When I was ten, in central Illinois, a restored 1930’s movie theater opened up. The first movie I saw there was Vertigo, with my old man. When I became a volunteer there later that year with my mom, the first movie I worked was Gone with the Wind. To a ten year-old kid, GWTW’s run-time is approximately an eon long, but I survived and kept volunteering and seeing movies there until I left for Baton Rouge at age 23. The Normal Theater was like church to me.
Earlier this month, the Normal Theater showed a documentary about small repertory movie theaters called The Rep.
As per the website: “The film follows the lives of three uber film geeks during the first year of operations of a single-screen repertory cinema. Dubbed ‘The Underground Cinema’ by its gang of misfits, Alex, Charlie and Nigel will stop at nothing to see their theatre succeed. In the face of strong competition from big box theatres, local cinematheques and home video, it’s a constant struggle to stay afloat. Throw in 12-hour workdays, having no semblance of a personal life and all the normal stresses of working day in/day out with the same people… things couldn’t be much more of an uphill battle.”
Theaters like this are breeding grounds for movie geeks and god knows we need more movie geeks (you can’t have enough people scoffing at the stinking pile of debris that is Transformers/G.I. Joe/Battleship). These are places where people can see the new cut of Metropolis and Caddyshack in the same month. Or understand the immense beauty of Lawrence of Arabia in a way that a TV screen, no matter how ludicrously big, cannot provide.
Kinda like the mini-surge of in popularity of vinyl records, theaters like this are slowly rising from the shadows of the multiplexes. The Alamo Drafthouse (of the famous and harshly enforced ‘no texting’ policy) is putting up carefully picked franchises around the country. The Normal Theater is still chugging along. But it’s an uphill slog.
I haven’t yet had a chance to see The Rep in its feature doc form, but I have watched the five episodes of the web series and they struck a chord. As I’d bet they will in anyone who’s worked at or frequented a small or rep or independent movie theater. These are the movie dorks you’d want to hang out with and the theater you’d want to hang out in.
Unless you’re in Fresno, Pittsburgh, or Melbourne, you won’t get a chance to see The Rep on the big screen in the next month. But it is hitting VOD on September 3rd, which is where I’ll be catching it.
FADE OUT 