I consider it a sacred duty to attend a commercial screening of The Interview sometime on Christmas Day, and I don’t even like the film (which I saw about two weeks ago) all that much. It’s all about (a) celebrating First Amendment freedom and (b) doing my small part to make sure that independent exhibitors showing the Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg film earn as much revenue as possible. I haven’t felt this patriotic in a long time…seriously. On top of which I feel sorry for them having eaten Sony’s reportedly tough terms (exhibitor-unfriendly percentage splits, no theatre security provided).

The curious aspect is that while a fair number of Los Angeles theatres will be playing The Interview, there are apparently only two small Manhattan venues showing it — the Cinema Village and Quad Cinema 4. (Or at least this seems the case as of 10:30 pm on Tuesday, 12.23.) I was going to take a Metro North train up to Yonkers and catch it at an Alamo Drafthouse cinema up there, but the West Village obviously trumps that.

Other New York-area options are the Hudson Mall Cinemas (701 New Jersey 440, Jersey City, NJ 07304) and Big Cinemas Columbia Park 12 (3125 Kennedy Boulevard, North Bergen, NJ 07047).

Some of the Los Angeles-area venues showing the film are the Egyptian, Sundance Cinemas, Los Feliz 3 and Cinefamily plus reportedly 10 Regency cinemas throughout Southern California.