The Salt Lake Tribune‘s film critic Sean Means is reporting that the Trolley Square Cinemas will go dark by the end of the month, a casualty of the extensive renovation project that is converting Trolley Square from an interesting, funky, uniquely Salt Lake shopping mall into a less-interesting, brighter-lighted, and no doubt utterly homogenized shopping mall. There is no word on whether a new movie theater will be incorporated into the redesigned Trolley, but my hunch is that there won’t be. And that seems like real shame to me.

When I worked in the theater biz nearly 20 years ago (holy crap, it can’t be that long ago, can it?), Trolley Square was like some kind of weird nexus for movie theaters. There were three of them in and around the mall that I can remember: there was a four-plex inside the mall that eventually became (after several buy-outs and remodels) the Trolley Square Cinemas, a two-plex called the Flick, and, of course, that wondrous old hybrid of old-fashioned movie palace and modern multiplex, Trolley Corners, which was a triplex. That was nine screens in three different facilities, all within a single city block — pretty remarkable at that time, before the megaplex concept — i.e., theaters with ten or more screens under a single roof — really took hold. But of course once the megas started going up, the older (and smaller) multis started having trouble competing, especially the ones closer in to the city center instead of out in burbs where the kids are.

The Flick was the first to fall, and I don’t know anyone who mourned its loss. The one and only film I remember seeing there was Batman in the fall of ’89, and the place was a rundown dive then. I believe the space it used to occupy is now The Pottery Barn. Trolley Corners went next, and it was a much bigger loss for this part of town, and for the Salt Lake Valley generally.

As for Trolley Square Cinemas, I went there a few times. I remember it was where a lot of the exhibitor-only advance screenings* were held back in my days in the biz. I liked the place, especially after the Regency chain took over and remodeled it into an arthouse (complete with coffee bar). But I have to be honest, I’m probably not going to miss it much. A combination of inconvenience, circumstances, and programming prevented me from going there very often — basically, TSC has rarely played anything I’ve wanted to see badly enough (and that hasn’t been playing closer to home) to justify the trip into a part of town I don’t get to very often. The last film I can recall seeing there was Night Watch, a Russian vampire/action flick, and that was probably two years ago. So I suppose it’s somewhat hypocritical of me to make too much of a fuss about the place closing, considering how little I personally supported it. But I do feel bad that there won’t be any cinematic options on the east side of the city any more, and I also feel bad whenever I see another chapter of my earlier life closing. I’ve always liked dark and cozy Trolley Square, and going to a movie at Trolley Corners was a fondly remembered event, even when the place got a little long in the tooth (I always loved that big Star Wars mural outside the main auditorium, for one thing!). Trolley Square Cinema was like the last clinging remnant of that particular segment of How Things Used to Be™, and now it, like so much else that I never appreciated while it was here, is going away, soon to be followed by the old Trolley Square itself.

Sigh. It breaks the heart…

* FYI for those unlucky enough never to have worked in theaters: exhibitor screenings are like special “sneak peeks” given for theater managers, ostensibly to help them decide if they want to book a particular picture, but really (I believe) they’re just a perk of working in the industry, the chance to see something before anyone else does and then brag about it until the flick actually opens. Held weeks or even months out from the film’s official release date, these screenings are usually of an unfinished “work print,” which means that the score hasn’t been added yet or key visual-effects sequences are still being created. Sometimes the editing isn’t locked down either. For example, I saw an exhibitor screening for Misery that was basically the completed film, but with music cues from Aliens and various Hitchcock films subbing for the still-being-recorded soundtrack. It was a big deal for lowly ushers and projectionists such as myself and my friends to get to attend these screenings; we used to plead and beg our managers for the honor, and count ourselves blessed when one came along that they weren’t interested in seeing themselves (there were limits on how many people could attend per each invitation). Of course, sometimes that backfired badly… like the time I managed to wheedle an invitation for myself to the screening of Highlander 2. Oy. That one still burns… the sad thing is that the finished version didn’t make any more sense than the work print I saw that was missing half its FX shots and had visual timing cues flashing in the corners…