Other Stuff

WHITE PEOPLE

How do you deal with someone close to you who reveals a rather prickly prejudice? First off, a hearty guffaw to those claiming to have no prejudices. Just because your prejudices are in vogue doesn't make them any less prejudices. Meanwhile, my friend seems to have serious problems with a whole segment of the homosexual population.

Enter political correctness, and . . . wait for it . . . a story.

My dad and I were watching an indoor soccer game, and my nephew was tearing up the field. Now, I'm no athlete nor do I play one on TV, but there was another kid on the field, besides my nephew, who was just a joy to watch play. He moved with ease and precision and the grace of a ballet dancer. My dad is a little hard of hearing, which means he can be loud without meaning to. Add that to the ambient noise of the arena, and he didn't stand a chance. With no ceremony, he asked, loud enough for the whole county to hear, "Who is that negro kid? He's good!"

I know my dad, and he wouldn't use the term "negro" to denigrate or be intentionally offensive. He comes off that way sometimes, but, when the smoke clears, he's really okay. Now, back in his day, referring to black people as "negroes" was a way of not using the more common "n word." As ridiculous as this may seem now, the past prevalence of the "n word" brought a veneer of tolerance to anyone who used "negro" instead, when describing Sammy Davis, Jr. Today it begs the question, what exactly is there to be tolerated?

Back in the day when I was a glorified babysitter in a facility for troubled adolescents, I gave a kid a timeout for using a racist term. After about half an hour of pretending I couldn't hear him asking how much looooooonger he'd be on a time out, I sat down with him. When I asked him why he felt it was okay to use that term, he said that everyone there was white so it didn't matter. He embraced his ignorance and celebrated it. Since I wasn't his therapist, I just laid down the boundaries around the use of such words. As if on cue, he shot into lawyer-style questioning about exactly how far he could go before getting busted. I wasn't in the mood to play, so I reminded him I could get arbitrary on his ass anytime it suited me. Guess what he called me.

Every morning at the facility, I started my shift as a driver. I'd pick up the kids from their porches where they waited, slumped over and still halfway into the sleep they were dragged from just a few minutes before. My days usually ended the same way, depositing students one by one, from a van full of tired kids. On this particular day I was left with one kid to drop off before I could head back to the barn. Once we were alone, he asked me why it was wrong for ass-clown to use racist terms. [Please: no flames from ass-clowns who find my language offensive to their group.] Caught off guard by the obviousness of the question, the best I could do was to tell him that those terms come from ignorance and a lack of exposure to those they disrespected. His silence screamed that he thought I was full of shit. Hey, it's all I had at the moment. So I tried again: "We all get along better when we try not to piss each other off. So, let's leave such language behind. As this world shrinks, you'll be sharing it with different kinds of people." He didn't seem to get his mind around that either. So, I just told him watching what you say will reduce the number of times you get your ass kicked. He nodded and sat back in his seat.

So, the majority of us get through our days understanding that everyone else is just trying to get through their day, too, no matter how much energy they put into perpetuating their particular stereotypes. Such perpetuations can make it hard for the less intellectually agile to find common ground with them. Add to that, people of all stripes have a vocal minority who seem to set linguistic snares from which to hang the pseudo-insensitive. A dear friend of mine once said, "I don't mind being call a dyke, so I still have to work at not using 'oriental' instead of 'Asian.'" I think one of the many reasons we have remained good friends for so long is that we both walk with big feet through the minefield of political correctness.

More than a few people in my life pick out curtains with their own gender. Many of them would lay down in traffic for me. So, it is particularly upsetting when another friend tells me he's going to pass on attending an event because it involves being around gay people. Now, if this friend happened upon a flamboyant antique dealer in a broken down Miata convertible with a rainbow license plate frame, stalled out on the side of the road, I have no doubt he would do everything he could to make sure the fella was okay-then never admit he even stopped. But, on this day he made it clear he wasn't going to be involved in anything that involved homosexuals.

It feels a little like a junior high school playground. "If you like him, then you can't play with us." This is where it can get a little hard to practice what you preach. If you think tolerance is the only way we will be able to live together, then we have to accept that there are those who have a good spirit in their hearts, though it may not be evident from their vocabulary. I'd like to believe that there is not a single person, even if they protest in front of the courthouse, who would turn his or her back on a soldier returning from Iraq. Yes, the war makes no sense, but there are plenty of casualties who suffer their injuries after they return home. Do we shun these people because they were on an unpopular battlefield? In this town, there are more conservatives in the closet than Californians, and I suspect they remain in the closet because they would feel discriminated against if it was known that their answer to stopping global warming isn't at a Toyota dealership, or that 9/11 wasn't a government plot. Someone who would fight an overseas war to defend their beliefs is not that different from those who would put themselves between an old growth forest and a bulldozer. Ideology is just noise compared to the character of both these people.

It is all the rage to wax tolerance while poking cruelly at those who do not share your views. The word "tolerate" is a verb because it's an action-it's work. The work comes in making the effort to get along with those whose opinions you do not share. Calling someone a bigot (or ass-clown) never helps them get closer to embracing their brothers and sisters of a different stripe. I have an acquaintance who is very guarded about her personal life. As she moved into middle age, circumstances made that impossible. A huge part of me reveled in watching her outspoken relatives deal with their discomfort. Frankly, that enjoyment was short lived, as it usually is in such circumstances. My insensitivity to the pain of all parties involved was the manifestation of my prejudice-a life-long intolerance of those who intone arcane scripture at the first sign of discomfort. In this instance, I dehumanized these people for my own amusement and sense of self-righteousness. Maybe part of making that right is letting my friend wander his own path to the root of his bias. How it works out for him ain't on me. He'd still lay down in traffic for me, and I for him.

My Booker

April 12, 2006

My film booker and I have developed a unique relationship over the seven years we’ve been putting up with each other. When I talk to another theater owner and s/he asks whom I suggest as a booker, I pause before recommending my guy. He’s very good at what he does and has stood beside me when most others would have shown me the door (and frankly, I'd be outta biz by now without him). But, he gets mad. At me. He tends to be a little blunt and frequently expresses exasperation at booking decisions that I insist on. The good news is that he also puts up with me when I throw a fit about this movie company or that film rent. Like most people, I don’t like being yelled at or being told to play a movie “because it’ll pay off later.” But it is part of who he is and he’s worth the mutual drama.

When he sent me an email telling me to, “put down the tools and market these movies,” I initially reacted the way I might react if someone said, “I’m gonna get fit-shaced drunk and try to knock that soup can off the top of your head with live grenades.” My response would typically end with, “…and the horse you rode in on.”

Tools are to me what rum is to a pirate, sarcasm to a teenager, a grenade pin to someone with a soup can on their head: really damned important. One doesn’t tell me to put down my tools, thank you very much. My wife and I live in a part of town where working on the car your driveway isn’t the norm. Since none of my neighbors would groove on me working on my car in their driveways, I tend to do it in mine. I have an affinity for big motorcycles and old diesel Mercedes—double happiness for my neighbors: noise and smoke! (The reality is we all get along quite well. If I’m underneath a 300D swapping out a CV joint, usually one of my neighbors wanders over to talk movies or cars.) But, this how I spend my days off when Oregon weather dissuades two-wheel recreation —oil changes on the Harleys or chasing rust with primer on an old 300TD. My darling wife, who cares as much for my automotive ramblings as I do about comparisons between software development frameworks (Can Ruby on Rails run on soy oil? I rest my case), listens politely as I regale her with tales of repaired window regulators and injector timing. 

So, my booker, who knows me, and knows I’m transforming the Avalon, has the stones to tell me to “put down my tools.” Maybe I better listen. What that means is, you better listen, too. We have some good stuff coming, so focus your cinematic lust on these coming titles, and if you see my booker, tell him you can’t get me to shut up about these films. Please. I’m begging you.

The Death of Cinema

April 5, 2006

The end is near. Soon all theaters will be closed. Cardboard signs in their windows made from the boxes of home theater units will read, WE GIVE UP. You will be able to watch the tumbleweeds roll across the multiplex parking lot with a live web cam. You will have your grandson on your knee and tell him stories of times before the 100 terabyte iMovie thingie, “We actually had to sit in auditoriums with people WE DIDN’T KNOW. Sometimes we even laughed and cried together. Sometimes it went dark and we had to sit there until a human person turned up the lights and fixed the film…yes, film!” You will snicker to yourself at the wide-eyed look of horror on the kid’s face…

The supposed latest nail in the coffin of the cinematic experience was five major studios announcing you can now download a movie from the Internet the same day it goes to DVD. Prices will be roughly comparable to DVDs -- $20 to $30 for new releases, $10 to $16 for catalog titles.   And from the room with those who have been at this awhile you’ll hear…crickets. Perhaps a little yawning. Some may crack their knuckles and ask, “That all ya got?”

You see, the doomsayers started a long time ago. TV was supposed to have killed the movies back in 1931 when there were 40,000 TVs in all of the US of A (9,000 in NYC alone). The cinema industry didn’t really worry about it too much until the early ‘50s. Their answer was to introduce CinemaScope, the wide-screen format. Thousands of drive-in movie theaters built an extra expanse of screen to accommodate the larger format.

In 1973 HBO started broadcasting movies with no commercials. Once again, the choir was singing the swan song of the cinema.   

Yawn.

About that time VHS kicked Beta’s smaller, better-looking butt and people could finally watch porn in the privacy of their homes. Very quickly people learned to defeat the anti-recording tab on the Disney videos so they could record their porn on innocent looking tapes—which always led to an uncomfortable moment when grandma slapped in SNOW WHITE to appease the rug rats. “Well, kiddies. Sometimes it takes more than a kiss to wake up Snow White, now go play outside.”

And on it goes: the Internet, DVDs, downloads, earthquakes, floods, pestilence…each of which will spell the end to movies being shown in theaters.

Bullshit.

You go to the movies to get the heck outta the house. Yes, at home you can pause the movie to pee. You can also listen to the phone ring (God help you if your phone rings in one of my theaters), the dog bark, the kids unfurl their list of things the world owes them, and you can even listen to the neighbors watching porn on their Betamax. Of course popcorn is cheaper if you buy it and make it yourself. Probably better for you, too. Orville Redenbacher can put that stupid little bowtie somewhere corn won’t grow if he tells you his stuff tastes like theater popcorn.

Movies are actually a great deal for an evening out. Especially at the Darkside. Come on Wednesday, which is Cheap Nite. It costs $10 for you and your date to get in (if you are a FlickClique member it’s $4 admission for ANY night). If you each get a small popcorn and drink (both of which are refillable), you can add another $10. So for only a single Jackson (or less) you can spend two hours with your sweetie and, best of all, not have to talk to them!  If you go out to dinner, you think you’re getting away for less than twice that? And you have to TALK. Make conversation. Before the food comes this really sucks because your blood sugar is low. I’m enough of an antisocial bozo with a good meal under my belt. Imagine me pretending I care about your list of things you think the world owes you—that you insist on telling me about because your blood sugar is low. (Give my wife a sympathetic nod next time you see her.)

The cinema experience will be around for a long time. Even when things don’t go the way they should in the projection booth, you’re still out of your house, hangin’ out with other people, and not thinking about work, the leaking car, that hangnail, the war in Iraq, and that exquisite loaf the dog left under the dining room table.   

Try ignoring that stuff when you’re at home. Much easier to get away from it all with a popcorn in your hand, a movie on the screen, and the faint rumblings of me in the booth cussing at the equipment.

The Whiteside

THE WHITESIDE
March 2, 2006

In the course of kindling the phoenix of the Avalon I stumbled upon a piece of Corvallis history: the ticket stub from the last show at the Whiteside Theater. It was from January 2002. The movie was LORD OF THE RINGS. It was the last movie on the last night that the last movie palace in Corvallis had something shimmering on its silver screen.

The Whiteside Theater is owned by Regal Cinemas, the same folks who bring you the Ninth Street Cinemas. They closed the Whiteside a couple of years before Carmike dropped that 12-plex into north town. Wonder if they ever considered that keeping the Whiteside open might’ve made Carmike back off our fair hamlet—at least for a while. Every day when I walk past the closed doors of the Whiteside, I contemplate the circumstantial dominos that fell and led to her fall. People still wonder why I opened a theater across the street rather than putting my energy into the Corvallis icon. When folks ask directly, I usually cut them short by pointing out, “If you have a million-five you’re not doing anything with, I’ll be glad to take her on.”

Despite my sarcasm, the Whiteside still sits quietly, waiting in limbo for resurrection or eternal death. Why isn’t anyone taking her on? Simply put: it's the math. The numbers do not crunch kindly for this old theater. To open it as a cinema again, there is probably about a million dollars in work to make the building habitable. That’s before the doors can open. Add to that $500,000 needed to buy the building and you have payments that will never come close to being met by a single screen theater in a 50k population town with 21 screens. Anyone with any business sense will run like heck in the other direction if approached with reopening the Whiteside as a cinema.

So, how about opening it as a live venue with food? This is where things get really fun. If you make the Whiteside something other than a theater you get hit with federal, state, county, and city “change of use” requirements. Let’s start with parking. Right now the old gal’s parking is grandfathered in. As soon as you make her something other than a cinema, you need to comply with all the parking requirements as new construction. Then we have seismic requirements. As she sits, you can open her as a cinema (after renovation) and get away with everything pretty much as it is. Make it a restaurant or nightclub, and you’ll need to cover every brick wall with chain link (during a seismic event, the shifting of the building will compress the bricks so they spit out like killer watermelon seeds). That balcony will probably have to go and we’re not even warmed up yet.   

So let’s say you get all new plumbing, heating, cooling, roof, electrical, projection equipment, restrooms and so on and, presto, you’re open as a cinema. Did you think you would be able to get films? Any movie company that even thinks of giving the Whiteside a movie that would fill the 900 seats will get three kinds of hell from Carmike. If Fine Line Features discovers Tolkein wrote another Lord of the Rings and gives that movie to the Whiteside, they can pretty much count on Carmike not playing any of their other films for a long time—and not just in Corvallis. It’s Show Business, kids. Not Show Art. Fine Line will make the smart business decision. End of story. Old films have their fan base here, but won’t draw 900 people a night in this town. Trust me. I know. The art-house market would be a lawnmower engine trying to propel the Whiteside locomotive. That just leaves porno and a meth lab as the real moneymakers for the Whiteside…

These are some of the reasons we have the Darkside Cinema and not the Whiteside Theater. What can save the Whiteside? I don’t think there are a lot of people that have thought more about that than me. Admittedly, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer—but I’ve got no clue. Most people thinking of doing something with her eventually land on my doorstep, so I have heard some good ideas. Lots of thinking happening, just not a lot happening.

Bug Parts and Remodeling The Avalon

February 22, 2006

One day, a long time ago, when blackberry was a ubiquitous fruit-bearing vine rather than a communication center for your pocket, I was riding an old Harley across the valley floor. With no warning, a deer decided to cross the road a hundred or so cubits in front of me. Those of us damned with a little deer-vs-vehicular experience know that where there is one, there is a party. So, I began the rather convoluted process of ratcheting down the speed of this ancient iron hog, at the same time revving the engine to line up transmission synchros, and intermittently pulsing the front and rear brakes—all the while tickling and teasing the gear box down to first gear. As I scanned the roadside for quadrupeds, a hexped hit my windshield. Insect impact is not a terribly novel occurrence on a motorcycle, don’t you know, but this one hit the edge of the windshield and dispersed its exoskeleton into the air. The bad news for me was my head was turned, scanning for potential venison, thus the shards of bug slipped behind my glasses and lodged in my eye. Well, now.

I wobbled over to the side of the road on my one good eye. Necessity being a mother, I used a pair of nail cutters and the mirror of my motorcycle to remove bug parts from my cornea. It reminded me that life is not a Gump-esque box of chocolates. In fact, life is a burrito full of jalapeños. What you eat now will haunt you later that evening with a burning vengeance.  Whoa, my sweet Lady of Perpetual Motion. That evening my eyeball said, Howdy and thanks for the bug parts.
What the heck does this have to do with anything? Well, disassembling  the Avalon is just as painful as extracting entomological armor from my eye. It seems I remember every screw and nail I drove in over eight years ago. I know it’s like cutting off a finger to save an arm, but, man, there is a lot of history in that auditorium (No, not just on the sofa. You know who you are…). I can work for about three hours then it’s like a wave of nostalgia breaks over me and I just have to get away. It’s like listening to your kid scream when she’s getting a shot—you know she needs it and it’s a good thing, but, damn, you’d do almost anything to make it all better. I can still hear the laughter thundering in the floorboards from GREEK WEDDING with each nail I pull. As I undo the strings of the screen, I see the jaw-dropping expanse of WINGED MIGRATION. Each curtain that comes down, I feel the emotional tug of CINEMA PARADISO. I know that redoing the Avalon is the best chance to save her, but it is no fun. I had no idea what I was getting into when I opened those doors September 12th 1997. Do you remember what the first movie was?

And the emotional jalapeños burn like a mother every time I walk back into the Avalon and see her torn up. I have to take a deep breath and pick up the crowbar and start dispensing the medicine that goes down hard, but will hopefully bring the Avalon Cinema back up.

Film Delivery Drinking Game

February 1, 2006
Fridays are rapidly becoming my least favorite day of the week. Given that our calendar has no sense of humor, we seem to be averaging about one Friday every seven days, give or take. Then again, I guess we could blame pirates rather than the calendar for the general suckage of Fridays. Not the pirates who speak using only the consonant “R,” but the ones who leak copies of movies out to the world before they are officially in DVD release.

Back when I was learning the ins and outs of this funny business, we picked up our films from this place in Portland called, strangely enough, “The Film Depot.” All prints of all films were picked up by exhibitors at this magical place. Translation: We knew where our prints were going to be and who was the last person to handle them. Double translation: We knew WHEN we would get our prints and the last projectionist to run the film was ACCOUNTABLE for the condition of the print when it got to the depot. Well thanks to fear of pirates (“Arrrrrrrrg.” “Eeeeeeeek!!!”) getting their hooks on film, the single-digit IQ guys at the film studios decided we needed to have the movies in our possession for as little time as possible because the film might get pirated if left lounging in our projection booths. So we are not supposed to have the movie until the first day of the run. This means that the print often arrives minutes before, and sometimes days after, the first show on Fridays. Then they want the print back the minute it comes off the screen, and sometimes sooner. To accomplish this shuffling of prints, movie companies use various couriers. Those of us on the theater side of this equation pretty much think not-too-much of those on the sending side of this equation. I’m sure the sentiment is reciprocal. Now, the actual folks who drop the prints at our doors are usually pretty good folks, however, their dispatchers tend to occupy the lower end of the evolutionary scale.

You could make a drinking game out of the predictability of the excuses they provide when the print is actually not even located in the same state as the theater where it’s supposed to be played. 

“The previous theater missed the pick-up.” One shot of cheap whiskey. 

“There’s some real weather happening there.” One shot if it’s summer and the pick up was supposed to happen below the 45th parallel. Two shots if it’s spring and they’re talking about Tucson, AZ. 

“The studio never contacted us.” One shot if the studio swears they did. Two shots if they told you yesterday the studio did clear it. Three shots if it’s not even coming from a studio. You can kill the whole bottle if the person at the other end of the help line suddenly launches into some non-Latin-based language, mid-sentence, and claims to never have even spoken English.

As you can see, all this convoluted print moving has resulted in the complete elimination of movie piracy. It’s true, no more do they sell bootlegged copies of currently showing movies on the street corners of almost every American city with a population greater than four. Certainly there is no place on the Internet where one can find a copy of a movie not yet in DVD. Pride can’t begin to describe the feeling I get knowing I’m part of the piracy solution. Which leads me nicely into last Friday.

This week I’m gonna have you help me write the story of the weekly disaster. Circle the one that works best for you:  Last Friday it was: a) raining so hard you needed scuba gear to walk to the mailbox. b) still arriving right after Thursday. c) the first day of my new diet consisting of pain pills and sweet cherry nut logs. 

The movie we were supposed to be playing that evening was: a) lost on a life raft in the Pacific. b) floating down the Willamette toward Corvallis, until they figured out the Willamette flows AWAY from Corvallis. c) used as an emergency rope to lower passengers from a derailed train on a trestle.   

When the print arrived, it: a) looked like BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN after Pat Robertson edited it. b) was so late we could only build up the first two reels before starting the show.  c) turned out to be a Chinese language version of DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR? with Swahili subtitles. 

Once we got it on the screen: a) the customers released the snack bar people they were holding as hostages until the film started. b) the projectionist ran bottomless through the auditorium while doing the chicken dance.  c) the clouds parted, a shaft of light beamed from above, the choir sang an ascending C, and the rest of the night went off without a hitch.

Now add up the numbers of each letter you chose. Here is your score: Mostly As: You’re a type-A personality, or you’re from Canada and say, “eh?” a lot. Mostly Bs: You’re a type-B personality, or you like yellow and black striped sweaters and have antenna. No jokes about the stinger, please. Mostly Cs: You knocked over a bottle of Henry’s Root Beer  in the Avalon in 1999 and you still wonder if Paul knows you’re the one who left that sticky mess. Thanks for playing!

Dead Cars and Missing Film

DEAD CARS AND MISSING FILM
January 18, 2006

For those of you stunned by the lack of a first show last Friday of ZATHURA at the Avalon, we hope you got over it. It wasn’t a day unlike many in this business. Being the lazy lout I am, last Friday I sent someone else to pick up our print of ZARTHURA in Portland. He was leaving about lunchtime, which meant he should have been back in plenty of time for me to put the print together. Ho, ho, ho. Ha, ha, ha.

At 4:30 my cell rang and I got that just-shoot-me-now feeling in my stomach. Yep, it was him and he was on the side of I-5. Did you get the movie? Yep. Did you at least get part of the way home? Sure.              Well, part of the way meant six miles from the film depot, leaving only 94 to go. Sterling… So, I thought: if I care to slightly push the speed limit, I could be to the Avalon in time for the first show of the evening. Yeah, right. It looked like the last hour of THE PERFECT STORM out there, it was rush hour, and I was driving a car that would have been my last choice to take around the block, let alone to PDX and back during rush hour with enough rain falling to turn the Willamette Valley into a rice paddy.

Now, I love this car. However, it’s a replacement for a car that was turned to salvage about two months ago by someone mistaking the gas peddle for the brake. The car that got center-punched was an ugly though mechanically sound Mercedes diesel. This new one is shamelessly uglier, and also a MB diesel, but I had hardly spent more than three minutes under the hood. The steering was so loose you planned your corners with a calendar, the sunroof leaked so much water I had fish and kelp living under the driver’s seat, the headlights were aligned like one of those iguanas that can watch TV and throw darts at the same time, the brakes were so soft it was easier to open the door and put a foot down, and as if five cylinder diesels didn’t idle badly enough, this thing rocked so zestfully, I had to hold my coffee out the window at a stop.

So there I was, zipping down I-5, marveling at the stupidity of everyone else’s driving but mine, grateful that at least the radio worked. However, turning it on only allowed me to hear all about the bad luck other motorists were enjoying ahead of me. I wanted to try the tape deck, but who the hell has tapes any more? The only tape in the car was for an old answering machine entombed under the passenger seat. Somehow, listening to, “Hi. No one’s home right now. Please leave a message,” for 200 miles just struck me as a bad idea.            

I arrived at the scene of the crime and gave my buddy’s Saturn a five-second triage: Broken serpentine belt tensioner. Son, this car is going nowhere. We flung the movie into the back of my beast, left his car where she sat, and let the turbo breathe getting back onto I-5, just in time to pump the brakes like a 14 year-old with a blow-up Raquel doll (Model 23C. the 23 A and B had a seam splitting problem. Not that I’d know…) before loping through many miles of gridlock. Then it started to rain harder. Dip me in honey and throw me to the Lutherans, it was a long drive home to play ZATHURA to six people at 9:00. The next day, we drove back to his car in my car to get it towed home. It was a little easier to see in the daylight, though I didn’t admit it. I now own his soul, I was thinking, as I flung the answering machine tape out the window around Salem. 

April 4th, 2006 Death of Cinema

Other stuff:
The end is near. Soon all theaters will be closed. Cardboard signs in their windows, made from the boxes of home theater units will read, WE GIVE UP. You will be able to watch the tumbleweeds roll across the multiplex parking lot with a live web cam. You will have your grandson on your knee and tell him stories of times before the 100 terabyte iMovie thingie, “We actually had to sit in auditoriums with people WE DIDN’T KNOW. Sometimes we even laughed and cried together. Sometimes it went dark and we had to sit there until a human person turned up the lights and fixed the film…yes, film!” You will snicker to yourself at the wide-eyed look of horror in the kid’s face…
    The supposed latest nail in the coffin of the cinematic experience was five major studios announce you can now download a movie from the internet the same day it goes to DVD. Prices will be roughly comparable to DVDs -- $20 to $30 for new releases, $10 to $16 for catalog titles.
    And from the room with those who have been at this awhile you’ll hear…crickets. Perhaps a little yawning. Someone my crack their knuckles and ask, “That all ya got?”
    You see, this all started a long time ago. TV was supposed to have killed the movies back in 1931 when there was 40,000 TVs in all of the US of A (9,000 in NY alone). The cinema industry didn’t really worry about it too much until the early ‘50s when it came up with CinemaScope, the wide-screen format. Thousands of drive in movies theaters built an extra expanse of screen to accommodate the larger format. If you see a drive in built before 1953, you’ll see newer construction adding to the screen, if it’s the original screen.
    In 1973 HBO started broadcasting movies with no commercials. Once again, the choir was singing the swan song of the cinema.
    Yawn.
    About that time VHS kicked Beta’s smaller, better-looking butt and one could finally watch porn in the privacy of their home. Very quickly people learned to defeat the anti-recording tab on the Disney videos so they could record their porn on innocent looking tapes—which always led to an uncomfortable moment when grandma slapped in SNOW WHITE to appease the rug rats. “Well, kiddies. Sometimes it takes more than a kiss to wake up Snow White, now go play outside.”
    And on it goes: the internet, DVDs, downloads, earthquakes, floods, pestilence…all of which will spell the end to movies in theaters.
    Bullshit.
    You go to the movies to get the heck outta the house. Yes, at home you can pause the movie to pee. You can also listen to the phone ring (God help you if your phone rings in one of my theaters), the dog bark, the kids unfurl their list of things the world owes them, and you can listen to the neighbors watching porn on their Betamax. Of course popcorn is cheaper if you buy it and make it yourself. Probably better for you, too. Orville Redenbacher can put that stupid little bowtie somewhere corn won’t grow if he tells you his stuff tastes like theater popcorn.
    Movies are actually a great deal. Especially at the Darkside. Come on Wednesday, which is Cheap Nite. It costs $10 for you and your date to get in (if you are a FlickClique member it’s $4 admission for ANY night). If you each get a small popcorn and drink (both of which are refillable), you can add another $10. So for a Jackson (or less) you can spend two hours with your sweetie and, best of all, not have to talk to them!
If you go out to dinner, you think you’re getting away for less than twice that? And you have to TALK. Make conversation. Before the food comes this really sucks because your blood sugar is low. I’m enough of an antisocial bozo with a good meal under my belt. Imagine me pretending I care of about your list of things you think the world owes you—that you insist on telling me about because your blood sugar is low.
    The cinema experience will be around for a long time. Even when things don’t go the way they should in the projection booth--you’re still out of your house, hangin’ out with other people, and not thinking about work, the leaking car, that hangnail, the war in Iraq, and that exquisite loaf the dog left under the dining room table.
    Try ignoring that stuff at home. Much easier to not think about with a popcorn in your hand, a movie on the screen, and the faint rumblings of me in the booth cussing at the equipment.

March 29th, 2006 Screen Falling

Other stuff: I have a habit of overbuilding stuff. To get the inclined floor outta the Avalon involved 12- ton car jacks, 4-foot crowbars, and the possibility of a future hernia surgery (no, really). I was glad for my engineering excess when I found myself standing on top the center speaker behind the screen. You see, it’s about eight feet up in the air and the pile of fractured lumber with claws of bents nails would have been my landing pad if I hadn’t used a handful of 3” screws to secure the speaker to the cleat on the wall.

So here I am in the top of the speaker undoing the final screws that hold the screen frame upright. Did I mention the screen frame is made of steel and weighs as much as a 1950s American car? Well, that would be an exaggeration, but a mighty small exaggeration compared to some I tell. The idea was to unlatch the frame and let it fall onto the pile of lumber. As the Makita whirred and spun, the final screw came out of the bracket…and I had a thought: I might have secured the frame to the speakerupon which I was standing. Holy hygiene challenged hyenas, Batman, this could get ugly!

Then time stood still. I had a moment of clarity and asked myself, what led me to be standing on top of this speaker, getting ready to jump for the cross-beam about three feet above me if those cables I ignored drag down my perch with the screen?

It was my mom’s fault.

You see, when I was nine I asked my mom how movies were made. She handed me an 8 mm Bell & Howell movie camera and a roll of film. It went downhill from there. I wanted to watch movies, any movie, then go out and see if I could make my own version. I had lassoed every kid in the neighborhood to act and used every dime I found in the paper machines or earned collecting cans from the beaches of Santa Cruz to buy film and processing. We did a lot of stop-action stuff with teddy bears and GI Joes. We even did one with GI Joe and my friend’s sister’s Barbie. His mother confiscated it shortly after its debut. When I become famous, it will show up on eBay. Don’t bid until the final few seconds.

When I get out of high school, where do I go to work? A drive-in movie theater! This was a real ‘nad pumper for me because it combined cars and movies. My best friend and I lived underneath the screen tower and ran the shows. After the shows we hopped in our ‘60s red Impala Super Sports (Yes, we each had one. And, miraculously, we both STILL have those same cars!) and practiced safe, courteous driving—never exceeding the speed limit or compelling others with similarly appointed vehicles to some sort of competition. Ever. Honest.

Sure I went to college. Did a lot of other things. But always landed back in a projection booth watching light dance through film at 24 frames per second. So I caved. I decided I needed to be in a theater more than I needed to be anywhere else. Ho hum. All thanks to my mom.

I’m sure if my mom saw me standing on top of that speaker wondering just how this screen falling thing was going to play out, she would have asked in her best French Canadian accent, what the hell I thought I was doing? A valid question, eh?  She had a certain pronunciation of my name that swapped the vowels (that my Impala partner Ron can still imitate perfectly) that reduced me to about eight years old. Though my mom stopped catching me doing stupid stuff years ago (some suggest it’s due to her passing away), at that moment, I heard her, “Puuuaaawwwl!”

There was no blaming this one on my little brother.

Slowly the steel frame of the screen started giving in to gravity, moving away from me, past the point of no return. I grabbed the beam over my head and was ready to grapple onto it if my four square feet of MDF I was standing on decided to chase the screen to the floor. (I can imagine the cell call as I hang from the beam: “Hi, honey. How’s work? Say, could you come on down to the Avalon…no, nothing’s wrong…just hanging around, that’s all…”)

Insert your favorite onomonapeia here for the sound of a heavy-assed screen hitting the ground.

Evidently I did NOT secure the screen to the speaker since I was watching dust rise from same place I watched the screen start its fall. Once I was safely on the floor, I looked at the screen and tried not to think of all the films that had splashed across its white expanse --  that now looked like the sail of the Bounty after the mutiny (Arrrrr!). It seemed a crudely unceremonious way for a screen holding over 30 years (from two theaters) of film luminescence to end its career. Though I did keep my promise and it did see ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as one of its last shows (I’m still finding glitter and rice). With any luck, a new screen will start its life in the Avalon in awhile. Releasing myself from the soggy sentimentality that binds me to the old Avalon will help the rise of the new Avalon. Sentimentality is a silly habit that makes things harder than they need to be.
“Puuuaaawwwl, don’t be silly.”
Yeah, mom. I’m working on it.
Like the marquee reads, Stay Tuned.

March 1st, 2006 Whiteside

Other Stuff:
In the course of kindling the phoenix of the Avalon I stumbled upon a piece of Corvallis history: the ticket stub from the last show at the Whiteside Theater. It was from January 2002. The movie was LORD OF THE RINGS. It was the last movie on the last night that the last movie palace in Corvallis had something shimmering on its silver screen.

The Whiteside Theater is owned by Regal Cinemas, the same folks who bring you the Ninth Street Cinemas. They closed the Whiteside a couple of years before Carmike dropped that 12-plex into north town. Wonder if they ever considered that keeping the Whiteside open might’ve made Carmike back off our fair hamlet—at least for a while. Every day when I walk past the closed doors of the Whiteside, I contemplate the circumstantial dominos that fell and led to her fall. People still wonder why I opened a theater across the street rather than putting my energy into the Corvallis icon. When folks ask directly, I usually cut them short by pointing out, “If you have a million-five you’re not doing anything with, I’ll be glad to take her on.”

Despite my sarcasm, the Whiteside still sits quietly, waiting in limbo for resurrection or eternal death. Why isn’t anyone taking her on? Simply put: math. The numbers do not crunch kindly for this old theater. To open it as a cinema again, there is probably about a million dollars in work to make the building habitable. That’s before the doors can open. Add to that $500,000 needed to buy the building and you have payments that will never come close to being met by a single screen theater in a 50k population town with 21 screens. Anyone with any business sense will run like heck in the other direction if approached with reopening the Whiteside as a cinema.

So, how about opening it as a live venue with food? This is where things get really fun. If you make the Whiteside something other than a theater you get hit with federal, state, county, and city “change of use” requirements. Let’s start with parking. Right now the old gal’s parking is grandfathered in. As soon as you make her something other than a cinema, you need to comply with all the parking requirements as new construction. Then we have seismic requirements. As she sits, you can open her as a cinema (after renovation) and get away with everything pretty much as it is. Make it a restaurant or nightclub, and you’ll need to cover every brick wall with chain link (during a seismic event, the shifting of the building will compress the bricks so they spit out like killer watermelon seeds). That balcony will probably have to go and we’re not even warmed up yet.

So let’s say you get all new plumbing, heating, cooling, roof, electrical, projection equipment, restrooms and so on and, presto, you’re open as a cinema. Did you think you would be able to get films? Any movie company that even thinks of giving the Whiteside a movie that would fill the 900 seats will get three kinds of hell from Carmike. If Fine Line Features discovers Tolkein wrote another Lord of the Rings and gives that movie to the Whiteside, they can pretty much count on Carmike not playing any of their other films for a long time—and not just in Corvallis. It’s Show Business, kids. Not Show Art. Fine Line will make the smart business decision. End of story. Old films have their fan base here, but won’t draw 900 people a night in this town. Trust me. I know. The art-house market would be a lawnmower engine trying to propel the Whiteside locomotive. That just leaves porno and a meth lab as the real moneymakers for the Whiteside…

These are some of the reasons we have the Darkside Cinema and not the Whiteside Theater. What can save the Whiteside? I don’t think there are a lot of people that have thought more about that than me. Admittedly, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer—but I’ve got no clue. Most people thinking of doing something with her eventually land on my doorstep, so I have heard some good ideas. Lots of thinking happening, just not a lot happening.

This is a piece I wrote for the Corvallis Gazette-Times after the Whiteside closed: http://gtconnect.com/articles/2002/01/29/export1401.txt