The following represents a closer example of the writers voice, but it is also unpolished. It includes the accompanying video that shows footage of the demolishing of the cinema described in the article.
“The death of cinema” is a term that is thrown around quite often. British director Peter Greenaway said it came with the invention of the remote control (1983). Susan Sontag suggested it had died in her article "A Century of Cinema" (1995). Many cinephiles believe it died with the invention of video or at least when it completely took over cinemas.
For me cinema died today. Not with any conversion or transition of our beloved images, but with the erasure of my first movie palace. The Park Theatre, in Menlo Park, California, was 66 years old when the property owner decided it should be flattened and turned into office buildings. That might not seem very old, but for California architecture that is ample time especially considering the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.
Progress is haunting. In one regard things change for the better. Technology advances to make things easier, cheaper and more accessible, but not always. Sometimes progress squashes beauty. To what extent do we let progress determine our lives? This was a question that spun around my head 11 years ago when the Park first closed it’s doors as a cinema to the public and now the wound has reopened and flows with blood once more.
Situations like this really make me wonder if the invisible decisions made by our current form of economy are really in line with our values. When the pursuit of profit goes before culture, history and community it loses purpose. Environment is a beast of a topic. Books and artwork are archived. Human lives are protected. Buildings are quite different. With property, or more specifically, buildings it is the owner that decides the fate. A building, like a painting, can be protected, but this involves an active city council, experts and an interested community. If someone possesses property of historic significance that they do not appreciate then why do they bother owning it?
The Dorothy Chandler Pavillion is only 50 years old and yet the Los Angeles Conservancy chose it to be apart of their Last Remaining Seats film series to recognize it’s historic significance. The Park is it’s senior by 16 years and it left without a whisper. However it was brilliantly orchestrated by the owner, Howard Crittenden. Almost mysteriously so for me. Eleven years ago he closed it’s doors to the protests of Landmark Theatres, who ran the cinema, and a few local residents. I left for college to New York and later Los Angeles. Upon my return to the Bay Area and after so many had forgotten and so much neglect to the building Mr. Crittenden decided to destroy the Park. A completely unintended last laugh.
“In a critique of the lamentable state of American cities, there can be no appeal to the nostalgia for lost traditions and ways of life; our appeal can be only to the future. This should not necessarily excite optimism.” - James Brook (“Remarks on the Poetic Transformation of San Francisco”)
In an essay on the development and short history of US cities, San Francisco in particular, Mr. Brook makes reference to a man named Nicholas Calas a European writer who immigrated to New York City in the 1940’s. Having come from the old world with endless history in the walls of buildings and the floor beneath his feet he couldn’t stop writing about how bizarre of a hogpog construction that was the Big Apple. A city that came from nowhere and grew not from history, culture or organic construction, but from market flow. In many ways Calas was correct that in 1940 New York was still quite young and San Francisco even younger. Buildings and places develop their true characters only after their initial purpose has waned.
In previous times humankind's constructions were made to outlive their makers as a way to personify the power and creation of that period. Now real estate developers are driven by profit, which is driven by current market trends. It is as if the moment construction is complete that a building is already a burden upon the owner for not being enough of a cash-cow. California is perpetually changing with the tides. Landmarks barely have a chance to find their true personalities before they are razed and forgotten. As Brook mentions this leaves us with only the ability to look to the future.
Calas believed that the poetry of a city could be found in the forgotten spaces and "flow" from one wondering place to the next. The accidental or intentional additions to a sidewalk that leads to a building that's followed by a path through a park. This is what I saw in the Park Theatre. After 50 years of movie goers, employees, accidents, violence and love. It was in the walls.
If enough people love something can it ever be killed?
In an age where most people are regretting the slow fade out of the medium of celluloid film, for me, this overrated argument takes a back seat to the erasure of the elegant classic movie palaces that are now on the verge of extinction. This is a thought that runs through my mind knowing that Mr. Crittenden is also the owner of the last remaining classic cinema palace in Menlo Park, the Guild; due to turn 90 in just about two years from now. Will we be lamenting the destruction of that elegant construction in ten years time?
