Free movie passes rebut theater shooting

“How about going to the movies?” Mr. SummerFest asked me.

I should have been thrilled at the idea of a date night with my new husband and even more delighted that he was even suggesting we go to a chick flick (the new Meryl Streep movie). Instead I felt a flutter of fear in my gut, no doubt the result of those horrendous theater shootings in Aurora, Colo., in mid-July.

“Is that safe for us to go to the movies?” I caught myself wondering.

Jason Cole knows how I feel. He lives about 15 miles from where those shootings took place. “I got this dreadful sense of ‘Oh, no! Here we go again,’ ” he told me last week. “The shootings at Columbine are still fresh in a lot of people’s memories here.”

High school? The movies? What else is going to be taken away from us as a place where we feel safe? Jason doesn’t have any personal connection to anyone with either of shootings. And yet, like me, and I bet you, he’s had enough. He got angry.

“It’s just the overall selfishness of the act,” he told me. “I was very frustrated by how quickly the conversation went from this one man and his choices to everybody trying to make it about their own particular pet causes or policies. It’s about people who were hurt and who were scared as a result about this one person’s actions.”

Jason figured the shooter made a choice that night and now so could he. “I decided to choose to do something good,” he said. “I figured one person’s awful choice could be drowned out if hundreds and thousands of people make choices to do something good.”

Simply put, Jason Cole decided to take back the movies.

The original plan was to scrape together some money, enough to buy a couple hundred movie tickets and give them away for free. As is often the case with great ideas, this one took on a life of its own. “In the end we raised over $9,000,” Jason beamed.

On Aug. 11, Jason’s friends and family and a bunch of volunteers spread out over movie theatres in three Colorado cities and gave away 1,300 free movie passes. At first, some folks thought something was up. Surely, these people were pushing or marketing something.

"One man asked, 'What are you, rich?' We said 'No, we just wanted to show there are more good people in the world than bad. And he kind of just looked at it for a second and then he got this huge smile on his face. And he just said, 'Wow. That's amazing.' "

Amazing, indeed. Probably even more so for Jason and his volunteers than the folks who got the free ticket.

So you say all the bad news depresses you? Looks like one man in Colorado has found the best antidote possible. “I would just say that you should go out and try to do something to change the story,” Jason said. “It doesn’t have to be something huge. Very small actions can spread from one person to another. It’s a little bit like throwing rocks in a pond; you never know how far those ripples are going to spread. But you have to at least take that first action and that first step and try and do something to change the story. Try to lead people toward light, instead of darkness.”

About the Author