I was recently turned onto a new theatre in Fort Collins, CO. that takes a different approach to movies. It’s called the Lyric Cinema Cafe. The cool thing about the theatre is that it’s a different kind of movie experience. There is a cafe where you can buy beer or wine, healthy food as well as all the regular movie-fare. There’s a theatre in the back that seats about 80. It has theatre seats but also has couches. They are in the process of building a second much smaller theatre.
From the Lyric website I found two other similar theatres. One is the Moxie, located in Springfield, MO. and the other is the Ragtag Cinema located in Colombia, MO. I guess Missouri is ahead of the curve on this!
Each of the theatres show more independent movies but some branch into more mainstream films. The Lyric is showing Raising Arizona soon.
I’m pretty inspired by these places – essentially this is what the Renegade Picture Show is all about. Of course the Renegade is a little more thrown together and we don’t have a permanent address or a roof over the projector – but that’s half the fun!
I would love to see cinema go in the direction of the micro-cinema and by bet is that it will! Why? Because there is a market for it. People want something different than the same old movie experience – they want something a little more interactive, a little more loose, a little more….fun.
I like seeing the Hollywood blockbusters on the big screen in the movieplexes but there’s something to be said for independently owned and operated small movie houses that show something other than first-run films.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of movies that are great films but they rarely see any screen time because they don’t meet the typical marketing scheme that the studios have in place.
The other thing about each of these theatres is that they fit into a downtown mainstreet culture environment – no scraping off acres of land for an enormous structure and parking spots. It’s a theatre with a coffee house or corner pub feel rather than a Wal-Mart feel.
It would be nice to see more independent theatres pop-up – maybe even one in Norman?
