The Last Picture Show of South Beach
With the announcement that Regal Cinemas will close their South Beach location, contributing writer David Rolland examines his favorite cinemas of Miami's past.
It wasn't exactly surprising that Regal Cinema announced their South Beach location was one of the 39 theaters they'd be shutting down. Since COVID hit, the 18 screen multiplex has been a bit of a ghost town. When I took my daughter to see Lyle Lyle Crocodile last October we were the only ones in the cavernous IMAX theater. It was fun being free to heckle and laugh as loud as we wanted. But the writing on the screen about the theater's future was as vivid as the CGI reptile singing show tunes.
Still for movie lovers it is always a bit heartbreaking when your neighborhood theater closes down. The Silverspot is just over the bridge in Downtown. A bit further is Sunset Place, Merrick Park, or Coconut Grove or Aventura. But if a densely populated area like Miami Beach can't support a movie theater, can other theaters' closures be far behind?
Growing up in the '80's in the rough and tumble streets of Key Biscayne my family would have to drive over a few bridges if we wanted to see any movies. Since every theater was a car ride away we weren't particularly wedded to any of South Florida's countless theaters. We'd look at the Miami Herald for movie times or get out the Southern Bell phone book to call the theater and see which spot was playing the movie at the most convenient time.Â
I remember seeing The Black Cauldron at the cavernous Omni mall and getting to ride their merry-go-round immediately after. There were the two markedly different theaters on Coral Way. The Miracle 4 which is now a playhouse on Miracle Mile, projected images from a lava lamp before The Never Ending Story, and then later in the '80's opened the futuristic Miracle Center where I saw the 1989 version of Batman.Â
Down in South Miami you had the Riviera, right next to Swenson's and Spec's Records where I saw Howard the Duck, and down the street where Sunset Place now resides was The Bakery Center where I saw Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Sometimes we trekked further. We went all the way south to the Falls to introduce me to the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi and watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off at North Beach's now vacant Byron Carlisle theater.Â
As you can tell, the act of moviegoing in an actual theater creates a sense of nostalgia for me, in a way streaming probably never will. I can't tell you whether I saw White Noise last month on Netflix or Hulu, but I remember seeing Silence of the Lambs at Cocowalk 30 + years ago.Â
And so before the Regal closes down South Beach, I'm going as much as I can.Â
Last Tuesday, the movie I wanted to see wasn't playing at a time I could handle, but I would embrace the inconvenience. If I wanted infinite content played at my time of choosing I could turn on my Roku at home, but where was the romance and sense of adventure that movie theaters represent in that? And so I settled on a movie I had no intention of seeing, The Fabelmans.
The box office at Regal had shuttered down since they reopened after the pandemic. I took the escalator up to the concession stand where they were now selling tickets and where you could pick your seats. I asked the teenager working if he knew when the theater was closing for good. "They haven't really told us," he shrugged. "Maybe February 15?"
Only a few weeks away, so it might have been my last time at Regal Cinemas South Beach. I tried to think of the first movie I saw in this theater. I remembered seeing American Beauty in Fall of 1999. The great website cinematreasures.org, said the Regal opened in June of 1999, so maybe that's the winner. Ironically, the announcement of the 2,800 seat megaplex heralded the end of something else: local, small theaters.
The Fabelmans was playing in one of the auditoriums renovated in the last decade to be more like a living room where you could recline and watch the movie lying down. I've picked up the bad habit of falling asleep at movies. But I made it through the one slow part in the beginning and found myself riveted by Spielberg's loosely autobiographical love letter to filmmaking. If I saw it at home I doubt I would have powered through. I would have picked up my phone and been lost to the addiction of social media or video games.Â
The younger version of me would have killed for the ability to watch any movie you can think of at any given time without even having to drive to a video store. But my nine year old daughter who has only known a world of unlimited shows without commercials was just as crestfallen about the Regal closing as me. There's something special about the ritual of going out to the movies, the smell of popcorn, sharing a laugh in a dark room with strangers. It's a sacred space where there are no diversions to your entertainment.Â
But maybe there's no need to get too sentimental. Maybe my neighborhood's theater closing won't be the beginning of the end of movie theaters. All those theaters I mentioned earlier in the Miami of the 1980's have closed down, but new ones have cropped up in their place. Just like humans always find a reason to think the world will soon end, so have movie theaters always seemed on the verge of extinction.Â
Years before I was born, the great movie The Last Picture Show depicted a small Texan town whose lone movie theater was closing. The final shot in glorious black and white showed the closed down cinema on a deserted main street. I think it symbolized the end of youth, the end of small town life, or at least the end of something. But I suppose I can rewatch the movie any time on my phone to meditate what exactly it means to a town when their movie theater closes. Â