Bob's Take: Film laments loss of classic theaters (I'm in the film)

[Omaha Steve]

I was the Chairman of the group that tried to save the theater. We had over a dozen stories that went world wide through the AP.

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=1462&u_sid=2209186



Published Thursday
July 20, 2006

Bob's Take: Film laments loss of classic theaters

BY BOB FISCHBACH


WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Remember the Indian Hills?

It's been five years since Methodist Health System took a wrecking ball to the hatbox-shaped movie theater, built for the Cinerama projection system, and put a parking lot on the site at 8601 West Dodge Road.

Now Omaha documentary filmmaker Jim Fields revisits the subject in "Preserve Me a Seat," which focuses on the uphill fight to save the Indian Hills and other theaters built before multiplexes became the norm.

"Preserve Me a Seat" premieres Wednesday at the Grand Theatre in Grand Island, Neb. The single-screen, 400-seat movie house was restored after closing in 2004.

On July 27, Fields' movie gets its Omaha premiere at the Dundee Theater, the city's remaining single-screen theater. It also will be screened July 28 in Lincoln at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center.

The 800-seat Indian Hills opened in December 1962. Its screen stretched 35 feet high and 105 feet long in a 146-degree curve that seemed to wrap itself around its audience. Three separate cameras were used to film movies in Cinerama, and three carefully synchronized projectors threw the image onto the screen.

Later, a single, wide-lens camera was used to film some movies advertised as Cinerama, such as "Grand Prix" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Technical problems and expense led to the demise of true Cinerama by 1965. But the curved screen provided a great way to see a movie long after that. State-of-the-art acoustics, sound and whisper-quiet cooling and heating also enhanced seeing a movie at the Indian Hills.

When Fields saw "2001: A Space Odyssey" there as a kid, he was hooked.