JOLIE GOT A GUN

spotlight
Look like an Egyptian
Famous Players’ new Paramount Calgary borrows a theme from movie palaces of old BY SEAN DAVIDSON
There’s a reason that the same
names — Tivoli, Roxy,
Paramount, Capitol, Strand —
are so consistently popular
with the owners and builders
of movie theatres. A little less than a century
ago, as the movie biz grew out of its nickel-and-dime
adolescence into an adulthood
bankrolled by the Hollywood gold rush, the
showmen of the 1910s and ’20s moved
their business out of cramped, makeshift
nickelodeons into newly constructed,
impossibly lavish movie palaces. Theatre
owners have been trying to recapture the
grandeur of those glory days ever since.
Gigantic cinemas like the 2,500-seat
Chinese Theatre in L.A. and New York’s
6,200-seat Roxy were designed specifically
to screen new multiple-reel feature films
and — with their giltwork, Baroque finery
and servile army of ushers — gave the act of
movie going an air of much-needed class.
Palaces were frequently decorated in the
style of exotic locales such as Turkey, Egypt,
Spain and Persia and, although they’ve
since gone the way of drive-ins and
Betamax, are a big part of movie history.
Something similar happened in the
1990s. Moviegoers grew tired of seeing
films in small, aging multiplexes, attendance
dropped, and exhibitors responded
by building bigger and snazzier theatres.
Such as the recently opened Paramount
Calgary at Chinook Centre, a giant Famous
Players cinema built with the movie palaces
of old in mind. The $32-million complex
houses 17 screens, seats 4,128 and is elaborately
decorated with all things Egyptian —
scarabs, hieroglyphics, cobras and a giant
pharaoh’s mask.
“People like the idea of the exotic and the
Nile,” says Joanne Fraser, vice president of
corporate affairs at Famous Players. “And so
it’s sort of a link to the past because these are
the future of movie palaces we’re building.”
In addition to 16 stadium-style cinemas, the
Paramount Calgary also features a 3D IMAX
theatre, numerous concession stands and a
TechTown video arcade.
The theatre is just the latest in Famous
Players’ massive four-year expansion
program, during which the Canadian
entertainment giant has spent hundreds
of millions on 41 similar complexes across
the country. Calgary’s is the third
Paramount theatre, after Toronto and
Montreal, and Famous Players recently
added a SilverCity complex, complete with
a giant fire-breathing dragon, to the West
Edmonton Mall.
Ron Rivet, executive director of design
and construction, says that people are
often surprised by the company’s increasingly
grandiose designs for its theatres. But
famous 22 june 2001
because the Chinook Centre shopping mall
had just gone through major renovations,
designers and artists had to think up new
ways to make the theatre stand out from
the other storefronts. “It had to be in keeping
with the rest of the shopping centre,” says
Rivet, but, “we also had to find a way to
stand out.”
Each Paramount has been fairly elaborate,
but the Chinook Centre site gave designers
a chance to do things on a larger scale than
before — like the theatre’s crowning attraction,
a pharaoh’s mask perched atop the
popcorn stand. Every 30 minutes — when
it’s turned on — the mask opens up to display
a music and laser show that recounts
King Tut’s death, mummification and passage
into the afterlife. It’s what the designers
call “the main event.”
And yes, although the movie biz has
changed a lot since the first Paramount,
Rivet still sees a connection between the
movie palaces of the silent era and the
megaplexes of today. Back then, movie
going was “an event, it was a night out, it
was a big deal. We’re essentially doing the
same thing today but in a different way,” he
says. People are still looking for what he
calls “the wow factor.”
“They’re not just going to a movie theatre
to see the film,” he says. “They want to
be entertained.”
F