Hollywood Twenty-No More
Another long-standing theater faces its final fade out
The news came out this week that the Regal Hollywood Cinema off of I-85 in Chamblee, Georgia would be closing its doors for good in October after 25 years in operation. I can’t say that I was too surprised to hear this - I’ve gone to this theatre often of late since it’s a straight shot down the highway from our house, and because it often hangs onto films I’ve missed a little longer than other nearby multiplexes, but it has fallen heavily into disrepair of late, particularly post-pandemic, and there has hardly been anyone else there whenever I’ve visited. For a while now it has had the unfortunately all-too-familiar feeling of a theatre that has lived past its prime and was simply waiting to be put out of its misery.
I remember when this theatre opened - it felt to me, and was certainly touted as being, incredibly new and modern at the time, perhaps in part because of its design but also due to the fact that at 24 screens it seemed impossibly huge. It felt like the future was here. It opened with a midnight showing of The Phantom Menace, the first new Star Wars film in 16 years, which at the time gave it a sense of momentous historical importance.
By the end of this year it will be an empty lot.
I never went during its first decade-plus. It was too far away from where I grew up and there were closer options that would play anything I would have wanted to see. Even the in-town arthouse theaters felt more accessible. Two years after it opened I moved to Athens for college and my moviegoing started to center around the University 16 and the recently-closed Beechwood 11 (which you can read more about here).
The first movie I have a conscious memory of seeing at the Hollywood 24 was a preview screening of Batman Begins. Being that this was a summer 2005 release, that lines up with my having recently graduated and moved back to Atlanta. I was something of a denizen of that early screening circuit. I vividly recall sitting in the parking lot, having gotten there far too early, listening to a live broadcast of the Michael Jackson verdict on the radio.
Three years later I would see The Dark Knight in the same theater at a midnight showing, weighted heavily with the grief of a recent broken heart (what a tangled emotional web we weave around the edges of theatrical viewings of Batman films) - I had spent the better part of a year anticipating this movie while at the same time falling foolishly in love, to the extent that the two had become hopelessly intermingled and, in the wake of her leaving me for someone else, I confess that I allowed my self-pity to rob that highly-anticipated screening of a good deal of its joy.
The Regal Hollywood became more of a regular fixture for me in recent years as we’ve lived in various locations that were each in close proximity to the highway off which it lies, and due in large part to its aforementioned value as a longer-than-usual repository for recent fare. Having 24 screens to fill means you don’t have to be in as much of a hurry to let stuff go. It was the only place, for instance, where Tiffany and I could go see Steven Spielberg’s The Post as we were doing our last-minute cramming for that year’s Oscars. We were the youngest people in that crowd by approximately 30 years, and I remember the elderly man in the row next to us leaning forward in his chair and gasping, “Watergate!” after the film’s closing scene - the geriatric equivalent of the reaction you’d hear when Thanos popped up at the end of Avengers Whatever to tease his eventual villainy.
It was also the only place where I could check out Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die by the time I was able to get to seeing it. I missed the last 5-10 minutes of the film because Tiff was calling me right as her flight to Ireland was boarding and I didn’t want to miss out on what may have been my last chance to speak with her before her trip. I still don’t remember if I ever went back to watch what I missed, if that tells you anything1.
This theater came very close to gaining major historical importance almost a year ago - it very nearly became the site of my son Samuel’s first theatrical movie-going experience. We were on the way to a rep screening of The Polar Express, but he fell asleep in the car, so I turned right around and went home (my fellow parents will know that there is little to nothing that can or should interrupt a nap).
Most recently, however, my obsession with the space has been tied to its more distant past. I only recently learned that prior to the multiplex, there was a drive-in located on the site that was demolished in order to make way for the indoor theater. In my recent obsession/deep-dive into movie theaters lost and past (which I also talked a little bit about here), the drive-in in particular was a place of fascination to me (probably because I have such emotional connections to them from my childhood). Learning that Scream 2 opened there felt exhilaratingly incongruous - I couldn’t imagine so modern (to me) a movie opening to a drive-in audience2. (Now they exist as a novelty footnote)
Since I learned of it, I try to imagine every time I drive by the theater what it would have looked like in those days from my vantage point on the highway. I occasionally look at satellite maps of the area and feel like I can easily see what the layout of the space would have been based on the shape of the current lot, which still resembles a typical drive-in layout. I’ve even driven behind the theater in order to get a sense of the property line, and scanned the wooded area immediately behind to see if I can steal just a glimpse into the past of anything that might be a reminder or, unlikelier but more exciting still, a remnant of that previous existence.
Perhaps I will make it to one more showing in the month or so that I have left, but if I don’t then that means that last thing I will have seen there was Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. If that remains the case, it’s a hell of a note to go out on, having said goodbye with one of the most stirring cinematic experiences I’ve ever had (more on that here if you’re curious). Things of this nature - perhaps all things - tend to be best left as they naturally happened rather than be subjected to a forced attempt at curation.
Sometimes a theater closes and it feels like a grave injustice. Sometimes, sadly, it feels like you’re finally releasing something that has lived beyond its time. The closing of this specific building feels caught between those two poles. I don’t know what’s going to take its place - probably a mixed-used development, as is ever the case these days. What does feel more resonant is that this space, which has for so long been dedicated to theatrical exhibition and the ritual of moviegoing in a variety of forms, will now pass on to another phase of its existence, and that feels like not just another cinematic loss but a major shifting of energies in the culture as a whole.
-cs
And this is a movie in which Tom Waits plays the role of itinerant Greek chorus, so you KNOW it must have been something of a whiff. A whiff that I will still insist I liked quite a bit even though I never finished it. Man is a complex animal.
Certainly there are this day still a number of first-run drive-ins, but they have by this point shifted to a zone of nostalgia - they no longer feel like hold-outs now so much as conscious (and valuable) throwbacks.