#Movie theaters in 1999 nextime movie#

It was like you wouldnвЂ™t even find anything like that today.Д®very movie was a spectacle that couldnвЂ™t be recreated anywhere else.Д«ack then, studios and theaters had a business arrangement where if a theater had a certain movie, nobody else in the area could play it.

Yeah, we had, I want to say, somewhere between 12 seats. Ted MundorffвЂ™s first job was at a single-screen movie palace in the San Francisco suburbs in 1969. Well, yeah, I started out as an usher, and you never left the auditorium, so whatever movie was playing, you knew every line, every inflection that the director intended. To see a movie at the time was to have an usher in a tuxedo hand you a printed program before guiding you to your seat. The 1960s was the era of huge studio epics.ДЄnd the theaters got bigger and more luxurious, as well.

#Movie theaters in 1999 nextime tv#

The peak of moviegoing in this country was the 1940s, when there really wasnвЂ™t another game in town, besidesвЂ¦ I donвЂ™t know, newspapers?ДЄnd then television came along, the TV dinner вЂ™50s.ДЄs television kept viewers at home, movies competed by becoming more spectacular. The kinds of movies we watch has always been tied up with how we watch them and where. The rise of the megaplex is pretty recent, but itвЂ™s part of a pattern. TheyвЂ™re easy to dismiss as a tacky вЂ™90s invention, but megaplexes, and specifically this one in Dallas, upended the entire theater business, and even changed the kinds of movies that got made in ways you might not imagine. You know the kind вЂ“ the gigantic, neon, big-box stores of moviegoing. Built in 1995, it was the first of its kind, the first movie megaplex in the U.S. What Chancler had discovered there, in the suburban sprawl of Dallas, was the AMC Grand 24. Why are we not doing this at the other place? It was like, oh, this is whatвЂ™s going on. In fact, he would get off of work at his job where he saw movies for free, and drive 40 minutes across town to pay for movies at this new place. They made it feel like that all throughout.Д¬hancler could not believe how much better this theater was than the one where he worked. ThatвЂ™s like the closest you get to Hollywood. So yeah, first time pulling up to that, itвЂ™s just like, вЂњWow.вЂќ Especially growing up in Dallas when youвЂ™re not around Hollywood stuff or anything like that. You know how a Walmart or a SamвЂ™s Club looks from the freeway? No one ever says they canвЂ™t find it. This is reporter Ryan Kailath with the story of this intriguing new theater.Д¬hancler jumped in the car and drove downtown, and then past downtown - past the business district, past the hospitals, past the strip malls with the car dealerships, and finally down one of those long, empty roads that seems to anticipate suburbs that donвЂ™t exist yet. It was a very tiny, semi-raggedy theater, but in the raggedy way thatвЂ™s endearing, where itвЂ™s like the soundвЂ™s coming from one speakerвЂ¦Д«ut one day Chancler heard about a new kind of theater, on the other side of town. The auditoriums were cramped and narrow, the screen was dim. Theaters in the early вЂ™90s, they werenвЂ™t usually all that nice, and ChanclerвЂ™s was no exception. You donвЂ™t know that person, but youвЂ™re sitting there laughing with them and having a good time. You donвЂ™t know any of the people in that room, but youвЂ™re all on a common ground of how hilarious a scene is, or how scary the scene is, or how awesome it is to see Jackie Chan jump through a ladder. Man, Fridays and Saturday nights were my favorite. So he would go back to work on his days off and watch the same movies over again with a crowd вЂ“ the more packed, the better. When new prints came in, Chancler would watch them all the way through for hiccups and errors, staying late, alone in the auditorium, but what he really loved was to see movies with other people. I think I was nine or 10 when I knew I wanted to work at a movie theater, but I couldnвЂ™t actually do it until I was, I donвЂ™t know, 14 or 15 is when they start letting people have jobs.Д¬hancler became a projectionist, which if you love movies, is a dream job. I mean, if I had a вЂnothing to do Saturday,вЂ™ which was often, I would see at least three or four movies a day, for sure. Favorite pastime was to go to the movies. In a world known as the 1990s, Chancler Haynes was a skinny kid in Dallas, the new kid at school, and he loved going to the movies.