(O-T) Boy, is Paul Allen interesting! Remember Cinerama?
Cinerama: Reborn retro theater to open April 23
Thursday, April 8, 1999
By WILLIAM ARNOLD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
MOVIE CRITIC
It may sound like shameless hype, but there's no other way to say this: the survival and restoration of Seattle's Cinerama Theater in the late 1990s is simply one of the greatest success stories in the whole checkered history of movie theater preservation in America.
When the theater's 35-year lease ran out in March 1997, no exhibitor was even vaguely interested in the once-luxurious movie showcase at Fourth Avenue and Lenora Street. The Seattle media wrote its obituary, and no sane observer gave the naive, grass-roots "Save-the-Cinerama" campaign the slightest chance of success.
But two years later, the Cinerama is not only still standing, it's undergone a multimillion-dollar renovation, and will reopen April 23 as the most technologically advanced, state-of-the-art cinema, not just in Seattle and the Northwest, but arguably on the entire planet.
A year ago, in what was supposed to be the Cinerama's final week, I took a last, sad tour of the long-neglected facility -- cringing at the water-damaged walls, crumbling screen, broken seats and dilapidated fixtures that seemed almost beyond repair.
Late last month, I wandered through the same space and found it had been not just lovingly restored to its full 1963 glory, but transformed into a kind of nirvana for movie lovers -- a theater so chock-full of extras and innovations that it's hard to list them all (see accompanying story).
The fairy godmother in this Cinderella story is billionaire movie fan Paul Allen, who loved the theater as a boy, bought it on impulse, and has spared no expense in turning it into both a museum of the old Cinerama process and a vanguard for the new era in movie exhibition.
And yet the fairy tale -- the story of the rise and fall and spectacular rise again of the Cinerama Theater -- goes back before Allen was born, and is a reflection of the meandering currents that have shaped the history of American motion picture exhibition in the postwar era.
Cinerama -- the process, not the theater -- was born in 1952 with the New York debut of "This is Cinerama," a thrill-packed travelogue that joined three separate images from three different 35 mm projectors to create a single image on one giant screen, curved at a 165-degree angle.
Originally developed by a member of the Paramount special-effects department, the process actually debuted at the 1939 World's Fair, but it wasn't until the threat of television panicked Hollywood in the early 1950s that the company found the funding it needed to get down to serious business.
It was a smash success, the three images blending together to give an illusion of vastness and depth that no previous wide-screen process had come close to achieving. Within a few years, Cinerama had a system operating in an existing movie palace in almost every major city in America.
Through the '50s, even as Fox's single-lens Cinemascope became the industry standard for wide-screen, Cinerama thrived as a sort of carnival attraction, a precursor to Imax, showing big-screen travelogues like "Cinerama Holiday" and "Seven Wonders of the World."
Then, in the early 1960s, the decision of MGM and Cinerama to co-produce two big-budget narrative films in the process inspired a number of exhibitors to invest in a brand new Cinerama idea -- "dedicated" Cinerama theaters built from the ground up specifically to showcase the process.
The Martin theater chain of Columbus, Ga., built Seattle's 827-seat Cinerama in the Regrade at a cost of $1 million. It began construction just before the World's Fair in 1962, and opened in January 1963 with George Pal's "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm."
It was the first new downtown theater in 35 years, and was designed with both a spacious, movie-palace luxury and a futuristic sleekness that reflected the fair and the Space Needle. Originally, it had no concession stand, so no greasy popcorn or sticky soda could stain its plush red carpeting.
The second film to play the Cinerama, the epic western "How the West Was Won," was a blockbuster hit, but it also was the end of "three-panel" Cinerama. Hard-pressed MGM suddenly deemed the format too expensive to continue the partnership, and no other studio was interested.
Thus, in 1964, the company began producing epic films shot in single-lens 70 mm, but bearing the old Cinerama logo, and designed to fit the specially curved Cinerama screen: films like "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," "Grand Prix," "Khartoum," "Ice Station Zebra" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."
By the early 1970s, these single-lens Cinerama films -- most of them deluxe, hard-ticket, "road show" releases -- were also deemed too expensive to produce, especially when Cinerama's rivals began blowing up standard 35 mm film to 70 mm and passing it off as the real thing.
In 1978, the Cinerama Co. liquidated and vanished from the movie scene. But Seattle's Cinerama Theater survived as the city's prime venue for big-screen Hollywood epics. Even though the curved screen tended to distort the image at the corners, audiences loved the place.
For several generations of moviegoers, the Cinerama was the theater for a big date or special outing. Something about its convenient Regrade location, its plush seats, its wide legroom, its perfect sightlines, its awesome floor-to-ceiling screen, and its Space-Age-moderne décor was . . . well, magical.
The late Bob Bond of Sterling Recreation Organization, the local theater chain that acquired the Cinerama in the '60s, once said, "Every theater has its own aura, its chemistry, what the Chinese call 'feng shui.' And audiences just love the vibes of the Cinerama. It's a star among theaters. A superstar."
Through the 1980s and mid-'90s, the superstar reigned supreme. In the wake of the big boom in science fiction created by "Star Wars" in 1977, it became known as Seattle's sci-fi showcase: the ultimate temple to appreciate "Blade Runner," "The Black Hole" or the revival of the "Star Wars" trilogy.
But when its original 35-year lease ran out in March 1997, Cineplex Odeon, which bought Sterling Recreation in 1987 -- suddenly announced it had no interest in a renewal. The economics of single-screen theaters no longer made sense and the trend was toward big downtown multiplexes.
When no other theater chain expressed interest in the lease and the owner -- Rainier Properties -- began speaking of a five-story apartment house that could be built on the site, a grass-roots preservation campaign quickly arose, led by local movie publicist Janet Wainwright.
For the next year, Cineplex Odeon continued to show films in the theater without a lease, the physical decline of the doomed facility escalated, and the "Save-the-Cinerama" campaign -- taken up by several local radio personalities and a dedicated band of volunteers -- refused to give in to the inevitable.
In March 1998, one of the group's petitions caught the eye of Allen, who had stopped by his local video store to buy some DVDs (digital versatile discs). With many fond memories of the Cinerama, he signed the petition, then, a week later, bought the theater for $3.75 million.
When it finally reopens on April 23, the new Cinerama will be a big step forward into the new era of movie exhibition, with the world's first "active" movie posters, a breakthrough sound system, acoustics to rival any symphony hall in the world, and capacity for digital or "filmless" cinema.
But what is perhaps even more impressive is the theater's dedication to its own past -- including a lavish interior redecoration so faithful to the original's space-chic motif that the concession stand actually uses specially designed, '60s-style popcorn and soft-drink containers.
Best of all, the restoration has gone to enormous lengths to preserve the theater's most famous feature, its giant, curved screen, which will stand behind a new "flat" screen (more suitable for current films), but can be exposed for revival screenings of the great films of the Cinerama past.
By early next year, the theater will restore the two side projection booths and replace the old three-projector system, so it will be one of only three theaters in the world capable of showing the old three-panel Cinerama films of the '50s and early '60s.
Exactly what place the new Cinerama will occupy in the movie firmament of the new century is, at this point, hard to predict. It'll be booked and managed by Boston-based General Cinema Corp., America's largest movie theater chain, and ticket prices will be comparable to the other downtown houses.
With its past reputation and its many new innovations, it will likely resume its former position as the special place to see a special movie in Seattle -- to the point that getting in could be tough. What die-hard fan would want to see "Star Wars: Episode One" anywhere else?
But Allen clearly wants his theater to be more than another downtown screen. His contract with General Cinema allows him a stretch of days for his personal use, and he's already given the theater to the Seattle International Film Festival for the first week of its 1999 run, beginning May 13.
He's also let it be known to the restorers that he intends the theater to stay abreast of the emerging movie technology -- hence the decision to "wire" the Cinerama with the capacity for "digital cinema," even though that technology is several years from practical use.
So the theater seems destined to find its own unique place again as Seattle's ultimate movie showplace, as the West Coast's most deluxe revival-house for the great Cinerama and 70 mm films of Hollywood past, and as America's ongoing, prototype cinema for the new millennium.
Why it's the best
Ten reasons Seattle's newly restored Cinerama Theater can lay claim to being the most user-friendly, technically advanced, state-of-the-art movie house in the world:
The first "active" movie posters, a quartet (two in the lobby, two outside facing the street) of 42-inch-tall plasma screens that can display both old-fashioned static one-sheets and multimedia film trailers combining sound, music and high-resolution video.
Full capability for Electronic Cinema, a pioneering new image-delivery technology that will eventually feed digitized motion pictures directly to projectors via disk or fiber-optic cable -- making celluloid film obsolete.
A "breakthrough" digital sound system designed by noted consultant Neil Grant to deliver "the richest motion-picture surround experience in the world," plus a second, old-fashioned analog sound system that can be used for accurate presentations of Cinerama classics.
Acoustics to "rival any symphony hall in the world," making use of special building materials, air diffusers, a series of computer-designed sound baffles, and a revolutionary sound-wave-shaped ceiling, the first of its kind in the country.
Rear-window captioning and assistive-listening devices for the hard of hearing, audio narration devices for the blind and seeing impaired, removable wide seats for the obese, and wheelchair access to seemingly every inch of the space -- even the projection booth.
Two box offices, one at the Fourth Avenue entrance, another in the alley off Lenora Street. (Ironically, replacing the theater-claim-to-fame that Seattle lost when its Embassy Theater at Third Avenue and Union Street -- the only two-box-office theater on the West Coast -- closed in the early 1990s.)
A theater store that will sell movie memorabilia, soundtracks and perhaps the equivalent of the old slick souvenir programs that were regularly sold at roadshow engagements of films like "The Greatest Story Ever Told," and "How the West Was Won."
Seattle's first outside digital marquee, replacing the former marquee that wrapped around the corner of Fourth Avenue and Lenora Street. It runs along a new extension of the eave on the Lenora Street side designed to protect the queue from the elements.
An adjustable screen system -- a modern "flat" screen for contemporary films that can be dismantled in eight hours to reveal a huge, curved, early 1960s-style Cinerama screen for revivals of both three-panel and single-lens Cinerama movies.
A dedication to the vanishing, single-screen-moviegoing-experience in all its glory. No lines to get in the tiny auditoriums down the hall. No gourmet restaurant food or alcoholic beverages served. No noisy video games polluting the lobby.
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