This article originally appeared in the March, 2002, Number 30 issue of *spark.
I lived in Montreal for three years while pursuing my PhD. On Tuesday nights, I got into the habit of walking across Ste. Catharine; between the Eaton Centre and the Fauburg were six English language movie theatres. It would be a poor night, indeed, that I couldn't find at least two films that I would want to watch. (Why Tuesday? Hey - I was a student.)
A few months after I moved back to Toronto, I returned to Montreal for a visit. I found that there were only two theatres left along my favourite stretch of street, and that one of them was a huge Paramount that didn't exist when I lived in the city. Five of the six theatres I frequented had been shut down.
I was reminded of this by the recent announcement that three of Toronto's older theatres will soon be shut down. I have personal history with two of them. A friend I go to movies with used to work at a store on Eglinton; after work, we would sometimes go to the Eglinton to watch a movie. I also covered the Toronto International Film Festival for several years, and have many fond memories of the Uptown, one of the most elegant theatres in the city.
The immediate cause of the closures is an order by the Ontario Human Rights Commission to Famous Players, the owner of the theatres, to make them wheelchair accessible. The theatre chain claims that renovating the theatres would cost $700,000, an amount it cannot afford. Yet, there are two very obvious contributing factors to the closing of the theatres: greed and stupidity, the twin banes of capitalism.
Over the last few years, Famous Players and Cineplex Odeon, its main rival, have gone on a building binge, erecting innumerable multiplexes in major metropolitan cities. (A spree that cost Famous Players far more than renovating three of its existing theatres.) This had a two-fold purpose: it delighted shareholders, who came to believe that this represented sustainable corporate growth, and; it put economic pressure on each company's rival. This is the scorched earth capitalism of the supposed New Economy: spend yourself into deep debt in order to bankrupt your competition.
Last Corporation Standing. This is what happened in Canadian bookselling. It's more or less what happened in the airline industry. There are undoubtedly other industries waiting to collapse into oligopoly or monopoly for the same reason.
The problem, as industry after industry has found out, is that even if your company is the one that survives, it has a mountain of debt that has to be paid off. Somehow. Invariably, this means closing down some of the corporation's operations and laying off workers. In the film exhibition business, it became clear pretty early on that the number of seats being built in Toronto far outstripped the number of moviegoing butts that could fill them; the growth in theatres was clearly unsustainable. But, of course, the theatre chains are not going to close the theatres they have just heavily invested in; thus, their older theatres are the first to go.
Now, the new theatres being built have some advantages over the older theatres. The seats are at a steeper gradient than most of the older theatres, a boon to a short person like myself who has had to watch too many films around the heads of taller people sitting in front of him. The screens are often larger and the sound systems are state of the art.
However, I find that the new theatres have next to no personality. Walking into the Paramount in Toronto or the Paramount in Montreal is pretty much the same experience. More tellingly, Toronto's Paramount or the Yorkdale theatres or the Grande are virtually identical: similar food mini-courts, same games areas, identical theatres.
This is by design, of course. The addition of food vendors and games areas is an attempt to make cinemas "entertainment destinations" rather than simply places to see films. The reasoning behind this is the fear among chain executives that people won't leave their computers and television sets just to see a mere movie. (Given the quality of many of the movies they show, there is much reason to this belief, but that's a rant for another time.)
I wouldn't mind if I didn't encounter the same half dozen food vendors, or if the design of the theatres wasn't so...sterile. Compared to the palaces of a bygone era, these theatres have no individuality, and they aren't likely to evince the same level of loyalty.
By those who truly love the moviegoing experience, the old theatres will be missed.
Short Takes: Kate & Leopold is a Meg Ryan romantic comedy about a woman who finds that her one true love is a man who has traveled in time from the 19th century. What jumped out at me from the premise of the film, something I did not find in any of the reviews, was the way the underlying premise played into the perception that there are no eligible single men in the world. I mean, how desperate does a woman have to be to look for men from a different period in time?
Meg, Meg, Meg, Meg, Meg. I'm here. I'm smart. I'm funny. I am a decent human being who wouldn't dream of kicking a helpless animal for no reason. You don't need to warp the space-time continuum to find an eligible bachelor. Really. Just, please, tone down the perkiness; you are 40 years old, after all.
Is that so much to ask?
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