Movies, movies, movies.

In my recent series addressing 'What is a 'Downtown', and Why Doesn't Stoney Creek Have One', I presented the case for seeing a cinema return to King Street. For all those too young to remember, we used to have our own 'nabe'. (Neighbourhood cinema.) It was known as 'The Fox' and it was in the same building The Royal Canadian Legion has been using for the past 44 years.

The installment in the series dealing with placing a 'dinner cinema' in our downtown can be found here, but here's a summary of the part dealing with The Fox:

The Fox Cinema.

This is the jewel in the new Downtown Stoney Creek crown. This isn't merely a resurrection of the 'old' Fox name. This is a reinvention. It is a 'dinner cinema'; in the same way that 'dinner theatre' serves meals in the same venue where a production is presented, this facility allows you to watch a movie...while having a meal, a snack...or just munching on popcorn. An example is the Commodore Theatre in Portsmouth, Virginia. The Fox would bring people into the downtown, creating traffic. It would cater to various customer profiles, from retirees, to families, couples, kids for weekend matinées, as well as a venue for students of all kinds. Of course, there's always opportunities for there to be additional tenants, such as The Regent Gala Theatre, which houses post-production facilities. It fare would lean more to 'art-house' films, retrospectives, classics...with the odd mainstream delight thrown in for good measure.

I've had people ask me why there aren't any cinemas left in the area east of Jackson Square, south of the Cineplex Silvercity Hamilton Mountain. I have an answer prepared, because I sat down and wrote one out when The Century was demolished earlier this year. So without further ado, here's a pretty through explanation. (Not that any of this means that what I'm proposing couldn't happen. With the right approach -namely, mine- Downtown Stoney Creek could see a cinema again.)

The Fall of The Century: ‘Why?’, The Cinema History Factor

In light of the brouhaha over The Century’s demise (as I type these words, its bricks are being separated and sent tumbling to the ground), I believe some deeper reflection is in order. Not so much to further process the sadness of losing one of Hamilton’s remaining historical theatres/cinemas, but rather to assemble and consider a more accurate set of facts –this time from the general cinema history category– so that we can better answer the question ‘Why did The Century fall?’ Because often, and certainly in this instance, concentrating on the small picture –Hamilton’s lack of direction regarding the downtown, lax by-law enforcement, suspect property owner motivations– prevents us from appreciating the big picture, such as other, bigger-than-Hamilton contributing factors. (If in fact ‘understanding’ is what you’re craving...and not just another excuse to get righteous and feel you’re living a valid existence. Whoops; I think I just dripped some sarcasm all down my shirt.)

Appropriately, given that we’re examining history and heritage, let’s go back in time.

It’s 1940. Hamilton’s population is about 170,000, taking into account a retroactive regional amalgamation. We’re in the arguable ‘heyday’ of moviegoing. The cinematic landscape of Hamilton is broad and deep. Its largest auditorium, its premier ‘cinema palace’ is aptly named: The Palace. It seats well over 3,000. The Capitol, several doors down King Street, 2000-plus. There are others, of course: The Tivoli, The Savoy, The Regent, The Royal, The Grenada, The Strand and The Westdale, amongst others. These ‘others’ of course, include The Century.

During this era, the average North American goes to their local cinemas roughly thirty times a year. (Allow me to indulge myself here and submit that this figure can be adjusted for those people who don’t see any movies ever –both the elderly and the very young– to approach a ‘once a week’ figure.) Importantly, all of Hollywood’s revenues from its product comes from cinema receipts alone. One hundred percent. If you wanted to take in a movie, going to the cinema was your only option.

Moreover, going to the cinema was it, entertainment-wise. Yes, there was the theatre. Yes, there were restaurants, dances, sporting events and other options. But a night at the pictures, the movie-house, a silver-screen date...it was a big deal, a foundation of people's social lives. Going out to the flicks was an event. Movie-houses were packed on the weekend, and matinées had far more appeal than they do today. Which is why there were so many truly amazing cinemas built from 1925-1935 the world over. To properly understand the cachet that films had back then, Google the box office figures for the most popular films of this era. When inflation is factored in, the results are truly astonishing. Or check out YouTube for videos of New York City, showing cinemas strung together, busier than beehives, people flocking to their local palace or nabe. An amazing world. But that world no longer exists.

Let’s return to Hamilton in 2010. Its regional population has tripled to over 500,000. And the cinema-going landscape? Well, the options below the Escarpment are The Empire Cinemas at Jackson Square (six screens)...and The Westdale. That’s it. Above? Two Cineplex SilverCity multiplexes containing a total of 18 screens (at the peripheries of the city), and The Movie Palace at the Mountain brow.

Other changes are substantial. The average North American now goes to the cinema about six times a year. Most of his or her viewings of film are experienced on screens of another type entirely: television, home projection, computer, iPod. Cinema receipts now only account for between ten and twelve percent of Hollywood’s revenues. Yeah, I know; that’s an unbelievable stat, incongruous when you consider that ‘Box Office Numbers’ may as well be a popular game, the extent to which people drool over them on message boards. The rest, the overwhelming majority of revenues generated by the medium? Broadcast rights for television and DVD sales. In fact, it’s quite possible that when simultaneous releases arrive (when a film will be released at the cinema, available for online download and rental at the exact same time), this figure could eventually go as low as five percent.

In Hamilton, there only one single-screen cinema now exists, a contemporary of The Century, albeit a much younger one: The Westdale. In the downtown, where there used to be enough cinemas to require two hands with which to count them, again only one remains, the aforementioned multiplex of six.

What happened?

Many things, but in the name of brevity, these factors, in chronological order:

The breakup of the production and distribution monopolies.

Television.

The blockbuster release.

The VCR.

Multiple-screen cinemas. The ‘multiplex’.

The DVD.

When the monopolies were dissolved (it used to be that studios owned their own cinemas, exerting complete control over their product from conception to exhibition), the game changed. Additionally, the first death-knell of the single-screen movie palace (such as The Century) was sounded. On another front entirely from the moment television appeared, the very paradigm of entertainment began to shift. No longer did you have to go outside the home to get your visual kicks. And with the advent of the ‘blockbuster’ in the mid-70s, studios began rethinking how and when they produced films, rejigging the very strategies of the business.

By 1980, Hollywood’s receipts from cinemas (again, in relation to the entire revenue pie) were down to fifty-five percent of the total, thanks to the VCR and its cassettes as well as television broadcast rights. By 1985, this figure was twenty-five percent. To pound the truth home regarding the final item in our list: in 1997, DVD sales were zero; by 2002, they accounted for over ten billion dollars. (It’s important to note that Hollywood doesn’t care where it gets its revenue from. They no longer own the cinemas, so they don’t care how the revenue stream is comprised, only that it continues to grow. While this is germane to the discussion at hand, it’s nevertheless another one entirely.)

While all of the above was unfolding, film exhibition companies in Canada such as Famous Players and Cineplex-Odeon cut their costs to the bone: single-screen cinemas were closed, replaced with multi-screen facilities...or not replaced at all. As first the VCR and then DVDs had hit the market, people had begun ‘cocooning’, staying home rather than taking the time –and spending the money– to go out, viewing films at their convenience, relishing the power to press 'Pause'.

So although many people curse the companies that decimated the movie-going landscape with their restructuring and closures, here’s a generally unspoken truth: if you’ve rented a VHS or DVD movie along the way, if you’ve watched a broadcast of a film, if you’ve gone the Pay-Per-View route, if you’ve purchased movies to add to your library...then you’re part of the reason that the film business changed, you contributed to the situation that finds single-screen movie palaces a rarity, and you’re complicit in the loss of fine structures such as...The Century.

And here’s something else, another component rarely considered: the very idea of being in a huge auditorium with other people, having a communal experience had gradually lost its appeal, its lustre reduced substantially over the decades. With so much unfolding ‘out there’ in the world, a movie screen’s power in delivering larger-than-life entertainment lessened with each passing year: World War 2. The Cold War. Korea, Vietnam, a president’s assassination, moon landings, the oil crisis, a recession, personal computers, mobile phones, the Internet...and on and on and on and on. Certainly, spectacle still sold tickets, but as the world had changed, so had the way in which people saw it...and how they viewed their entertainment. Literally. Indeed, individualism and a certain paradoxical insularism (the World Wide Web and all its wonders be damned) rule the day now, not the ‘shared’ experience. (And to think that the Walkman may have been the initial culprit in these escalating ‘death by 1000 cuts’ infractions.)

Within the past three decades, five major cinemas existed in downtown Hamilton. With a combined seating capacity of over 8,000. (I’m not saying they were being used to capacity.) Today? The Jackson Square facility has less than a quarter of that number. 1973 proved to be a pivotal year in Hamilton. Both The Capitol and The Palace movie palaces were demolished that year, while The Odeon (twin-screened) opened just down the street, as did Jackson Square Famous Players twin-screens. In less than two decades, The Tivoli and The Century would join The Odeon in mothballs. Hamilton suffered horribly from the film exhibition business shakeups, the downsizing by both Cineplex-Odeon and Famous Players, in combination with the general downturn of the economy, especially when considering the steel industry’s travails. A refocusing of development attention from the downtown to the peripheral areas surely didn’t help.

So. In response to ‘Why did The Century fall?’, insofar as the cinema-related reasons go, the answer to me seems like it was a ‘perfect storm’ of circumstances: unpredictably changing entertainment habits in concert with powerful, ever-rising-stakes business forces. We’re all at blame to one degree or another in this ‘crime’ being committed, just as those people who decided to close cinemas and then demolish them, only to have parking lots replace them, or beauty supply stores or wing ‘n beer restaurants...or condos played their parts. What’s interesting to me is that I doubt anyone here...if they’re old enough...would have changed any of their behaviour at the time to prevent these ends, even had they been warned. But then, we do live in a free-market, capitalistic democracy, where everyone casts their votes...by way of their dollars.