Colin McEnroe Show: Is 'Movie Magic' Dying?
Theaters are changing. Films are going digital. What are we losing?
Published: Jun 02, 2011
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James Hanley
Photo:Chion Wolf
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Colin McEnroe Show: Is 'Movie Magic' Dying?
Elizabeth Taylor has died. But the moviegoing experience she embodied died long before her.
If you grew up with multiplexes it may be almost impossible for you to imagine the way a trip to the movie was once an American brush with affordable glamour.
It started with their names. The Roxy. The Majestic. The Grand. The Rialto. Their exteriors were architecturally exotic starting with the early Beaux-Arts facades. Their marquees lit up the streets of American downtowns and their lobbies were intentionally plush and lavish. It was part of the American dream. If you could scrape up 25 or 50 cents, you could live like a swell for two hours.
Inside the theater, as John Updike wrote, was that "instant when the orange side lights, Babylonian in design were still lit, the curtain was still closed" and one heard "that delicate promissory whir" of the projector.
Today theaters are different.
Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.
(Note: this intro is heavily indebted to the book "The Show Starts on the Sidewalk" by Maggie Valentine, published by Yale Press.)
***This episode originally aired March 23, 2011***
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E-mail From Brian (Re: Favorite Movie Experience)
I was in Portland, OR visiting a friend in 2005 and we went to see Capote. I was carded at the door which I commented was kind of strange. They told me that it was actually a bar. Sure enough, it was a bar with full snack bar. In the theater the seats had been removed from every other row and replaced with narrow wooden tables to put your food and pitchers or pints of beer. Definitely a unique way to watch a movie.
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