Back to the Big Screen

When I told my Dad about the AFI Silver Theatre’s huge main screening room, he replied, “Just like they all used to be.” He had to rub it in, didn’t he?

Back in the 1970s, as drive-ins began fading out and ticket sales struggled, downtown palaces were forced slice their single-screen cinemas in smaller pieces to compete against the new onslaught of shopping mall multiplexes. By the time I reached high school, every theater in the Danbury area had split into 2 or 3 screens each—the Cine, the Palace, the Crown, the Bank Street Cinema, and the Fine Arts. Less than a decade later, the new 10-screen multiplex drove all but one out of business, leaving just the little art house in Bethel and the second run house in Newtown clinging to their niche audiences.

One screen, cut in half, sometimes in thrice. No wonder I was shocked by the Silver’s grandeur.

I vaguely remember seeing a movie as a kid at the old Palace Theater on Main Street before it was cut. The crowd was large enough to invade the balcony above, but my Mom got me safely away from any falling popcorn or soda. I last attended the Palace in the early 1990s, to see Highlander: The Final Dimension. This time, I got to be in the balcony, but only because the theater had cut it away from the screening room below—the balcony now was its own theater, with a sloped wooden “floor” yawning from my front row seat to the screen. The theater closed only a couple of years later.

I wonder if it’s time to reopen them.

An unexpected side effect to the advent of multiplexes has been the shorter runs of major releases. Two decades ago, a blockbuster film like Raiders of the Lost Ark would run all summer and into the fall. But with studios churning out more and more event crowd-thrillers to please the working class and school-aged clientele of the movie mall, the finite amount of available release dates grew smaller and smaller, until blockbusters—once a monthly event—started piling on top of one another. A major movie losing about half its audience after its opening week used to be an ominous sign of a possible turkey; today, it’s the general rule. This past summer, Spider-Man 3, Shriek the Third, Knocked Up, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ocean’s Thirteen, The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Evan Almighty, A Mighty Heart, Live Free or Die Hard, and Ratatouille all were released within two months of each other and all before July, with dozens of smaller studio and independent films filling the in-between cracks. Studios now expect blockbusters to win back most of their production costs in the hopefully huge opening weekend, accepting that audiences will move onto the next big release the next week.

The problem with this fiscal philosophy is that even modern stadium-seating rooms are fairly limited to a few hundred, if that. With highly anticipated releases like Pirates and Spider-Man, showings are sold out well in advance, leaving people scrambling to find later showings or another day. Which seems a bit counter-productive, given how movies are viewed today: comfortable lounge seats with cup-holders, multiple-speaker sound systems, tickets that finally have risen to double-digits. Movie-going has become an outing, just like going to a baseball game or concert.

So why not go full-bore and bring back the big screen?

Not every theater needs one, and not every multiplex screen must be gargantuan. But with more and more people installing personal home theaters, the idea of spending between $10–$30 to go out to see a movie has become impractical; movie-going used to be, and should be, a unique experience that cannot be replicated unless you’re Howard Hughes. Restoring some screens to retro size would bring back some of the lost grandeur and make the event movies a true event, and with the shorter runs of major movies, the risk is far less than it was 20 years ago. It works for the Silver—they manage to draw people in with dusty classics, foreign films, and one or two actual new releases. Imagine what would happen if the local multiplex had one “blockbuster screen.” Imagine seeing something like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter on it.

Movies still are struggling—last week’s Resident Evil: Extinction grossed more than its predecessor but actually sold fewer tickets. Theater-going quickly is growing from a regular activity to a special occasion; perhaps it’s time theaters began treating themselves the same way. They have little to lose.

Theatrical Traveler

Despite my love of film, I rarely went to the movie theater growing up. My parents--who came of age with 50 cent flicks and double-features--balked at the $3 or $4 ticket price plus concessions, deciding that there were many other, more worthy things on which to spend Dad’s paycheck. The first movie I saw on my own was WarGames, and that’s only because Mom shelped me off to the discount theater one afternoon. Not until I hit high school and driving age did I manage to see movies on my own.

Thus, most of the 1980s cinematic zeighast passed me by . . . but only in theaters. Starting in the early part of the decade, around the time I began trolling video stores, I started stealing the entertainment sections of the Sunday New York Times and Daily News from my parents for the sole purpose of gazing at the movie advertisements--the more obscure, the better. Back then, commercial independents like New World and Empire were in full bloom, able to shop their wares on limited theatrical runs before usually making their money back on video. And if it wasn’t playing in New York, it wasn’t playing anywhere.

I read those sections every Sunday for years, right up to the time I left for college, and even then I occasionally visited the Ezra Lehman Memorial Library to read the Times’s Arts section. That’s how I learned about Highlander, Clearcut, The Plague Dogs, Walker, The Quiet Earth, Clockwise, American Ninja, Powwow Highway, Where the Rivers Flow North, Queen of Hearts, Fright Night, Johnny Dangerously, Night of the Comet, One Crazy Summer, even Troma’s The Toxic Avenger. In the unwired era, before even Windows existed, those advertisements were a boon. Sometimes it would be years before I finally saw the movies, but if I was interested, I eventually saw them.

But I still missed out on the theatrical experience.

Maybe in these days of digital discs and plasma televisions, the brick-and-mortar cinema seems antiquated. But whether it be a modern multiplex littered with stadium seating or a relic from the grindhouse age irking out a second-run existence, the movie theater still is the only place where the communal emotion of live theater and timelessness of recorded media come together. It is a unique show, one that has existed since Edison photographed a man’s sneeze. The experience can be shared, not just in one sitting but across the country at the same time--a connection so painfully subtle--and the experience can be returned to, any time the reel is threaded. For nearly half my life, I missed out, and missed the glory days of the cool little flicks I adore so much. One of those was The Terminator.

Back when it was released in the mid-1980s, The Terminator looked like any number of action flicks, decked out with titles like The Exterminator and The Eliminators. The ads were simplistic--Arnold wearing those sunglasses, holding that big arse gun complete with laser target. I didn’t think much of the movie until it appeared on cable a year or so later. All Dad and I knew was that the big German guy who played Conan was in it, and it had explosions.

The movie left me breathless.

It moved, and until I stumbled into John Woo’s The Killer halfway through, I never saw a movie that moved like that. Ever since, The Terminator has become one of my favorite genre films, reliving Sarah Connor’s and Reese’s desperate flight and fight dozens of times on cable or DVD. I always wondered, though, what the movie was like big-screen-style, while trapped with a dozen or so strangers.

So, there I was last Friday night, staring up at the marquee of the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland, where The Terminator flashed across on a lighted message board, wondering if this is how it felt 25 years ago.

I still have no idea. It couldn't have been this good, could it?

From the start, from the moment the electronica title score pulsed alive and stilled the audience, everything was different. First, I just noticed things I never did before, like the ironic Jetsons tee-shirt Sarah wears early on, or the tire track tattoo slapped across the face of a very young Bill Paxton, playing a very short role. The terminator’s brutality rippled shivers through my spine for the first time in years, the impact screaming for my attention with little gore for embellishment. The tin model effects and old school back-screening also got my attention, but strangely, seeing the now-obvious seams didn’t bother me so much--it’s been a while since I saw a handmade movie like this, with every effect in-camera. It’s a film that’s been crafted, not processed in post.

There is one scene in the movie, though, that I’ve never been able to sit through: when Arnold’s cyborg operates on himself after a particularly messy encounter with Reece and Sarah. I made myself watch this time--the only time I’ll ever get to see this movie in the place it was meant to be shown. I cringed, even though the head is clearly a robotic stand-in. Cringed, because I can’t pause the film, take a break, make a snack. Sure, I can get up and leave, but there’s something about sitting in a theater that prevents me. By then, you see, I was lost.

At the beginning of the movie, as the story bloomed, I immediately noticed the stitches, holding up facades for fantasy. But The Terminator’s window dressing was never the point, and by the time the skeletal chassis rises within the fire, the stop motion doesn’t matter, and I’m fully within James Cameron’s nightmare.

What drives The Terminator isn’t just the action--it’s the demented triangle of Sarah and the two pursuing her--one to save and one to destroy. What people remember most of the movie isn’t the gunfire or the carnage or the futuristic vision or even Arnie playing doctor. It’s that one line.

You know, that one.

That line became a pop culture staple because of Schwarzenegger’s performance. Maybe some joked, maybe some still do, about how Arnold’s best role is one where he plays a robot. But that performance is unique among the genre--many have played androids, replicants, and droids, but no one has conveyed the cold, physical menace that Schwarzenegger did. That’s better than any special effect.

The characters of The Terminator do more than distract; they offer a way into the fantasy. Not just the malicious metal man, but Sarah, with her transformation from nice waitress to humanity’s hope, and Reece, with all of his expectations and fear. They aren’t players, they’re people, thrown into a peril where their limits are tested and broken. The audience is caught up in their story, and accepts their reality. They know they are watching fiction, but just for a brief moment, they are caught up in that fiction, not just witnessing but sharing the experience with the avatars on screen.

That’s the theatrical experience--a willing, emotional immersion into a false reality. Only the cinema, where there’s no escape from the story on screen, can weave that trick. From epics like Blade Runner and Doctor Zhivago to little movies like The Terminator, for all their hand-worn faults exposed by time and technology, they still manage to make us disappear for a while.

And not even the audience tittering at Sarah Connor’s last line could spoil it.

Well, not completely.