My cinema paradiso

            I've been feeling a little out of sorts these past few days. It happens now and then to the best of us. Usually, when the gloom of life clouds over my head it wants to stick around for a few days before flickering rays of sun start to peek through the cracks again. When these days come along, one thing I like to do to get myself back on track is to go to the movie theater. It doesn't matter what I watch, or whom I go with, if anyone at all, it's just being there that makes everything seem better. The second I open the doors and get a blast of that buttery popcorn smell, which will probably be a permanent scent within its walls long after it becomes the home of something else, someday in the future, I'm carried away as if in a dream, to another world, another existence, a place that is secret only to me. I can't help but feel a bond with this world, as if I was born into it. Having my first movie theater experience at the age of three, with the film E.T., may have given me this impression. But I know it comes from something much more deeply rooted.

            When I was about seven years old, my father took a part-time job at the local movie theater to make a little extra money for his growing family. He spent so much time working one job or the other, we hardly had a chance to sit down and spend time as a family before he was whisked away by obligations, yet always with loving smile and a hug when he went. On the weekends, however, he would often take my brother Paul and I to work with him and we would spend his entire shift watching one movie after another for the four to six hours he had to be there. Paul never liked to sit with me if we saw the same movie. In fact, it was hardly usual that we were ever in the same theater together. Our tastes differed slightly, even to this day. So I often sat quietly in the back of the theater, trying to stay out of the way and in an area where my father could easily spot me when he came in to check up on me. Half the time the theater would be empty and the room would feel like it was my own personal space. In the middle of watching a film, my father would often slide into the seat next to me, usually when he was on his break, and we would just sit there, the two of us, like Siskel and Ebert. He would turn to me and ask what I thought about the movie at the end, as if I had the intellect of an adult his age, and I would contemplate his question like it was a political matter. I'd express my opinion openly and in as much cinematic detail as my seven year-old mind could conjure. If there was ever a continuity issue, he was always the first one to spot it like we were playing a game of Where's Waldo. Throwing his pointed finger out, "Did you see that?"

"What?"

"The door was open, now it's closed!"

"Wow. They messed up."

I thought he was the most amazing man in the whole world, I still do. So smart my father was to figure out the plot before the end of the movie. He saw all the signs and put all the clues together like a trained detective. Before long I was looking at movies through new eyes, his eyes. It was at seven years old that I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker someday. However, as an adult, I now realize that it wasn't quite the film making that I fell in love with, but the story telling that drew me in. The adventures I saw, the characters I wanted to be and the clear meaning and purpose everyone walked away with at the end of a good story, clutched at my very soul. Film was life, told with a dramatic curve, wrapped up in a neat little bow. Unlike reality, difficult situations came back around full circle and everything ended on a happy note (most of the time). No matter how flawed or wrong you were in the beginning, in the end, everything was fixed and you were a better person than when you started. I wanted to bring epic stories to life like Spielberg did after watching Jurassic Park for the third time, make my father laugh like Danny Devito did when we watched Twins or Throw Mamma From The Train, feel the sting of tears when we thought our little robot friend died in Batteries Not Included, and understand how Superman really flew. We bonded more over watching action flicks than anything else though. My mother would often walk in on us in the living room, watching a Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone movie, and she would just shake her head at me and say in her broken English, "What kind of girl are you? How come you never watch nice romantic movies like normal girls? You're just like your father with all of those guns and explosions you watch." Then she'd walk away and my father and I would look at each other, smile and he would throw a protective arm around me and continue to watch the rest of the movie. I'm sure the last thing he wanted was his little girl yearning for romance at eleven or twelve anyway. No thank you, boys are mean and stupid anyway. Bring on the car chases and secret identities.

            My father probably doesn't realize how much of an influence he was on me as a child, which I didn't realize myself until many years later. But I wanted to bring him the happiness and entertainment he clearly adored from watching a movie on the big screen. Growing up with little money, on an island that had only one movie-theater in town, which played just a handful of films each year, over and over again, going to a movie theater was a luxury for him. It only made sense that as an adult, it still seemed like a magical event for him and his enthusiasm surely rubbed off on me. Whether is was coming up with the story or being a part of the process of bringing it to the actual screen, that was all I wanted to do with my life. Not only was it an escape from reality, hard work, and the dullness of most days, it was also a place where we could imagine something more for ourselves. Everything was going to be all right in the movie world. It was our sanctuary when we needed one. And when the film industry starts to feel like a let down behind the scenes, going to the theater reminds me of what I fell in love with in the first place. There in the darkness it is only the buttery scent of freshly popped corn, a big bright screen dancing with the images of my favorite stars, and me. Nothing else matters for two to three hours.

            Some ten or eleven years ago, that little movie theater my father used to work at closed down and sat empty for nearly a year. In that time I seriously contemplated buying the space to reinvent the possibility of the success of its former years. I couldn't bear the idea of it becoming something other than a movie theater. What I envisioned was something of a complex built around the original theaters. It would play new releases seven days a week and in the space behind the theater, which was acres of woods at the time, I wanted to turn that into a drive in movie theater that played classics on Sunday and Monday nights. With a 50's style snack bar attached to the back of the building, people would have access to all their favorite treats and never have to go very far. The theater would have been slightly expanded to have a movie themed cafe in one wing, for people to sit and relax over a coffee or light dinner while waiting for their film to start, or sit and snack after a late movie if they didn't want the night to end so soon. The other wing would have a entertainment store that sold DVD's, CD soundtracks and movie memorabilia for anyone wanting to take the film world home with them. I would have been a movie lover's dream come true. Sadly, before I actually put any of my ideas into motion, the space was bought and turned into a Bargain Outlet. It broke my heart when I drove by one day and saw the Cinemas sign replaced with the bright white letters adorning the outlet's name.

            Going to the theater is a whole other beast, compared to sitting at home with the distractions of home life spinning around you. At a movie theater, it's an event. A reason to get out of your pajamas or sweats and sit beside other people, strangers or friends, as you all laugh out loud together, sob tears of sadness or clap for joy in the time it took you to fall in love with the characters in the story. I fear the day that movie theaters might not exist anymore. I don't think it could happen in my lifetime, but if it did, it would be a sad time for us all and a major drawback to the American way of life. Until then, I'm going to enjoy sitting in my sanctuary while I can, soak up the love and dedication it took to create this film I'm about to watch, and eat my fresh bag of buttery popcorn spilling over my lap.