Cinematical

In the Sun Times, Roger Ebert talks about the changing (or, more accurately, changed) crop of movie theaters in his beloved Chicago: "Just for the sake of nostalgia," he writes, "Let me name the theaters I remember: the Chicago, State-Lake, Oriental, Roosevelt, United Artists, Woods, McVickers, Clark, Monroe, Michael Todd, Cinestage, World Playhouse, Loop, Bismarck Palace and, oh, a place called the Shangri-La that materialized out of a Chinese restaurant, showed some porn and disappeared." Those were all in the downtown loop alone; as he points out, the only place to currently see movies in the Loop is at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's newish Gene Siskel Film Center. The movie theaters have been largely replaced by "legit" theaters, and moviegoing has moved uptown.

It may not be what it once was, but I have great memories of seeing movies in Chicago. In fact, I often think of moving back there just for the movie theaters alone. I guess I should stop that sort of dreaming, because it looks like most of what I loved as recently as five years ago no longer exists.


I moved to the city in 1998 to start my BFA at SAIC, and for the year that I lived downtown, SAIC's Film Center, which at that point wasn't named after the still-living Siskel and was still part of the original building attached to the museum, was my second home. It was there that I first saw Metropolis, Balthazar, and Red Desert (it was also there that I should have been attending a lecture on ancient architecture every Monday morning, but for some reason my memories of that are less than clear).

Further down on Michigan Avenue was the Fine Arts, which is now closed. Housed inside the ancient Studebaker Building, it was a marvel of twinkly lights and crumbly Beaux-Arts ornamentation. I saw julien donkey-boy there in 1999, and Dancer in the Dark in 2000, and I can't imagine a better frame for both films' pixel-painted aesthetic. (I also shot one of my first rolls of color 16mm film in their bathroom, but let's not talk about that).

But my fondest memories of Chicago moviegoing took place at the Logan. The summer of 2000, I moved into this beautiful apartment on Palmer Square. It was huge and cheap, and it had beautiful built in art deco fixtures and dark wood moulding. It also lacked air conditioning, was too far away from the train to make going downtown worthwile, and was overrun with cockroaches. So I was sort of forced to spend a lot of time exploring the neighborhood. There were yuppies and dogs on Palmer Square itself, but at that point the general neighborhood was still somewhat ungentrified, and there was little to do but browse the discount furniture stores on Milwaukee and go to the movies. The Logan showed mostly recent second-runs (I saw Erin Brockovich two months after its release), but occasionally they'd program children's series, with stuff like The Nightmare Before Christmas  and Mary Poppins. All shows were $2, and popcorn (the best I ever tasted) was another dollar. The Logan theater saved my life that summer, and from what I hear, it's still there. Maybe a move back to Chicago wouldn't be such a bad idea after all...