That Old Theatre Magic

by Thomas M. Pender

I love going to movies.  Renting and buying DVDs are nice and convenient methods, but the experience of going to the show, buying tickets and junk food, and shushing other people (or being shushed) is another kind of fun that I treasure.  Even more, I love the experiences you can’t get anymore, unless you seek them out and find them in places not widely known.

I love the older theatres, built in the first half of the 20th Century, and I love drive-ins.

The Fox Theatre (also known as “the fabulous Fox” by locals) was built in 1928 in the heart of downtown Detroit.  It was fully restored in 1988, and listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1989.  I had heard of it for years growing up in the suburbs, mostly as a venue for concerts, but I was only inside the Fox once.  I went with a friend to attend a special showing of Citizen Kane in 1991, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the classic film’s release.  At the end of the 1980s, we had come to love the film after numerous viewing on VHS, and we were excited to see it up on the big screen for the first (and quite possibly, the only) time.

The outside of the Fox is brightly lit with lively lights, and seems to belong more on a Broadway avenue than Detroit’s Woodward Avenue, where (at least in 1991) it was situated among abandoned and decaying buildings.  As flashy and loud as the outside looked, the inside was pure class.  With just over 5,000 seats, it is the largest movie theatre I have ever been in.  The intricate wood moldings are still present and fully restored, as are the balconies, and it still has a 2,700-pipe organ, which was playing as we entered.

No one builds anything like this anymore.  No one carves anything for theatres or puts in velvet seat covers these days.  It’s sad in a way, but it also makes these existing buildings treasures.

In Kenosha, Wisconsin, I discovered the Orpheum Theatre.  Closed now, it was a “dollar show” second-run movie house when I lived down the street in 1999.  Being inside the theatre was an exploration in itself.  With two screens on the main floor, you climbed a steep staircase to get to the third screen room, and another to reach the fourth.  Fire hazard and handicap accessibility issues aside, it was a great deal of fun to get to the show, as well as see the show itself, at the Orpheum.

A few years ago, I experienced something I hadn’t since I was a teenager: the drive-in movie.

Not only does Atlanta still have the Starlight Six Drive-In, built in 1949, but due to the weather, it’s open year-‘round!  You can bring in your own food or visit the Snack Bar, and choose from six pairs of first-run films to enjoy.  The only things missing for the full nostalgia feel are the speakers.  Modern technology has allowed the film soundtracks to be broadcast in stereo on FM radio.  (Each screen has a different frequency.)  It’s an easy thing to sacrifice the nostalgia once you hear the film in stereo as loud or soft as you care to play it.  According to drive-ins.com, it is one of only 368 operating drive-ins in the country.  At its peak in the 1950s, there were between 4,000 and 5,000 screens up in the U.S.  In the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were at least four drive-ins in my hometown area.  If you haven’t been in decades, or if you’ve never been, get to a drive-in at least once.  You can search for the closest screens at www.drive-ins.com, and find the best place to share a new (or old, depending on how you look at it!) experience with your loved ones.

I love viewing DVDs at home, but I truly hope these and other venues like them last forever.  (P.S., somebody open the Orpheum back up!)

"Fright Night": Plenty Of Bite!

by Thomas M. Pender

In general, I can’t stand remakes.  I find them pointless.  It’s already been done.  Move on.  Still, in recent years, I’ve been forced to admit that some remakes have been pretty dang cool.  Planet of the Apes and Clash of the Titans are two stellar examples of how to do a remake right: Do NOT reshoot the exact same script used for the original (as 1999’s Psycho did embarrassingly), add some originality in visual and conceptual elements to make it unique, hire an excellent (and better than the original, if you can!) cast, and basically, use the original film as a skeleton for the remake, not as a Xerox.

I cringed a little when I learned that someone was remaking Fright Night, just because the cast was so well done in the first.  I tried and failed to imagine a more intimidating/alluring Jerry the neighbor vampire or a more valiant Charley the neighbor nerd.  And who would replace the late Roddy McDowall as the Van Helsing-esque fake television vampire stalker?

Have no fear, children.  Jerry is actually a much improved character through superstar Colin Farrell, Charley is just as successfully nerdy and brave via Anton (Star Trek’s new Chekov) Yelchin, and vamp hunter Peter Vincent is humorously portrayed by Brit actor David Tennant (SciFi Channel’s former Doctor Who).  I only know Christopher Mintz-Plasse from Superbad and can’t really gauge him as an actor yet.  I will say that his portrayal of “Evil” Ed in this remake was disappointing, but how can you match, let alone top, Stephen Geoffreys in this role?  Honestly.

Enough of the plot is altered so you don’t really know everything that’s going to happen, and of course, special effects have come a long way since 1985, so even if you’ve seen, re-seen, rented, bought, upgraded to DVD, and memorized the original film, there are elements to the remake that should draw you in.  In fact, one strong magnet should be the cameo appearance of Chris Sarandon, the original Jerry!

As much as I loathe the hyper-uber-overkill of the vampire genre in the past 10 years, this one I had to see.  I didn’t know if I would be watching it simply to trash it in comparison to the original, but I was a big enough fan of the 1985 laugh-and-scream-fest to have to see what had been done to it.

I’m pleased to say that you can love both versions individually.  In conclusion, I must say that this remake doesn’t suck.  (The pun is so intended!)

The Stubs of My Lifetime

by Thomas M. Pender

Some – like You’ve Got Mail and Antz – may never come to mean much, but others – like the 50th Anniversary showing of Citizen Kane at Detroit’s legendary Fox Theatre – may just be a piece of history.  Still others – like Holes, the very first film my son Garrett saw in a movie theater at the age of 3 – are personally historical.

At some point in my 45-year love affair with movies, I decided to start saving the ticket stubs of each film I saw in the theater.  I knew most would never amount to anything, but my thinking was: Who knew back in 1982 that E.T. would become such a historical phenomenon?  And how exciting would it be to have an original ticket stub to that iconic film?  So, never knowing which movie would turn into a classic in the future, I saved stubs from every blockbuster and every turkey I paid to see.

Some don’t so much cause me to reminisce about the film itself, but rather the time or place.  I saw A Bug’s Life, The Siege and about a dozen other films at The Odeon Theatre (just around the corner from my flat in Kenosha, Wisconsin) from the fall of 1998 to the summer of 1999.  The films themselves don’t stand out as masterpieces to me, but they remind me of a short time in my life when I was in love with the place in which I lived, and the events that happened there.  I was renting the second storey of a turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century family home that had been converted into four flats.  Mine was the largest, being the entire second floor, and included two fireplaces and a small chandelier in the dining room.  The house was situated in the Library Park section of Kenosha, and not only was it a few short blocks from Orson Welles’ birthplace home and from Lake Michigan, but the home itself was listed as a historical structure.

None of this would likely matter to many other people, but to me, it was a wonderful place to live, and I’m reminded of that whenever I see the ticket stub for Affliction, and all the other shows I saw at the amazing little Odeon Theatre.  Affliction itself, lauded as it was, was probably one of the most achingly boring films I’ve ever seen, yet the time and place remain with me in the stub.  It happened to be the film that was showing at the Odeon when I left Kenosha.  I took a picture of the theater itself, and the marquee blares the boredom proudly.

I’m not really one to run out and see the “artsier” films, or the “Oscar buzz” shows.  I see what interests me.  Will Sotheby’s someday auction off my antique ticket stub to the showing of Green Lantern?  Doubtful.  Still, by keeping all of the stubs, however dubious their place in history may be, there is a chance that I’ll end up with a piece of cinematic history.  Even if I don’t, I’ll still have the stub to the film where my son fell asleep holding onto my arm, and woke up to climb in my lap and say, “I love you, Daddy.”  I’ll still have the stub to the film I went to see with my fiancée on her first trip to see me in America.

In the end, these are the historic events I wished to chronicle.