Movieplex Fantasy

[Recycled from 5 October 2004]

I walk up to the googolplex box office, buy my ticket, enter. My ticket says "BIJOU" in big letters, and in smaller ones it lists the title of the movie and the date and time the ticket was printed.

I walk past the concession stand, where they are selling popcorn, drinks, candy and DVDs. I walk past the various theater rooms of the plex: the Roxy, the Horus, the Venetian, on my way to the Bijou where my film is showing. Each room has a miniature marquee, with lights and gewgaws, like an old-time movie house, and each one is different. I like the marquee for the Horus, where the "R" in "Horus" is the Egyptian ouadjet or eye-of-Horus glyph. Clever.

Entering the Bijou, I see the walls hung with blue velour curtains, with silver lame fringes. The seats are upholstered in blue, and there are distinctive oval lighting fixtures spaced along them. A pair of elaborately carved pillars flanks the screen, on which is projected a picture of a blue curtain hung with silver ropes.

I know, from previous visits, that if I'd gone into the Roxy I would have found red curtains, art deco lights and gold doodads on the panels at the ends of each row of seats. In the Venetian, I would have found pale blue curtains with gold ropes, and a pair of faux marble statues flanking the screen, and so on.

Well, I think it would be fun if they did it that way. And if it were a chain operation, they could have a Bijou at every plex they build, buy the carved pillars in bulk, &c.

Even without the individualized theater rooms, I will say that the Carmike chain has done pretty well by Corvallis. The place looked pretty good when I went there with Waldy to see _Sky Captain_.

Now if only someone would reopen the Whiteside, the long-shuttered movie palace downtown.

//The Magic 8-Ball says, "A wish without action remains a wish."\\