A New Hope: A Movie Theatre Epilogue

In the wonderful novel "Time and Again," Jack Finney's hero "thinks" and "emotes" himself from the still unchanged Dakota Hotel into the Central Park of the 19th Century. It is a feat of time travel unmatched in the high tech realms of modern movie science fiction. It is a feat of time travel that we all do quietly in our souls late at night or when we are sure that no one else is looking. We find those memories in our hearts that are brought back by the sight of a knick knack in a store window, or the scent of mustard on a steamed hot dog, and we are transported instantly and totally to another time, another place and we live there fully until the barking car horns bring us back in time before we are run over. We blush and blink it off and hope that no one saw that "look" on our face when it happened and then keep walking uptown or down taking little tastes of the still warm dream while it lasts.

On Wednesday, February 19, I attended a lecture by Freeman Dyson the noted, revered, and wondrous mathematician cum physicist, at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street.

Afterwards, head full of the history of science, the pacifism of Tolstoy, and the vagaries of Napoleonic educational methods, I wandered West on 42nd Street.

It was after 8 and it was dark as I walked through the desolation of the blocks between Sixth Avenue and Broadway.

I drifted back to my childhood and college days and the afternoons and nights spent in the myriad dirty piss-smelling movie theatres that lined 42nd Street watching movies and movies and cowboys and more movies. The memories shimmered hazily in the empty lots and little stores that live inside the shells of the old 10 cent movie houses.

Then I crossed Seventh Avenue and it was there.

Someone had brought back The Amsterdam Theatre. We all know it was Disney and we all know that our Mayor gave it to them on a silver tray, but there it was, glowing out of the shuttered strip between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. It was clean and lit up and looked for all the world like you could hand them a quarter and walk in and see a movie. It looked like the marble halls and marble men's rooms would smell like opening night. That the screen would no longer be torn, that the cherubim would have their gold leaf smiles buffed up once again. I peeked in past the gates and the inside was still unfinished, but the boxoffices were there and the marble floor was fairly clean and the marquee itself had every light bulb back in place only waiting to blink in some mystical snake-chasing-its-tail sequence.

And the best part was that as I walked down into the subway, it didn't disappear. It's still there, and even though it won't be used for movies, it promises to re-open in June and I can't wait.

Monday, March 3, 1997, New York City