Something There Is That Doesn't Like A Movie Theatre

Unlike Prufrock and his coffee spoons, I measure my life in the demise of movie theatres.

When I first moved to New York's Upper West Side, there were eleven separate sand-alone movie houses.

There was one tiny one at 72nd Street that showed art films (and I've forgotten the name, Embassy 72, perhaps), the Loew's 84th Street (a movie palace in the Grand tradition replete with balcony), The New Yorker at 89th Street, The Symphony, The Thalia, two now nameless full size United Artist Theatres between 96th and 97th Street (former and badly faded movie palaces with work lights visible through the screen during the entire show), The Metro, a nameless theatre that showed mostly Mexican films with Cantinflas and others, the Edison (the oldest movie theatre in New York and actually built by Edison), and the Olympia.

The 72nd Street Theatre made way for a furniture store, the New Yorker was trashed for an apartment building, the two United Artists theatres became another housing complex, the site of the Mexican theatre sells discount hand towels, and The Edison has become a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. Tom and D.W. Griffith would have been thrilled.

Of the rest, the gorgeous, gold-leafed, velvet curtained Loew's was torn down completely and rebuilt next door and now houses six shoebox theatres (the Loew's SexPlex as we in the know call it), these days The Symphony Space (nee The Symphony) shows films once a week, the Thalia passes into and out of private hands for several months at a time and has recently shown very fine African films before it went bust one mo' time, The Metro is twinnned, and so is the Olympia. So, if we count generously, there are now twelve movie theatres where once there were only eleven.

Clearly, clearly, clearly, it ain't the same.

I walk through the neighborhood seeing their ghostly marquees beckoning me. The upper West Side -- not Times Square -- was the heart of movie theatres and even of production in the 1920's and 30's. The tattered remains of the theatres call out to you if you look closely beneath the supermarket signs: the decorated arches that once soared over marquees, the wall-mounted hooks where the supports for the marquees were once attached are all still there. The huge inside spaces got divided up for groceries.

One foolish day Robert Frost visited me at my typewriter (when I still had a typewrite) and wrote this down for me.

Something there is that doesn't love a movie theatre
, That sends a wrecking crew onto it,
And spills the marquee onto the street;
And makes the aisles into sidewalks.
The work of moviegoers is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have not left one seat without gum,
And they would spill coke on every cushion,
As they cheer the heroes on.
It is the wreckers I mean,
No one sees them come or hears plans made,
but at Summer Holiday Movie time,
we find them there.
I let my friend know across the park;
And on a day we met to watch the sweating crews
And see the heavy cranes smash in the walls.
We stand across the street as we watch
To see the rubble that once held in magic
And kept out distorting light and noise.
We have to use a spell to watch the destruction without tears.
"Stay as you were when our backs are turned!"
We wear out our minds with calling back the dreams.
Oh, just another kind of nostalgic game,
Over on our side of the street.
It comes to little more.
There where it is, the contractor doesn't need an antique theatre.
He is all progress and higher rents.
Our memories of lush adventures will barely survive
Enhanced by popcorn and thirsty throats.
My friend says, "Good theatres made good neighbors."
A scent of Spring is still in me, and I wonder If we could put a notion in builders' hearts.
Didn't good theatres make good neighbors?" I'd ask them.
"Weren't they a wondrous palace to lure us from lonely rooms?
Before I built a high rise, I'd ask to know
What hand-painted ceiling I was tearing down and throwing out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a movie theatre,
That wants it down."
I could say "greed" to the builders,
But it's not greed exactly, and I'd rather
They said it to themselves.
I see them there
A blueprint and sales prospectus grasped firmly
One in each hand like an old stone savage armed.
The builders move in darkness as it seems to me,
But not one of celluloid visions and the sounds of wonder.
My friend will not be consoled.
He is sad still to think the thought.
He asks again, "Didn't good theatre's make good neighbors?"

Monday, March 3, 1997 New York City (poem circa 1980, New York City)