About fifteen years ago, I was working at a nine-screen multiplex in Sandy, Utah, running projectors and dreaming of the day when I’d have some kind of theater set-up in my own house. This was a common fantasy among my fellow minimum-wage-earning, popcorn-sweeping work buddies. “The Dudes,” as we called ourselves, were all, to one extent or another, movie fans and movie collectors, and we all had unique ideas about what would comprise the perfect private screening room.

Home theater technology was in its infancy back then. Twelve-inch laserdiscs were cutting-edge, and expensive Dolby Pro-Logic receivers — which processed stereo recordings into four output channels via some kind of electronic voodoo — were the best sound option available for the consumer market. As I recall, however, my buddies and I tended to focus less on the hardware and more on the room itself, what it would look like and how it would be furnished. We just kind of took it for granted that we’d have some kind of projection-style TV — the bigger the better — and a killer sound system, and that the whole package would naturally be THX-certified. (Our theater was the first in Utah to receive the coveted THX rating, a factoid that figured very prominently in the place’s advertising, so my fellow Dudes and I were all very big on THX…)
My own fantasy theater room was very much inspired by the classic movie palaces that were already mostly a thing of the past by the early ’90s. I envisioned art-deco lighting sconces, framed one-sheet posters on the walls, and a velvet waterfall curtain over the screen that would rise in flowing waves right as the lights dimmed, just like the old Centre Theatre where I’d first seen Star Wars as a kid.

A lot of time has passed since the days of the Dudes, more than I can easily accept sometimes, and for the most part my home-theater fantasies have passed as well. I guess my priorities have changed, as uncomfortably grown-up as that sounds. I no longer see much point in having a fancy screening room loaded with expensive toys. DVDs and a halfway-decent monitor provide a better picture than many theaters were projecting in the ’80s, and you can buy cheap 5.1 audio systems at Costco for genuine, butt-vibrating, cinema-style sound. That’s all you really need, and anything more is just showing off, like guys who chrome half their car’s engine for no other reason than to make people say, “Cooooooll.” I figure I have better things to spend my money on, thank you.

Even so, I couldn’t help but be impressed the other day when I came across the Web site of one Steve Jenkins. It seems that Steve’s idea of the perfect home screening room is quite a bit like mine used to be. What he’s built in his basement is truly remarkable, a labor of love that mixes the Golden Age of cinematic exhibition with a little Las Vegas and a lot of high-end hardware. Steve won’t disclose the cost of this little project, and I’m not sure I want to know anyway. Knowing would only make me jealous, or sick to my stomach, and it’s much better to feel impressed by this kind of thing. If my priorities ever revert to what they were circa 1992, this is what I’m going to want.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you the Jenkins Family Home Theater.

Postscript: just out of curiosity, I ran a search for other elaborate home theater set-ups. Not surprisingly, I found a Star Wars-themed home theater. Decisions, decisions, decisions…