The Tower Theater and the power of two

Lou Reed and Suzanne Vega: Talk a walk on the wild side remix

“What is your deal with eyes?,”  she softly cooed.  My answer was simple:  The Tower Theater and the power of two.

In reality, it was an unassuming place.  Right at home off the ‘drag’.  She was little more than simple dollar theater just off the UT campus that carried that dilapidated ‘heroin chic’ so familiar to the denizens of the capital city: a glory of ragamuffin ramshackle.  Now don’t get me wrong, artifacts were everywhere that it wasn’t always that way.   

Like the Hollywood she represented, she had once been adorned with lush gilded trappings befitting the epic.  Inside she had once been a place for the common man.  Shining bright bronze trim bordered well polished dark wooden edges.  On the floor, plush carpeting once embraced the guest’s feet.  The concession stand presented confectionary delights to tempt eyes of the passerby behind spotless panes of clear glass.  A sensory overload to prepare the senses for the larger-than-life visual feast that would soon be partaken. 

Time passed and with the appearance of more personal entertainment, the community provided by movies became less central to its audience.  The glory of the palace had begun to dim.  The Tower Theater fought nobly against this.  On the side of her art deco exterior was a mural depicting some of Hollywood’s most memorable scenes; stills from Citizen Kane, North by Northwest, Giant, and The Graduate were captured in a high black and white replicating kodalith while Superfly made a central and vibrant Technicolor appearance. 

Such stands however, were merely an attempt to slow the decaying audience.  A cursory examination of the exterior mural revealed that times had been tight for the kingdom.  On the mural, the paint was washed out and chipped.  Inside, the brass had long since oxidized; the carpet was worn and faded.  The clear glass at an understaffed concession stand had long since been replaced by a hazy and unkempt Plexiglas.  If one dared to enter the theater for a film, once seated they found themselves surrounded by the magic.

True, the screen of at Hogg Auditorium might be bigger, and the seats at the Union Theater and the theater at Dobie Mall might have been newer.  But the birds occasionally flying in front of the screen at Hogg or the tiny screens at the Union and Dobie broke and didn’t capture the majesty of the experience.  If you wanted to be engulfed by truth delivered at twenty-four frames a second, you went to The Tower Theater.

At this cinema, the immersion into the state of disbelief was palatable.  When, the lights began to fade the viewer, seated in the well worn seats was taken to another world. If you went with a group of friends, the laugher, amazement, and power of a shared viewing was increased exponentially.  If one took a date, either the balcony or the seclusion found in hidden corners provided a sanctum for the creation of a smaller world within the larger.  If you found yourself alone, she understood—she and her two.

One might logically ask how a well-worn theater could provide such an environment.  The realists, with a colder vision, might offer something about the fact that it was a communally shared event would be responsible.  That one is a bit too dry.  The sentimentalists among us meanwhile, might have us believe that the memories from hundreds of stories played in the past reached out to touch you in the present if only to remind you that you were never truly alone.  Nice, a bit dramatic and emotional, but I guess it’s richer than the realists.  As for me, well, I’m an observer.  Maybe that’s how I came to see the two.

It was my first night in the theater.  I had gone in one of those comfortable large groups that allowed you the safety of those you knew while you became more familiar with new faces.   Mystic Pizza was the movie.  It starred a young Vincent D’Onofrio.  Although he would become famous later for his stammering style of speech in C.S.I., he played in this one an uncommon commoner.  It was her idea.  The one with laughing eyes half hidden by cascading brown ringlets of hair.  Perhaps to find something clever to talk about I looked around the theater, and that it when I saw them.

Astride the screen, were two large art deco columns.  Perched comfortably at the top of each were two angels.  Though the outspread wings made them look like so many other ornamental angels, one point about them was outstanding.  The sculpted eyes had no pupils.  This enabled the diminutive guardians to scan the audience and through the grace of some deus ex machina was able to touch the members of the audience.  Sight unseen, they comforted, nurtured, and protected all in the audience.  Though they held a special softness for those who might see a movie alone.  The two would act as the community that accepted that the viewer, no matter how alone, would be accepted into.

So what happened to the theater?  After a break, I returned to the school to find that the cinema had been replaced by a record store.  Though they had kept the mural on the exterior, things were different.  Upon entry, I found out why.  The angels had been removed from the back wall.  Must have gotten in the way of commerce, those pesky angels.   in the second floor of merchandise that replaced where the balcony had once been.  A few years later, the record store was replaced by a book store.  In a retrograde technological march, the visual word became the audible, and the audible became the written.  Indeed the angel with the brown ringlets she… well she still softly coos.  And thanks to the angels of the cinema I will always hear her.