my whole family, my dad included could see the movie without having to wait for the DVD version with captions to come out. That’s obviously not going to happen. All I’m asking is that you put yourself in his shoes at the least. Imagine how horrible it would be to not be able to enjoy something that many people can. Maybe talk to someone to speed up the process for me? Maybe take matters into your own hands? Whatever you do, just know that us, along with the whole deaf community really appreciates it. Please pass on our concerns to your co-workers and anyone that can help. I expect to hear a reply from you soon!
Sincerely,
Riva Brody
