On 06/12/2011 12:31 PM, turquoiseb wrote: > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu<noozguru@...> wrote: >> I think people just go to a movie to be going to a movie >> and many may be saying "boy that sucked" afterward. In the >> 1950's and 60's many went to see some funky sci-fi and >> horror films just to laugh at them but back then a ticket >> averaged around 70 cents. > One of the reasons I am a film freak is that during > a formative period of my life (age 14 to 18) I lived > on US Air Force bases. Each of those bases had a movie > theater, and sometimes more than one. The program > changed continuously, a different film every night. > Tickets cost a quarter. > > This cost enabled me to grow up as somewhat of a film > fanatic. If I saw a film at one of the theaters on the > base and I found that I really liked it, my immediate > response -- even then -- was to see it again, to try > to figure out WHY I liked it. And I could. All I had > to do was to go to another of the theaters on the base > and most likely it would be playing there the next > night (the films rotated nightly among the theaters). > And it would cost me all of another quarter. > > On one of the bases I lived on in Morocco, one of the > three theaters was of a type that I have never seen > since. It was a walk-in drive-in. Really. There was > no roof, just rows of concrete benches set up facing > a full-sized theater screen, flanked by good theater- > quality speakers. Behind the seats was a projection > booth and the snack bar. You'd take a blanket and > maybe some snacks or drinks of your own and watch a > first-run American movie, above you the amazing > blanket of stars that was the Moroccan sky. > > The movie-going experience has been going downhill > for me ever since. :-)
I grew up near a town with a liberal arts college and in high school I saw Fellini and other foreign films at the local theater. When I went to the U of W there was the Ridgemont in Seattle which was mostly all foreign films at the time. Then in the 1970s more theaters such as the Harvard Exit and Seven Gables chain opened showing foreign and independent films. I rarely saw a Hollywood film in the 1970s. Returning to my hometown during the 1980s another entrepreneur opened a couple of multiplexes and had at least one art house film playing in an auditorium due to the local college crowd. I saw many of the foreign and indie films of that decade there. The Bay Area had one art house in nearby Lafayette and when Century Theaters built a new multiplex in Pleasant Hill on the other side of the freeway they made the old complex a Cinearts. It is is need of remodeling but there is a rift going on between the two owners of the mall there and the south end owner where the theaters are doesn't want to remodel though the north end owner remodeled. Of course I saw a lot more indie and foreign films Berkeley when gas was cheaper. My sister and brother-in-law liked to attend Sunday matinées with me at the Elmwood where a lot of foreign films played. Of course with a large screen HD set and surround system it is much easier to see these films at home now. Plus there is a pause button. ;-)
