You know what I wanna do? I want to open a movie theater, but I only want to show classic movies. You can go anywhere to watch Slumdog Millionaire or whatever, and that’s fine. I am not in any way trying to put down modern films, but the classics are crying out to be shown the way they were originally intended.
Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock belong in a theater, not on a 16-inch TV screen. I think it’s really too bad that we don’t get to watch the classics on the big screen anymore (well, those of us who live in little nothing towns don’t, anyway). I want to see To Have and Have Not on the big screen. People debate how much “chemistry” modern screen couples have, but nobody had chemistry like Bogart and Bacall. I bet they set a movie theater on fire. I want to watch Bride of Frankenstein on the big screen, with the great Karloff in his signature role and Ernest Thesiger as the greatest Mad Scientist ever. I want The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, because if you haven’t seen Leone’s magnificent vision on the big screen, you haven’t seen it at all. I want Night of the Living Dead, and The Road Warrior, and Shaft.
And I want it to be like the Cinema & Drafthouse back home, where you could order a pitcher of beer or a glass of scotch, and maybe some potato skins, and you could smoke while you watched the movie. If you can watch To Have and Have Not without needing a smoke, I don’t want to know you.
We’ll have classics every day: Sunset Boulevard, All Quiet on the Western Front, Out of the Past, ...and God Created Woman. We’ll have a matinee and an evening show, an hour or so apart. They’ll be two different movies, in case folks want to make a day of it, and in between we’ll show shorts from Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry, as God-that-ain’t clearly intended. Friday latenights would be our Trash Classics double feature, and Saturday latenights would be our classic horror double feature. And every Sunday there would be a brunch/matinee with real food (as opposed to bar food) and light comedy, mostly Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers, maybe the occasional Carole Lombard or W.C. Fields for variety.
Of course, to do this, I would have to be fairly wealthy, because there’s a good chance that the business would never turn a profit, so I’d have to be able to absorb the loss year after year. And that means that I’ll never get to do it, ‘cause I’ll never be wealthy. But still, that’s what I want. Isn’t my reach supposed to exceed my grasp?
Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock belong in a theater, not on a 16-inch TV screen. I think it’s really too bad that we don’t get to watch the classics on the big screen anymore (well, those of us who live in little nothing towns don’t, anyway). I want to see To Have and Have Not on the big screen. People debate how much “chemistry” modern screen couples have, but nobody had chemistry like Bogart and Bacall. I bet they set a movie theater on fire. I want to watch Bride of Frankenstein on the big screen, with the great Karloff in his signature role and Ernest Thesiger as the greatest Mad Scientist ever. I want The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, because if you haven’t seen Leone’s magnificent vision on the big screen, you haven’t seen it at all. I want Night of the Living Dead, and The Road Warrior, and Shaft.
And I want it to be like the Cinema & Drafthouse back home, where you could order a pitcher of beer or a glass of scotch, and maybe some potato skins, and you could smoke while you watched the movie. If you can watch To Have and Have Not without needing a smoke, I don’t want to know you.
We’ll have classics every day: Sunset Boulevard, All Quiet on the Western Front, Out of the Past, ...and God Created Woman. We’ll have a matinee and an evening show, an hour or so apart. They’ll be two different movies, in case folks want to make a day of it, and in between we’ll show shorts from Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry, as God-that-ain’t clearly intended. Friday latenights would be our Trash Classics double feature, and Saturday latenights would be our classic horror double feature. And every Sunday there would be a brunch/matinee with real food (as opposed to bar food) and light comedy, mostly Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers, maybe the occasional Carole Lombard or W.C. Fields for variety.
Of course, to do this, I would have to be fairly wealthy, because there’s a good chance that the business would never turn a profit, so I’d have to be able to absorb the loss year after year. And that means that I’ll never get to do it, ‘cause I’ll never be wealthy. But still, that’s what I want. Isn’t my reach supposed to exceed my grasp?
