The Incredible Edens Theater

A number of years ago, I wrote a piece about Movie Theaters I’ve Known and Loved. It included the story of how I had one of my most formative movie experiences in a modernist masterpiece of a theater that was on the Edens Expressway in Northbrook Illinois. Yesterday, I stumbled across a YouTube video about the theater and its demise that had been made for local TV in the ’90s. For those of you who are fellow movie theater geeks and others who are interested in architecture, you might find this as fascinating as I did. Little did I know that the theater featured that largest hyperbolic paraboloid in the world. If you want to know what that means, you’ll have to watch the video (which by the way is separated into five short parts.) Enjoy!

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Diary of a Cubs Fan – Part Two

Field of DreamsThis is part 2 of a series. You can start at the beginning here.

In my last entry, I neglected to mention that while in Chicago, I stayed in the home of Peter Gilbert, my friend, colleague and one of the makers of “Hoop Dreams.” Peter, who teaches in North Carolina, has hosted me for the playoffs several times over the years, including for all the games played in Chicago last year. So I’ve become a part of the family. Peter’s wife Dru and his kids Leo and Fay not only make me feel welcome, they have invested in my Cubdom by being among my stoutest supporters. As the Cubs victories have mounted up, they have expressed their belief that my staying at their home has been good luck for the team. So, they don’t want me staying anywhere else.

I also neglected to mention the fact that on the day that the Giants defeated the Mets for the Wild Card, I started growing my playoff beard. Facial hair growth has been a pretty standard baseball superstition for a long time, and I adopted the custom last year. Just to be clear, I really don’t believe that anything I do is going to affect the outcome of the games, but I like the idea of participating in some way. And besides, my grey beard makes me look a little bit like Cubs Manager Joe Madden, and he is the coolest manager in baseball. Continue reading “Diary of a Cubs Fan – Part Two”

Movie Theaters I’ve Known and Loved

I grew up in movie theaters. At a very young age, my mother started bringing me to matinees and later we would pile the family into the car and head to the local drive-in for double features. In my adolescent and teenage years, the fact that my family moved around so much meant that I had few friends. I spent all my spare time in movie theaters. By the time I went to college, movies were my life. I used to pride myself on the fact that I could name the theater where I saw every film I’d ever seen.

On a recent trip to Chicago, I walked around the Loop–the site of many of my most formative movie moments–and was astonished to see how little was left of what was one of the most beautiful movie theater districts anywhere. It made me very sad, but motivated me to write this piece about the movie theaters for which I have the fondest memories. They are in chronological order according to where they fit in my life.

The Park Plaza Theater in the Bronx was most likely my first movie theater experience. It was only a few blocks from where we lived, and this is where my mother first exposed me to movies. I remember the matrons in their white suits and flashlights trying to keep the kids–who were required to sit in a separate section unless they were accompanied by parents–quiet. The first movie I actually remember was a film that terrified me at the time. It had images that stuck with me throughout my life, even though I couldn’t remember what film it was. It was only as an adult that I realized that the movie I had seen was “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” Continue reading “Movie Theaters I’ve Known and Loved”

10 Years Ago…A Family Odyssey (part 4)

This is Part 4 of a series. You can find the other parts at Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Day Four: Friday September 14, 2001

Bright and early, we piled back into the car for the next leg of our journey. We had a sort of deadline in that Northwestern’s orientation was to begin at 6:00 that evening. I was calculating that the drive from Toronto to Chicago would be about 8 hours, so we would be there in plenty of time.

As we headed toward the border, traffic was getting heavy, and the radio was reporting delays ahead. I remembered the advice I had been given the night before, and we got off the highway and started heading north. It only took about a half hour to get to the border crossing that had been suggested. We passed a few signs and a couple of cute gift shops that confirmed we were on a native Canadian reservation. As we approached the border crossing, we were suddenly in a long line of cars. Even worse, what had not been told to us was that this border crossing required a ferry, which only ran once per hour. So we sat waiting for almost a full hour for the ferry to arrive, then it took another half hour to load the cars aboard, a 15-minute ride across the river, and then some additional time to unload. We had lost significant time. Continue reading “10 Years Ago…A Family Odyssey (part 4)”