23-Seat Theatre Closes: Patrons Buy Big-Screen TVs
This converted railway carriage in South Wales, England, has been showing movies for over fifty years. Or rather, HAD been. Maintenance costs finally outstripped potential income from the 23 seats within, and Wales’ smallest cinema house has been shuttered for good.
The BBC gives us the small picture:
The cinema was founded by electrician Gwyn Phillips, who fell in love with the silver screen while working in local cinemas as a teenager.
He built La Charrette in his back garden and invited family and friends to screenings.
Although he died in 1996, his family continued to allow the 70-strong members to screen films there, and seven years ago Lottery funding helped pay for a new video projection system and Dolby surround sound.
The last screening - Ocean’s 13 - was followed by a compilation of clips from films shown over the last 54 years.
I love watching movies in small houses. The image can be quite sharp at that size, and it looks almost 3D. Without the need for megawatts to drive the sound through a cavernous house, your 5.1 sound effortlessly fills the room. In fact there was a 4 screen art house in Santa Cruz when I grew up, and the movie-going was magical.
This is the solution for La Charrette. Multiplex! Instead on a single 23 seat house, we need to carve it up into a couple of 5 seaters, a 6 seater and a 7 seater; the last one will be for the blockbusters. Just like with any theatre, this will spread the risk around. Say you have only one big hit. 12 people show up for it, but 5 get turned away, and they buy tickets for the bomb in the next compartment rather than trudge home in the cold Welsh fog.
If four screens is good, maybe 11 is better. Then again, there would surely be trouble as local teens pursue their hormonal agendae, alone in a two seat auditorium. So here is the answer: 23 single seat houses. We turn the car on its end, install video iPods and load the patrons in like torpedoes.
Attention Phillips family! If you’re reading this, you got an investor. Especially if I can wrangle a bulk rate on the iPods.
-daniel k.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Judging by the picture, the owners even got the Welsh equivalent of ADA compliance in place, with a spiffy ramp. They tried hard to get seats filled: darn kids and their you-tubers and their Haloes part 3. Oughta be a law.
Apropos of closed theatres, I drove up Geary a few days ago and the UA Coronet, the 1200-seat sister movie house to the Rio, was completely demolished. Nothing but weeds in a flat vacant lot. I guess being built in 1949 won’t save ‘em.
October 30th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Ah, the Coronet. Saw Star Wars there in it’s second week. Waited in line hours for a weekday afternoon matinee, completely sold out, an usher on every aisle. That will never happen again.