More thoughts on Morris Theater, its future

Del Sarlette recently suggested that I didn't cover near enough ground reminiscing about the Morris Theater. Of course I appreciate attracting his eyeballs. And anyone else's.
How will this "sequel" post do? I hope better than "Grease 2." Sid Caesar says he doesn't even remember being involved in that movie. He has chemical abuse excuses which is a convenient thing to have when you've been involved in a cimematic trainwreck.
Ah, our local cinema: Mention the Morris Theater to anyone who grew up here and I'm sure they can instantly visualize the whole place. Maybe even smell the popcorn.
Every town has some oddball artwork in a few places and the theater is an example here. There's some art off to the side on both sides of the screen that I never understood, not that I'm knocking art. Art is of course notorious for defying understanding. The fact that I'm writing about this is probably a hats-off to the theater and its artistic wrinkle.
Most of all I'm curious whether other patrons through the years have seen an apparent (to me) "face" in those colorful swishes. I have never brought this up with anyone. Maybe Mr. Sarlette has had the like impression, I don't know.
That artwork is a defining twist for our aged theater in an age in which new theaters are built in cookie cutter fashion. When I was a kid our Morris Theater seemed perfectly current and acceptable. Today I use the the word "reminisce" (as in the opening sentence) in connection with the theater, as if the past tense is appropriate. For all practical purposes it may well be.
The theater is being kept alive in "bailout" fashion - a word I used in kicking off my previous theater post. Another reader (besides Del) suggested after reading that post that my feelings were overly conflicted - that I wasn't prepared to assert whether the old theater should be kept alive.
Indeed there is a lot "conflicted" in our community now. Do we believe in lawbreaking? I hope not, but there has been such a chorus of voices coming out on behalf of those brothers in the construction industry, brothers who - let's face it - did some no no's (and by their own admission, er, confession).
We seem to at least be overly expedient in addressing that untidy subject.
Other adversity has cropped up - the Coborn's closing, to name a notable one.
The Morris newspaper has basically been cut in half in terms of the kind of content that people presumably want in a paper: interesting reading material and not piles of ready-for-the-dumpster ad circulars (with many circulars promoting out-of-town commerce).
I doubt that our print newspaper will ever be the focus of the kind of bailout that resuscitated the Morris Theater. There is no harm done keeping the theater going. As for all the paper thrust at us through the absentee-owned newspaper and its "shopper" (Ad-viser), I don't believe the same can be said, not in our new green-conscious era.
Was I too conflicted when assessing the Morris Theater recently? The Cliff's Notes version of that post might be: "The Morris Theater appears to be our only option for continuing to get current movies in town, but aesthetically it has many issues."
I would have to know the movie business better to suggest whether a better option is practical. Aesthetically the movie watching experience is superior at the First Lutheran Church movie room. This is a converted Sunday school room by comparison to our specially designed theater which came on the scene in about 1940. There was deserved fanfare at that time.
Change is befuddling. Change is fundamentally why I ended up unemployed well before I could ponder legitimate retirement. But the job market has been unkind to a great many people. The "creative destruction" process of capitalism is healthy but unnerving.
Pondering that "destruction," here's a question: Has the "twin" theater gone the way of 8-track tapes?
My impression is that theaters today fall into two categories: 1) relics like what we see in Morris and in Paynesville, the latter being a clone of our theater (without the art, I think); and 2) the multi-screen (as in 7 or 8) cineplexes. Leave it to Alexandria to have an example of the current norm.
(I saw the original Austin Powers movie at the Paynesville relic.)
Alex's Midway Cinema (fill in the number) has grown so fast I called them about three years ago because I couldn't find their website listed in a Yahoo search - a glitch that turned out to be related to their growth (with the number hiked up).
I called them for one other reason: to inquire if the movie "W," the oddball biopic about George W. Bush, was coming. It's incredible, but not all well-known movies even make it to Alexandria. When I called, I got some inside-baseball answer indicating that "W" might not make it. I believe this Oliver Stone movie never made it "out here." Despite high-profile promotion. . .
I was only half-teasing when I asked the person on the other end of this call whether political reasons were involved (in not having it on the upcoming calendar). She readily answered "no." At the time I thought Stone's intentions were to pull the mask off President Bush and reveal him for his deficiencies. But I later learned that the movie had more of a measured, timid tone. It was "oddball" because of its reliance on flashbacks.
I never saw it but I read about it. A friend who watched it on DVD indicated that the flashbacks could be distracting and confusing. A confused movie about a confused man, I might surmise.
Maybe Stone would have had more "balls" making this movie if it was after the financial collapse.
Flashback to the '70s: I saw the movie "Jaws" at a twin theater in St. Cloud. I saw the movie "Star Wars" at a twin theater in Brainerd. The St. Cloud theater, where I also sat through "All the President's Men" twice the same night, has been razed. I don't know about Brainerd.
I suspect the "twin" theaters have given way to the 8 or 9-screen establishments, where one can end up in quite small rooms to see a movie. No problem, as I've learned.
I hope pure nostalgia isn't behind the push to keep the Morris Theater going. Even though all Morris natives can embrace tremendously warm memories of that place, we must recognize that it probably belongs in the dust bin of history.
Boomers will remember Bob Collins as proprietor for an extended time. Those memories aren't warm for men who may have been rambunctious in those theater seats as boys.
Collins was of course just being a responsible business owner. But he applied discipline like a stern fourth grade teacher. If a group of boys - it was always boys - were too hyper and distracting for the other patrons, Collins would take care of the situation decisively, coming down the aisle with that notorious flashlight.
A misbehaving boy wasn't likely to engage in that behavior again.
Toward the end of the Collins chapter there were definitely issues at the theater, the most notorious being your shoes sticking to the floor as you walked in and out. This was in the late 1970s and early '80s when there were a lot of deficiencies in America. Maybe that stickiness could just be attributed to the Jimmy Carter-induced "malaise."
By the late 1990s, when Curt Barber was proprietor (its last as a private venture), I was seeing movies at the Morris Theater mainly as a means of relaxing. I didn't hold out very high standards for the experience. Many of the movies were supreme letdowns, like "The Village," "Coach Carter" (two hours of rap music?), "8 Below" (a dog movie that couldn't have been made by a dog lover) and "Because of Winn-Dixie" (a dog movie that must have seemed great on paper but just failed miserably, despite Jeff Daniels).
The marquee sign out front shows the wear and tear of its existence.
I remember when as a kid, one of my peers, reportedly Bruce Christiansen, did some part-time work there and was able to pull off a prank: putting some school gossip on the marquee just long enough to step back and take a photo.
Bruce is the son of Lyle who has developed a passion for trying to prove his late brother Kenny was D.B. Cooper. So this is a family with no inhibitions - quite admirable to an extent.
Would this community be comfortable seeing "Morris Community Church" on the theater marquee? In other words, stepping aside to let the somewhat nomadic and fundamentalist church finally get a permanent home?
This was an idea that was bandied about when Mr. Barber let go of the theater. Its future was in limbo.
First of all, the idea of a church taking over an abandoned building in the "business district" (whatever that is nowadays) is the sort of thing which, justified or not, suggests "blight"
I have a better idea: Let's just have one ELCA Lutheran church in town - there's no excuse having two - and whichever of their buildings gets abandoned could be taken over by those great Morris Community Church people.
Having two ELCA churches, besides being excessive, encourages unnecessary competition. A fellow First Lutheran member told me once that their celebrated "New Wine" youth traveling group was good for "recruiting" new members.
"Recruiting" is a cynical term to use in connection with a church, an institution that ought to simply provide an inspiring experience for all who enter. The Synod should just step in.
I don't know what Morris will look like in 50 years, but I suspect there will be some kind of new theater experience, in a smaller setting, and fewer churches, helping the faithful build efficiency with resources.
And the newspaper? What's a newspaper?
Newspapers are dying because the commodity they sell - information - is becoming, with each passing day, free on the Internet. I mentioned this to friend Brent Waddell this morning at McDonald's and his response was: "Maybe they should get together with the bottled water people."
Rimshot.
But we will always need movies.
-Brian Williams - Morris mn Minnesota - morris theater mn - bwilly73@yahoo.com