How did this movie come to be?
I’m a filmmaker as well, based in Edmonton here. And I’ve done a number of these documentaries as part of a CBC series called Absolutely Canadian — specifically, Absolutely Alberta. So I’ve been now producing and directing these for the last five years, and just starting to enjoy producing more generally. I’d never worked with the director, Levi Holwell, before, but I knew him from this film festival that we go to every year, in Camrose, called Nordly’s Film & Arts Festival. I thought this would be a good opportunity for him to make something and get it on the CBC. He was kind of telling this story the other day, that basically, when he got my email about whether or not he had an idea for a documentary, his answer was, honestly, no — he had never really thought of himself as a documentary filmmaker.
So how did you convince him?
Well, as is often the case in our business, when you have the opportunity to make a film, you kind of start catering your expectations or your ideas to what the opportunity is. And that’s when I started really seriously thinking about making a documentary film about these independent, single-screen movie theatres, mostly in small towns. And as somebody who loves going to the movies, I think he recognized that these theatres are struggling, and what that means if that experience isn’t available to people. But also, frankly, it was a love of the aesthetics of old movie theatres. There’s something romantic about them — a lot of them are these old, art deco buildings that may not look like much on the outside, but inside they have this old-school vibe, very much like the Garneau Theatre here in Edmonton.
What’s your earliest movie memory?
For me, it’s going to see Titanic with my mom at the Paramount. I remember standing in line, waiting to go see Titanic at this iconic, single-screen movie theatre right in downtown Edmonton that closed…shortly thereafter, like within the next four years, probably. And it’s still just been kind of sitting there for like 20 years. I would love to be able to go to a movie there this weekend, if I could.
It seems like a tough film to navigate, in terms of tone. Because not all the theatres in your film make it. Was it tough treading the line between sort of fighting for these theatres to stick around, and more just commemorating their fading existence?
It’s interesting, because I think you can watch the film and see it as kind of an elegy, especially when you think of the last shot as a theatre full of kids. But the reason why we wanted to include that shot and why we thought it was so poignant, is because that theatre is closing, so this is the generation of kids that’s going to grow up without a movie theatre in their town. So what does that mean? It’s such an iconic and formative experience for so many of us — especially when you start dating as a teenager, it’s kind of a classic first date. So what are people going to be doing instead? So you can definitely watch the film and think about how this is sort of a dying industry.
How do the ones that make it…make it?
A number of people throughout the film say it’s a very difficult industry to make money in. You know, the Metro at the Garneau Theatre in Edmonton, the only reason that exists is because it’s a not-for-profit society. So it has a totally different business model. So I try not to take that for granted. On the other hand, you have these stories of family businesses, like the young couple in Drumheller — they talk about being able to run this theatre into their 70s, but they have supplemental income that’s coming from other places, so it’s not something you can do as your primary business anymore. But you can also watch the film, and say, oh, this is something that if a community and a few dedicated people are still very passionate about, it can be something that’s very rewarding. And it’s a way to kind of be in the community that maybe a lot of us are missing in the kind of more online digital age.
I realized watching the film that projectors, and even the “camera reel” sound, are becoming one of those things where the symbol is more prevalent than the real-life object, like how the “save” icon on computers is a floppy disc (EDITOR’S NOTE: the term is skeuomorph).
It’s already happened! 99 per cent of movies you see in theatres are digital projection now. So that ticking projector sound you’re thinking of, that people sitting at the back of the theatre used to be able to hear, that’s already been gone for a while. That’s what made the Oppenheimer print special. If you didn’t know, Edmonton was one of 30 places in the world that had a 70-millimetre film print, on actual celluloid film. It was really cute, actually, because they had to bring a projectionist out of retirement to run it and stuff.
Do you view that as a kind of testament to Edmonton cinephiles appreciating the old ways of cinema?
Yeah, I think so. Like at the Metro, we’ll get 35-millimetre film print movies (note: Rhys Howard is on Metro Cinema Society’s programming committee). And they always advertise it, so it’s always a bit of an event, which I really appreciate.
The Metro is one of your film’s success stories, in the sense that it’s thankfully still operating. What makes it work?
Well it’s a not-for-profit, so it really depends on volunteer participation in order to kind of keep it going. But I say we’re lucky to have it because it has a model that works — like, they need to put butts in seats with screenings of The Princess Bride. They need to make money, but also, because they’re a not-for-profit society, they also have a mandate to show things that wouldn’t get shown in other theatres. So it’s exciting that a screening of something that we know is going to get 400 people into the theatre can subsidize a screening that we know is going to draw fewer people — our decisions don’t have to be made just on those cold sort of market metrics just to keep the lights on, which makes it really special.
And sometimes, seeing an arthouse film in a mostly empty theatre is kinda cool in its own way, right?
For sure. Sylvia [Douglas], who’s the president currently at Metro Cinema Society, she talks in the film about how sometimes she goes to a screening and she’s the only person there. I’ve never been fully alone, but sometimes you’ll go to an obscure arthouse film on a Wednesday night, and there might be five or seven people there, and that looks like a pretty empty room, because the Metro has like 500-plus seats. But I remember the first time I was in L.A., I went to the New Beverly Cinema in West Hollywood that Quentin Tarantino owns. I went to see some obscure Italian horror movie, also on a Wednesday night, and there were about 13, maybe 14 people there. So when you think about it, L.A. is a (large) city, and you’ve got the cache of the fact that it’s owned by Quentin Tarantino, versus Edmonton, the city of maybe a million people with like five, six people at this kind of obscure screening on a Wednesday night. In that moment, I just had so much love and appreciation for what we’ve been able to hold on to, and do well, at Metro Cinema.
But obviously a full theatre is preferred, and your film ends on a kind of bittersweet note, showing kids in a theatre who are the final audience to attend a screening there.
It’s tough, because the kids, and these whole communities losing these theatres, are kind of what we’re talking about. What they’re missing out on is just the experience of watching something with a group of people, a group of strangers, which I think really does alter your experience of the thing you’re watching. You could say it’s an energetic thing — we’re social creatures, so if other people are laughing, it’s more fun to laugh along with them. The jokes are funnier, the suspense is more suspenseful, the action is bigger and more exhilarating. Or, if it’s an intimate, quiet film, it’s more intense to have 100 people in a room who are dead silent out of a sense of respect for what’s happening on the screen.
Keep the movie magic alive by watching Magic Hours on CBC Gem.
