Community Glue

Apart from schools, there are few things that bind a town together like a local movie theatre. Restaurants come and go. A library comes close but the number of readers, small to begin with, is ever dwindling. Places of worship are certainly a central gathering place, but you go to yours and I go to mine. Where else can one sit in a room that has held one's parents, one's children, one's neighbors and one's younger self, not to mention one's best friend, one's teachers and one's ex-boyfriend with the girl who works at the drug store who isn't half as pretty as she thinks she is?

Beyond the oddly-satisfying mental archeology it inspires, however, a movie theatre spins a never-ending cloth of shared cultural history. You saw The Sound of Music. You know sixteen going on seventeen can be a tumultuous time for a teenager. You saw Flashdance. You know Chef Brockett was the gravely-voiced mill supervisor who didn't think for one minute that string of numbers was Jennifer Beales's phone number. You saw A Wedding for Bella (and if you didn't, you should: it includes scenes of Mt. Lebanon.) You know that kneading biscotti can be a transcendent experience.

All of them played at the Denis Theatre.

A town needs a movie theater, and the Denis Theater has been both the temple and the word for Mt. Lebanon natives since 1938. I know it has been for me. I grew up in Mt. Lebanon, left for Chicago to attend to college and grad school and to fall in love and get married, but like many of you I came back, and one of the things I cherished about the town to which I had recommitted myself was its theatre.

One of my favorite stories about the Denis is from 1997. My husband and I, at that point married fourteen years, approached the ticket counter where a wide-eyed teen was holding down the fort. Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love were ending their runs in theatres. The former had entranced my husband and, the latter, me. I am a diehard Tom Stoppard fan. He has a rapturous wit, an awe-inspiring ability to play with words and an intellect that would be intimidating were it not so open and generous, and Shakespeare in Love touched me on many levels. I also liked and admired Saving Private Ryan, but, let's face it, it's a boy movie, and, as I had to watch much of it through slitted fingers, one viewing satisfied my requirements.





We had seen our beloved movies together and separately several times. We were lucky enough that night to have both playing at the Denis and decided we would each see our favorite one more time.

Hand-in-hand, we approached the counter, and my husband said, "One for Saving Private Ryan and one for Shakespeare in Love." The teenager was aghast. "You've got to be joking." The idea of a couple splitting up for movie night was beyond his imagination.

We still laugh about that.

Chris Schultz, the other owner of this blog, and I want to create a forum where people can find out news about the Denis Theatre restoration, discover ways to help and share recollections about the theatre's past and hopes for its future.

Not every post is going to be about the Denis. I'd love for us to talk about green options for construction, films we love and uptown Mt. Lebanon in general (like when are we going to get a bookstore, huh? And a cupcake shop? I wanna be able to walk out of a movie at 9:30 at night on a Friday or Saturday, stroll to a bookstore and end the evening with a cupcake, just like I can in Squirrel Hill.) And since this only works well if you join us in this effort, I'm going to throw out the first salvo. Shakespeare in Love knocked Saving Private Ryan out for the Oscar for Best Picture of 1997. The win astonished some critics, who felt Saving Private Ryan was a shoo-in. With eleven years' hindsight to inform us, was the Oscar for Shakespeare in Love a mistake? I think you can guess where I stand on the issue. Chris?