WANTED: An Indie Art House for Indy

So, after a brief intermission....


A little something has been on my mind for a while now.  I live in Indianapolis, and I've lived here for most of my life.  All in all, things are much better here now than in the past.  This is not the city with a downtown that more or less shut down when the sun set; we now have so many good restaurants that choosing which one to go to can take a while; and there are many cool, interesting and worthy-sounding events taking place here (on a fairly regular basis, even)... so many, in fact, that there have been more than a few occasions lately when I've been seriously torn over what to do with my free time.

But we're still missing something here.

For all the choice and variety on the arts and cultural front, our movie scene (if it can even be described as such) is seriously lacking a key component.  Yes, the Keystone Art Cinema is here, and I'm glad that it shows the art house/limited release films that it does.  And yes, we're fortunate to have Manoranjaninc bringing films from India (and- every great once in a while- elsewhere) to the Georgetown 14.  And yes, the Georgetown 14 also occasionally shows a non-Indian film that you can't see elsewhere in town, and the IMAX theater downtown shows movies (including the occasional local production) that you can't see at any other venue in town.  And yes, a few other theaters in and around the city (mostly AMC's Castleton Square 14 and Washington Square 12, GQTI's Hamilton 16 and IMAX,and Rave's Metropolis 18) help break the monotony every great once in a while by showing a movie that isn't showing on hundreds and thousands of other screens across the country.  I'm also very grateful for the Indianapolis International Film Festival, the Heartland Film Festival, the Indianapolis Museum of Art's film screenings, the series of films presented by Eric Grayson at the Garfield Park Performing Arts Center, and every other person and group working to bring movies (whether new and unlikely to show in the city otherwise, or old and extremely unlikely to be seen on a local large screen otherwise) to our fair city.

 And yet, and yet.... Ever since the Key Cinemas shut down several years ago, we've definitely been missing a piece of the puzzle.  Smaller, less-commercial art films are very rare at the Keystone Art Cinema, and practically non-existent elsewhere.  (We couldn't even get Polisse or Headhunters, which seem to have played at a pretty good number of other theaters across the country- sometimes in cities smaller/less populous than our own.)  Also, interesting-sounding cult/horror/psychotronic/whatever titles like Beyond the Black Rainbow, Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, Rubber, and many others that I couldn't think of in under a minute play in limited release- even if that means just midnight shows- at theaters in other cities.... but not here, dammit.  (Granted, the Movie Buff Theatre did show Hobo With a Shotgun- but that was a one-off effort, with little or no apparent advance publicity, apart from maybe an ad in NUVO.... and besides, the movie mostly sucked.)  We didn't even rate a screening of the complete/restored edition of Metropolis that came out recently- not even at the IMA; you had to drive to Bloomington to see that on a big screen.  And the mention of Bloomington reminds me that one theater there (AMC's Bloomington 11, I think) occasionally shows movies like The Viral Factor and The Hidden Face that may fall somewhere between art house and cult/psychotronic/whatever- but no AMC theater in this city showed either of those movies (or was allowed to show them by the powers-that-be way up in the AMC corporate structure). 

So what do we need?

A small theater- with two or three screens (one with as few as 20-40 seats, and another with 60 to 100+ seats, perhaps), in a part of town likely to draw enough people to keep it open.  (The late, lamented Key Cinemas were just too far of a drive from the majority of the would-be audiences for what they were showing, unfortunately- just as location, location, location doomed the lovably run-down Irving Theater in its last incarnation as a venue regularly screening films.)  I nominate Broad Ripple, since I live here- but any other place that could sustain such a theater (Fountain Square, possibly?) would do, just as long as it's within the city limits, or reasonably close.

And it wouldn't be only a theater- or at least not necessarily.  A post by Yi Lee on the Mobius Home Video Forum back in May described something that sounds very cool- something that I wished I'd dreamt up myself: "the European budget arthouse concept--a cross between a cinema, coffee shop, wine bar/pub, bookshop, and art gallery that sells tickets for under a fiver".  If only, if only.... It is entirely possible that even now, Indianapolis might not have enough hardcore film fans to sustain a standalone art house/cult house theater- but with all of the other elements added in (and maybe with the bookshop component specializing in film books, and rare/out of print cult titles- and with the possible addition of some other element, like cool/cult DVDs), this could be a success.  Not that the people backing the venture would be swimming in money or anything, but it could work.... right?

Now all I need is to find someone else out there who feels the same way- and who has enough money to back it up.

Yes, I know, you can see movies elsewhere- and (for that reason) the business of theatrical exhibition faces an uncertain future.... just like it has for many decades now, since the widespread availability of television first caused a large decline in theater attendance.  But those of us who love to see movies on big screens- and crave variety in what is available to us on those big screens- are being well-served by various venues in other cities across the country, and I think that the same sort of place can exist here in Indianapolis as well.  If not, I'll just continue to do what I have been doing in recent years- scanning the online schedules of local theaters week after week, always hoping to see other/different movies playing in or near town- and mostly just seeing the same old, same old that plays in every other city, on thousands of other screens.

A Little More

Wow- I can't believe it's been so long since my first (barely-there) post... and this one won't be much longer.  I was hoping to have several hours online this past weekend, but wound up with a fraction of that- such is life.


Anyhow, as I am a movie fan- an obsessive fan, some might say- with a special interest in obscure movies of the past, along with present-day theatrical releases that (more or less) fly under the radar, a large part of what I write about will have to do with those topics.  I also hope (somehow or other) to get at least a few movies on my "must-see" list onto a theater screen here in Indianapolis; I'll have a list of titles (with links) from that "must-see" list for my next post... whenever that may be.


Also, I'll post on other odd things out there that catch my eye, as time allows...