DC Film Society: Adam's Rib April 2020

Farewell Uptown

The last Friday the 13th was already living up to its name. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, it seemed that everything was closing, or well on its way to a shutdown. The NCAA basketball tournament was cancelled. Major League Baseball and the NBA were put on an indefinite hold. My colleagues and I all wondered when we would see each other in person again. Then came the hammer. I saw online that DC’s famed Uptown Theater had closed. AMC, the most recent owner of the Uptown, announced that the day before, Thursday the 12th, was the theater’s last day of operation. Just like that my love affair with the Uptown was over.

That affair began one night in 1992, while I was a student at George Washington University. My friends and I went there to catch a re-release of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. I was not prepared for what would happen. The huge wraparound screen, going from the floor to the ceiling, enveloped me in Scott’s beautiful futuristic L.A landscape. The sound seemed to come from everywhere. It was the perfect match of a film and a theater. I got lost in that experience in a transcendent, almost spiritual way. While I had been seeing films throughout my childhood and teenage years, I had no idea that moviegoing could be like this.

Even then the Uptown was a throwback. Only one screen, so only one movie at a time. The theater featured an upstairs with a massive balcony. Patrons would have friendly arguments about whether to see a movie in the balcony or on the floor level, which is what I preferred. Either way, you couldn’t go wrong. The upper level also had lounges on the way to the mens and ladies room. The outside was just as impressive. Just take a look at the picture above. The building stood out unmistakably, but with elegance. Its art deco design led up to the iconic Uptown sign.

Walking out of the Uptown that night in ’92, I understood what longtime DC residents had known for years – that the Uptown was the place in Washington to see any big “event” movie. The screen was IMAX before IMAX existed. With it wrapping around, if you sat towards the front, which I almost always did, the film could virtually surround you. The biggest difference between seeing a movie at home and in a theater, is that at home, it’s something you’re watching. Other things could be going on, in fact you might be doing something else at the same time. You can start, pause, stop, and are in total control. In the theater, the film controls what you see and hear, and you give over that control willingly. With the right film, in the right theater, it’s an immersive experience. And nowhere was that more true than at the Uptown.

Once I started going to the Uptown, I couldn’t stop. If a movie was playing there, I would insist on seeing it there. In 1993, I saw The Fugitive there, and was blown away during the train escape scene. Then a couple of years later, the Uptown was closed for renovations. It had a grand re-opening in 1996 with Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Losing myself in a film about a man losing himself felt so perfect.

Later that year, I learned that Lucasfilm would be re-releasing the original Star Wars, and I knew where I had to be and when I had to be there. The date was January 31, 1997. The weather was unseasonably warm, a relief since I knew I’d be in line for a while. This was the first showing of the re-release. A friend and I arrived to the Uptown at 7 a.m., three hours before showtime. Keep in mind that in 1997 there was no advance ticketing and no online purchases. If you wanted a ticket for this you would have to wait. Some fans had camped out next to the Uptown, others had gotten there far earlier than I had. Many were in costume. The atmosphere was closer to a rock concert. Once we finally got in, some fans entertained us with toy lightsaber duels in front of that big screen. The movie started and it became a collective nirvana. The audience cheered louder than in most ballgames I’ve attended. Thanks to the Uptown I rekindled my love for Star Wars. When The Empire Strikes Back re-release opened the following month, I was right back at the Uptown, in a line that covered a couple of blocks. I saw all eleven Star Wars films at the Uptown, right through The Rise of Skywalker last December. The franchise and that theater became intertwined to me.

The next year, the Uptown hosted the Warner Brothers 75th Anniversary Festival of Classics. The weeklong festival devoted one day to each decade from the 30s to the 90s. The Uptown was the perfect venue to discover seminal films such as Bullitt, Chariots of Fire and JFK. I’d only seen Goodfellas on video before then. Casablanca I had seen several times, but there was nothing like watching it on that screen with a packed house. For me the apex was viewing The Searchers and The Exorcist for the first time. Both of these masterpieces create an unmistakable atmosphere. The Searchers striking shots of “Death Valley,” a John Ford staple, became even more visceral in that theater. So did the dark Georgetown streets in The Exorcist. I had dreamed of the Uptown hosting a similar festival in 2023, for Warners’ 100th anniversary, but that’s going to stay merely a dream.

In addition to the films it showed, the Uptown served as a living link to film and DC history. Warner Brothers opened the theater in 1936, back when the major studios often had their own venues. In 1956, the theater was modified so it could show wide-screen films, all the rage in the 50s as the film studios tried to fight off television. In 1962, another remodeling allowed the Uptown to show the even bigger Cinerama films. Over the years, the Uptown had hosted world premieres of films such as 2001 and Jurassic Park. On May 25, 1977, when the original Star Wars debuted, it only played at 32 theaters across the country and the Uptown was one of them. So many film lovers in the DC area have their own histories with the Uptown, as the Washington City Paper documented in 2018 in their oral history of the theater. Thankfully local historian Robert K. Headley chronicled the Uptown as part of his book Motion Picture Exhibition in Washington D.C., an invaluable reference for this column, and Movie Theaters of Washington DC, which he co-authored with Pat Padua.

Over the past few years, I noticed crowds at the Uptown becoming smaller, even on a film’s opening weekend. As IMAX screens proliferated around the area, the Uptown was no longer the only place to see a film on a huge screen. The plush seats the Uptown installed in 1996 became outdated as more theaters installed reclining “Lay Z Boy” seats. The Uptown already had to compete with multiplexes that featured many screens. Add in IMAX and the reclining seats, and this competition grew even more difficult. Sure, there were others like me who still insisted on seeing “event” movies there, but it became clear we were in a dwindling minority.

Even though I didn’t want to admit it, in the back of my mind I feared that the Uptown may close some day. AMC had already tried to replace the theater’s iconic sign, only to relent in the face of community opposition. That was a clear sign that AMC’s commitment to the Uptown was tenuous at best. So I knew that the dreaded day may come, but I would have never thought it could happen like this. To not give DC audiences any advance warning, to wait until the day after the Uptown closed to share the news, was a gutless, tactless act by AMC. When other beloved theaters such as the Key and the Biograph closed, the theaters shared the closing in advance, so that audiences could come out one last time. This time the pain of the closing hurts that much more by never having the chance to say goodbye.

Other landmark theaters have come back from the dead before. A community non-profit refurbished and reopened the Avalon in DC. The American Film Institute did the same with the Silver Theater in Silver Spring, MD. Aaron Bland started an online petition to have the Uptown certified as a historical landmark so it couldn’t be torn down. Please take a minute to sign the petition. I’m not optimistic, but even a faint hope is better than nothing at all.

As Bob Hope would often sing, “Thanks for the Memories.” For 28 years, thanks to the Uptown, I got to experience seeing films the way they should be seen. The Uptown had distinction and character. When you saw a film at the Uptown, you remembered that you saw the film there. It was not just a part of DC film history, but also the personal film history of me and so many others. Part of me still can’t accept that it’s gone so suddenly. It’s not right and it’s not fair. I’ll give the final words to Headley, who closed his section on the Uptown by writing that it is (was) “one of the few real movie theaters remaining in the area where it is a pleasure to see a movie. We should all have such a neighborhood theater.”

Adam Spector
April 1, 2020