Editor's Note: This is the third edition of “Second Helpings,” or St. Louis experiences enjoyed by our blogger for a second time. Check back each Wednesday in January for a new installment.
For those of us without a direct, rooting interest in the future of the Granite City Cinema, the decision to build the three-screen venue in the first place was a curious, but exciting one. Flush with some downtown development funds, Granite City recently went against every current cultural assumption in funding a moviehouse, meant to help economically stimulate that key part of town.
Old-fashioned, brick-and-mortar movie theatres, after all, have been assumed a goner for decades. When homes were first air-conditioned, the summer-afternoon-at-the-movies pattern went away for many. When color TV rolled into being, another strike was registered against them. Ditto, the arrival of cable TV. The advent of Betamax and VHS tapes, followed by DVDs and Blu-Ray. The digital delivery of films via iTunes and Netflix. You name it, the advances of technology over the past 50 years have all predicted the moviehouse as a thing of the past. For a struggling municipality to invest in one of these as a bonding agent for its downtown... well, you just have to love this kind of mixture of crazy and bold.
As it’s "Second Helpings" month, we revisited the Granite City Cinema this past week, the night before the first real snowfall of the season. Maybe it was the threat of ill weather that kept attendance low, or maybe a Wednesday night at the GCC is generally a quiet experience, especially with new movies coming on Friday. Two teenaged girls made up the entire front-of-house crew and they even seemed to have time on their hands. In theatre one, about a dozen people gathered to take in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. (What a lamentable choice! Oof! Should’ve seen Alvin, Simon and Theodore in Chipwrecked.) After a single preview for the also-showing Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, the night’s feature presentation ran. For two hours, the dozen of us enjoyed life in a time-tested context of catching a flick.
Here’s what’s especially interesting, though, about the Granite City Cinema in 2012: It’s not just a referendum on whether people still enjoy a night at the show. It’s part of a bigger context, one that morphs and melds all types of civic, political, and cultural conversations. Many of those are hinted at in the Suburban Journals story “City’s plans for cinema will cater to residents.” The piece details the recent changes to the GCC, which have included Granite City taking on the day-to-day operations as of January 1, removing the contractual status bestowed on St. Louis Cinemas and its longtime local theatrical booker Harman Moseley. Theatre managers Lanny Mann and Travis Cape will remain, but will now be paid by the town, rather than the local mini-chain, which helped open the place in August, 2010.
And here’s where we’ll try to make a mountain out of a molehill, er... connect the micro elements of this story to macro, societal trends.
Chains: STL Cinemas operates three houses on the western side of the river, including the screens at the Moolah, the Galleria, and the Chase. One would assume that working with a chain, even a small one, would give some certain advantages to Granite City Cinema. Mann and Cape can shrortly prove that their own contacts and the general trends of first-run titles will be enough to cover any gap.
Churches: According to Granite City mayor Ed Hagnauer, a local church group wanted to use the facility for Sunday night services. This might seem quirky, but on an exurban ring around St. Louis, many, many independent or fledgling churches rent space at hotels, banquet centers, and from other churches, oftentimes running fairly sophisticated audio-visual programs in their services. If you’re not around such services as a matter of course, their proliferation’s a bit of an eye-opener.
Development: Libertarians might flip out at the mere thought of a city taking on the operations of a theatre, instead of simply concentrating on the essentials of city services, like trash removal, road repairs, and policing. In this deep already, it’s obvious that the $15,000 in annual savings that Granite City is claiming in the new arrangement is plenty enough to tackle this decidely non-essential service.
Tastes: Mayor Hagnauer indicates that “there are certain movies that aren’t going to go in Granite.” This one’s interesting, in that it implies that a Granite audience is distinct from a St. Louis Cinema audience. Did the place become an art house, without anyone knowing? Well, I watched Bridesmaids there this summer, on a day when Thor was on another screen. Pretty mainstream fare. But the inference is clear: Locals know what locals want to see, and Hagnauer’s comment suggests that the common denominator reading set is to a permanent “lowest.” Just say “no” to subtitles!
Tell you what, there is a lot to like about the Granite City Cinema. It’s new and clean. It’s relatively central, located as close to, say, the city as a lot of other moviehouses. A Wednesday night ticket only cost $7.50, a decent deal in today’s cinematic economy. There’s also something cool about young people having a place to work and socialize, and moviehouses are as all-American as it gets on that front.
Here’s hoping the for a successful transition for the cinema’s workers and namesake town.
