Goodbye Granville Cinema, Your Death Is Telling

The news that the Empire Granville 7 Theatre will close its doors on Nov. 4, 2012 didn't come as a surprise to many folk in the film world. The place has been slowly falling to pieces for years. Anyone who has ever spent much time in the theatre or talked to the people who worked there knew it was simply a matter of when. The place was unloved and unlovely most days, except, of course, for when the festivals were in the house.

The Granville 7 has principally been the home of the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) for the previous 11 years, but it also regularly hosted a plethora of other smaller events including the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival (VLAFF), The Queer Film Festival, DOXA and many others. After wrapping up a screening there last spring with DOXA, we humped equipment through one of the theatres and out into the back alley, watched by a solitary cinema-goer sitting in the twilight, entirely alone amidst row upon row of purple seats. According to the manager this was not an uncommon occurrence. The average attendance in the entire place often barely cracked double digits some days.

Even though the news of the theatre's demise wasn't unexpected, it still caused me a bolt of sadness. The place has seen some action-packed screenings lo, these many years, whether it's the Latin American community whooping up a hullabaloo at VLAFF's opening and closing films this year, or the happy men and women and transgendered folk at Out on Screen feeling their power in one giant room. The connection and solidarity of a community coming together to see themselves reflected back on the silver screen is simply a beautiful thing. The Granville's passing for that reason alone should be duly marked and mourned. It wasn't the greatest place to show a film, but it was cheap to rent, easily accessible and accommodating to people of all stripes, spots and polka dots. I have enjoyed many moments large and small and cinematic in many different ways in its green and purple expanse. Goodbye, old soldier.

Emotions aside, the demise of the place is not good news for anyone in the festival world. The one thing that the Granville 7 had was multiple mid-sized theatres, the ideal size for screenings of festival fare. For larger festivals like VIFF, the loss of the place means no more downtown hub for its audience. The critical mass and momentum, not to mention ease of one large central venue, won't be easily replicated in any other place. What future iterations of VIFF will look like only time will tell, but it will not be the same. Granville Street can revert permanently into the domain of girls in no pants and teetering heels, street kids from Quebec, and puddles of vomit. It's not that I have any great love for the downtown strip itself, but I will miss seeing crowds of people wandering up and down Granville, clutching their program guides and looking for a place to grab a bite to eat and a quick drink before the next show.

This has always been one of the trump cards played by any large festival event, namely that the economic spinoffs to the downtown core are considerable and valuable. The influx of cash from festival patrons represents a boost to restaurants, hotels and taxi services. All those people needing to be fed, entertained and shepherded about during the festival equates with equally large amounts of money to do just that. The economic surge in Vancouver is no different than any other large event. In Austin, Texas, the amount of money spent during the SXSW festival is in the neighbourhood of $190 million, according to a recent article in the Statesman. The piece cites a recent study undertaken that revealed SXSW as the "single most profitable event for the City of Austin's hospitality industry. This year, it was responsible for more than 11,000 reservations accounting for 50,000-plus total room nights at Austin-area hotels, up 13 per cent over 2011, according to the report... Austin alone holds the unique advantage of hosting a global annual audience that perpetuates the region's reputation as supportive of the film, music, and technology industries."

A lot of that SXSW cash is beer money perhaps, but even the significant economic spinoffs of a large festival like VIFF are not sufficiently big enough to keep the doors of the movie theatres in Vancouver open. The demise of the city's cinemas that have closed one after the other, the most recent ones in rapid succession, is remarkable and a little frightening. The Denman, the Hollywood, Oakridge, and soon the once mighty Ridge will be gone, leaving old faded memories and in the case of the Ridge, a gigantic red metal sign. The Granville 7 is only the newest addition to the heap of dead and vanished.

Hollywood's thin gruel

The logical question might seem, "Why does no one go the movies anymore? But of course they do, just not in the numbers that they once did. So why is that you may ask?"

Personally, I blame the corporations. Not just developers who would turn the city's urban centre into one enormous condominium development, but Hollywood itself. The suits that run the place should shoulder some of the responsibility for diminishing returns, in all senses of the term. With the exception of a few notable films like The Master and a whole swath of documentaries (if you haven't seen Searching for Sugarman yet, go as soon as is humanly possible, you won't be disappointed) it is pretty thin gruel in mainstream theatres at the moment.  

Occasionally I find it downright shocking, the average shabbiness, stupidity and plain old-fashioned bad filmmaking on evidence in the theatres. There is simply little reason to go to see films in theatres. It's expensive, obnoxious and I'm old and tired. I would rather stay home in my robe and slippers with a gin and tonic and watch HBO instead. 

I recently had a conversation with a young woman who works in the film world and she said, quite reasonably, that if you were young and poor you couldn't afford an evening at the movies that often, that even a $14 dollar ticket was prohibitive for the young folk. In the same breath she was astounded that there weren't more people at VIFF festival screenings. "These films are so good," she said. "Where is everyone?"

I didn't have an answer. It isn't that there aren't absolutely stunning films in the world; sometimes it is remarkable how many great films are actually being made every year. Amazing, incredible and profound pieces of cinematic artfulness are out there; you simply won't see them in a theatre like the Scotiabank, a venue that does more box office than the rest of the downtown theatres combined. Every time I go there I end up hating humanity and myself. Maybe it's the Burger King mentality of plastic cups, garbage, dumbness and Kevin James, but the consequence of all that loathing is that I don't go there very often. Lots of other folk are apparently having a similar experience as cinema attendance reached a record 25-year low in 2011. This past summer, attendance again dipped precipitously, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"What the hell?" one might well ask. 

I recently watched a film called Casting By about casting director Marion Dougherty who was responsible for some of the most remarkable cinematic pairings of all time, including Paul Newman and Robert Redford as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman as Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy. A tough-talking dame of the New York School, Dougherty's legendary instincts and equally legendary generosity and kindness essentially created the role of casting director, and gained an onscreen credit for their work. But even after a career that featured working with the likes of Dustin Hoffman, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Clint Eastwood, Bette Midler and Robert Redford, as well as being appointed the first-ever female vice president at Paramount, Marion was given the boot via a story in Variety. Hollywood eats its own, and it especially eats its old. In the film Dougherty is philosophical but pulls no punches in assigning blame for the sea change in Hollywood, name checking the corporate takeover as the principal reason for dwindling filmmaking fortunes.

My point in citing the story of Dougherty is that her career parallels the decline and fall of the Hollywood empire. When it becomes a matter of corporate profit, not human skill, the heart and soul of the thing dies.

The economics of movie theatres might not make sense in terms of profit margins, but that does not mean they lack inherent value. The Granville Cinema was a home for all films and all people -- gay, straight, all colours and nationalities -- not just those who find themselves in the middle of the vanilla flavoured mainstream. 

I will miss it.