The Ballard has changed hands half a dozen times in the last twenty years. Something about the building seems to attract dedicated film specialists whose business acumen is eccentric at best. In the past decade the theatre has been known by a variety of names. There was The Kinetoscope, which revived an endless number of pre-talkies until the IRS rode into town and padlocked all the doors. There was Dragonsbreath, which was dedicated to the martial arts film in all its cheesy glory and blew most of its receipts on a ridiculously expensive, life-size, full-body sculpture of Bruce Lee in a midair assault. There was a single summer of Ciné Flesheater that almost managed to display every variation of the B-budget zombie flick, but tended to dwell on the Spanish-Italian subgenre. And there was The Jerry Lewis House of Mirth which was able to roll everything from My Friend Irma through The King of Comedy before the proprietor retired to France, a happy, if bankrupt man.
The Ballard’s last incarnation was as The Anne Frank Cinema. And the ’59 version of The Diary of Anne Frank was the first in a series of holocaust movies Sylvia watched down here, followed by Genocide, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Sophie’s Choice, The Night Porter, Playing For Time, The Last Metro, Kapo, Diamonds of the Night, The Wannsee Conference, Judgment At Nuremberg, In a Glass Cage, Shoah and Hotel Terminus. She doesn’t know exactly what did in the Anne Frank, but at the final screening, a double bill featuring The Sorrow and the Pity and Night and Fog, the only two people in the place were she and Shel Singer, the neighborhood mayor of the Jews. At intermission, Mr. Singer got up from his seat in the last row and sat next to Sylvia, brought her a box of popcorn. For the last hour of the Anne Frank Cinema’s life, Shel held Sylvia’s butter-streaked hand, nothing erotic in the act, just a touch, human flesh brought together for a short time. Then as the credits rolled, Mr. Singer got up and left without a word. And that night they bolted the doors of the Ballard and cleared the marquee.
Now, six months later, the Loftus Brothers have decided to take a stab at the movie business. Tonight, the front of the Ballard sports a new, pricey sign made up of hundreds of blinking lightbulbs that are patterned to read Impact: The Car Crash Cinema.
“I guess the idea,” says Propp from the roof of the building looking down over the transformer lot next door, “is they’ll edit out everything but the crash scenes. They’ll dump the rest of the movie and just leave the smashups. If there’s a good chase scene preceding the crash, they might leave it in. But if a chase doesn’t end in a crash, no good.”
“They’ve got a lot of material to work with,” Sylvia says.
Propp nods, kneels down and starts to open a skylight. “And you’re probably just thinking of theatrical releases, right?”
“I’m thinking H. B. Halicki,” Sylvia says.
“Very good,” Propp says.”I’m impressed. Halicki, the Patron Saint.”
“Gone in 60 Seconds,” Sylvia says. “Ninety-three cars destroyed in forty minutes.”
“How about Grand Theft Auto?” Propp says.
“Eat My Dust!” Sylvia says. “Smash-Up on Interstate 5.”
“The Seven-Ups. Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry.”
“White Line Fever. Freebie and the Bean. Le Mans.”
“The Cannonball Run series,” Propp says. “My God, you could get through the first three months on Burt Reynold’s oeuvre alone. But the rumor is they’re going to use industrial films as well. Stuff out of these Detroit labs where they test cars. And underground video stuff borrowed from state police files. There’s supposed to be some Autobahn footage where you can see a head come right through a windshield.”
“You think they’ve got a shot?” she says.
Propp smiles at her and says, “I don’t see how they can miss.”
He opens the skylight back on its hinges and gestures for her to climb in.
“No alarms?”
“Not that I know of.”
Sylvia moves into the opening and lowers herself, then lets go and drops down to the floor in a squat. She gets up and steps back and Propp joins her, agile for his age and looking like he’s done this a lot in the past.
They’re in the balcony of the theatre, about a dozen rows pitched at a steep angle. Sylvia’s always loved the seats in the Ballard, old-time rockers covered in plush maroon velour and plenty of arm room so you’re not in constant battle with the person next door. Sylvia and her mother used to come to the Ballard a lot when Sylvia was young. They saw a lot of Disney stuff here, a lot of movies starring Kurt Russell. Sylvia hoped her first boyfriend would be like Kurt Russell — clean-cut, square jaw, well intentioned.
“You pick the seats,” Propp says, “and I’ll go fire up the projector.”
He climbs back to the projection booth and she surveys her choices and settles on the front row center where they can put their feet up on the railing. She sits down and gets comfortable and looks around at the decor, all natural wood and soft velour. And the sight of it all makes her hate the mall theatres even more — the little bowling alleys with their back-ache chairs and tiny screens and bad sound systems.
Last year Perry and she went to a Friday night late show of Castle Oswald and when the lights went down and the previews came on they thought there was something wrong with their eyes. The people on the screen were just ghost-images. If you squinted hard, you could barely see a man and a woman running through a park. They waited for someone else to get out of their seat and find an usher but no one did. So Sylvia got up and went out to the concession stand where all these teenagers in polyester jackets were busy trying to pick each other up. And she asked them if there was a problem with the movie. The assistant manager put down his massive tumbler of soda and explained with strained politeness that, in fact, one of the bulbs in the projector had burned out and that she could get her money back at the box office if she wanted. He turned back to the popcorn girl and Sylvia asked why they didn’t just change the bulb. The boy’s patience edging toward rupture, he told her the bulb was too hot to be changed now, that it would be changed tomorrow morning. Then he pursed his lips and breathed through his nose waiting to see if there was anything else she needed. Sylvia asked him if anyone else had requested their money back and he seemed pleased to tell her she was the first one. On the drive home she can remember Perry saying, “It’s no big deal, Sylvia. I’m not crazy about the movies anyway.”
And now she stares out at the huge old screen in front of her as the heavy blue curtain starts to roll back and she wonders how could I end up with a guy who isn’t crazy about the movies?
Propp does a fast trot down the inclined aisle, braking against gravity, slides in next to her and says, “Exactly where I’d have sat.”
“Glad you approve.”
They watch leader strip fill up the screen, a scratchy-looking test pattern that shows a color spectrum.
Propp leans into her shoulder and whispers, as if the theatre were filled and they might disturb someone. “Remember, the reduction to sixteen millimeter is going to be painful. I’m pretty sure this was done on the run. And the sound track isn’t quite in sync.”
“Please,” Sylvia says, “don’t build my expectations so high.”
He gives her elbow a playful shove off the armrest and they turn their attention to the screen. An old-time clap-board comes up that reads 11/5/38, then the marker is pulled down out of the shot and they’re watching Judy Garland looking beautiful in spite of the start of all the diet pills and bad advice.