Celluloid Heroes Part VIII: The Drug Of A Nation

And I did …
Front row, center, resting your feet on the apron were the best seats in all of Toronto by the way …

[1] The Uptown staff were also big movie fans, so much so that the tickets for that screening of The Shining were deliberately misspell to read “The Shinning” in reference to a popular spoof from The Simpsons TV show.

[2] The reason the always profitable Uptown closed? It was sued for not being wheelchair accessible. When the court ordered them to make it compliant, the prohibitive cost of a retrofit led the Famous Players chain to shutter the building and sell the property to a developer. In a tragic twist to the story, during the demolition of the building a wall collapsed onto an ESL school housed next door, killing one.

[3] So mainstream was JFK that it was parodied in an infamous episode of Seinfeld.

[4] Think of that: a three-hour plus film about the investigation into the Kennedy assassination selling out multiple times. We’ve come a long way, baby. Or not. It wouldn’t be until sometime in the mid-90s I finally saw JFK on the big screen, at a rep screening at Toronto’s Paradise Theater with my roommate (now president of the Director’s Guild of Canada) Warren Sonoda.

[5] In this post-The Doors film Stone hadn’t quite let go of his obsessions with Native American mysticism.

ADDENDUM:

A reader asked about the significance of this entry’s title. It comes from a great song by the great 90s hip-hop group Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy “Television, The Drug of a Nation”, the message of which might just as well apply to the internet culture of today.

37 thoughts on “Celluloid Heroes Part VIII: The Drug Of A Nation

  1. Man this takes me back. I was too young to see Natural Born Killers in the theater but when it hit video me and my friends must’ve watched it a dozen times much to our parents horror. They thought it was sick, deranged, and irresponsible but o their credit they didn’t forbid me from seeing it either. Watching it in the theater must have been an experience though.

  2. Great gret movie with a kick ass soundtrack album too. I loved NBK and still do. Its very much a movie of its time but thats not a bad thing. It really does feel like peak alternative rock just as it was sliding back into the underground. Great memories of the Uptown too. I didnt see it there but remember that theater well.

  3. Boy Oliver Stone was a real force back then wasn’t he? Just a stellar run of films as you pointed out. He did kind of fall off the map after Nixon as I recall. Either times changed or he did.

  4. Of the two I’m more in the JFK camp despite it being, as you said, largely hokum. I think Natural Born Killers is too far up its own ass from the beginning so it has license to be as out there and incendiary and offensive without really getting much deeper than surface level criticism of mass media and mass culture in general. But as a snapshot of attitudes of the time it definitely hit the mark.

  5. the Uptown! What a great theater and I agree – the best in Toronto at the time. Sad when it closed. At the risk of sounding old Toronto’s film scene never recovered from its loss, and the York, and the Eglinton, and the Highland (though in that case I hated the middle row dividing the auditorium so you could never sit in the center of the row). I also hate to say it but the crowds were better then too. Thanks to cell-phones everybody’s in their little bubble worlds, slouched over a screen and sometimes worse (i.e. texting during the movie).

  6. I don’t quite get the title of this one but I’m sure you’ll elaborate. For my part I hated Natural Born Killers. I thought it was ugly, misanthropic, and angry without focus, shocking for shock’s sake. My date however loved it (our first and last if I recall). It may be more of a “guy’s movie” than a woman’s but that’s okay too. For the record I *loved* Pulp Fiction which came out some months later.

  7. It’s funny but I considered myself an Oliver Stone fan up until this film. He’d always been a controversial filmmaker but I thing in this one he went off the rails and never really came back from it. So “Peak Stone” would apply to Natural Born Killers. Do you have a ranking of his work? For me I think his Vietnam Trilogy of Platoon, Born on the 4th of July, and Heaven & Earth are standouts, but Salvador is quite underrated and JFK a little overrated. And don’t get me started on The Doors.

  8. Great film but I think it’s real secret weapon is the man on the poster. Woody Haralson doesn’t get near enough credit for being the great actor he is. I recall reading his father was a convicted killer who was in jail much of Woody’s life and he channeled that experience of “having a killer’s blood in him” into his performance as Mickey. His monologue in the prison before the riot is a keeper in this guy’s opinion.

  9. I remember the disaster that befell the Uptown. While I can understand the need for accessibility not all movie theaters had that capacity to install an elevator or wheelchair accessible lift. The fact they closed it essentially because of one complaint and court order, the wall collapsed and somebody died seems like something of a bad joke. Had they let bygones be bygones one person would still be alive and the Uptown might still be standing.

  10. Movies at the Uptown. If you were never there you’ll never know how awesome that place was. When it closed a piece of Toronto died along with it. It feels like they all started falling like ugh I think the York and Eglinton went first.

    But hey, at least we got a lot of ugly condominiums/stashes for foreign oligarchs instead right?

  11. Rob – I think the York went first then the Eglinton. I remember it thusly because when rumors were swirling the Uptown was next there was some sort of email campaign to save it. By that point the old movie houses were dropping like flies so people were motivated. But on the other hand: condos.

  12. SaraBi – yes! “Television, the Drug of a Nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.” Also applies to the internet.

  13. Patrick – you’re not wrong and I do wonder if the people instrumental in its closure ever took pause to reconsider the consequences of their actions. That said I feel the writing was on the wall for the Uptown and other cinema closings at the time: the value of the real estate and location was far too tempting.

  14. Bryan – Yes for 2024. We’ll see where things go from here. The book is being shopped at present so I don’t want to post too much of it online, The chapters I have posted were cut from the final draft and there’s about six more of those.

  15. Charles – I think Woody Harrelson nailed the performance definitely. Both his sitcom background in the “I Love Mallory” sequence but also, as you indicate, the darkness in his own life.

  16. Matt – I’d rank Salvador and Platoon at the top. After those he went from “Oliver Stone: Filmmaker” to “Oliver Stone: Personality” and I think his work from then on reflected that. But Wall Street and Talk Radio are both really interesting films, and I think Nixon is severely underrated and surprisingly forgotten despite its absolute powerhouse of a cast.

  17. LeeAnn – Stone is definitely a guy’s filmmaker though I recall more than a few women cheering at Tommy Lee Jones’ comeuppance. The title refers to a song by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. I’ve updated the post with a link.

  18. Justin – movie audiences have changed definitely. I do miss the conversations and camaraderie of waiting in line: another thing we’ve lost. I do often feel we’ve sacrificed community for convenience in this century.

  19. Bill – probably a bit of both. He’s very much a filmmaker of his time and place. I also think post-2000 the studio system had changed to a degree his movies had a harder time getting financed.

  20. Martyn – agreed the timing of Killers and GenX’s cultural decline (at least the alt-rock era) was quite prescient.

  21. I agree with your take on Killers if it was made today with the internet instead of mass media fueling Mickey and Mallory. It’s funny and sad that while mass media influence has declined the internet has taken up slack and given a platform to behaviors good and bad. Maybe the problem really is us and our need to be seen.

  22. Jayson – it’s definitely a strong candidate for runner up. But the great thing about The Crow is it could take place anywhen. Natural born Killers is very much a 90s movie about the 90s zeitgeist.

  23. Jenn – a NBK remake/sequel/spinoff set in the here and now and focused on social media stardom could be both interesting and terrible at the same time.

  24. Yeah my parents did not want me watching “that trash”. Yet my mom was obsessed with the OJ Simpson trial too so go figure!

  25. What would a Essential 90s Movies top ten look like to you? To me (no particular order):

    Fight Club
    Jurassic Park
    The Matrix
    The Crow
    Natural Born Killers
    Forrest Gump
    Reservoir Dogs
    Mortal Combat
    Wayne’s World
    The Blair Witch Project

  26. Canada Square at Yonge and Eglinton was my jam back in the day. A great mix of art house and mainstream movies. The seats were comfortable, the concessions varied. A real gem that we also recently lost. I worry for the future of moviegoing. With so many people choosing streaming at home over going to a cinema I could see movie theaters becoming more endangered than they are now.

  27. I remember the Uptown quite well as it was my go-to for movies back in the 90s. We used to plan our movie watching around the top screens in the city and even if we were so-so on the movie itself the experience of seeing it at Uptown One elevated the mediocre.

  28. Wyatt — a top 10 90s list from me would vary, but if I break things down as 90s movies most of their time and place it would look like this:

    Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
    The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
    Reservoir Dogs (1992)
    Hard Boiled (1992)
    Schindler’s List (1993)
    Seven (1995)
    Lone Star (1996)
    Boogie Nights (1997)
    Starship Troopers (1997)
    The Limey (1999)

  29. Rob A. – agreed on Canada Square; a theater that could be showing Barton Fink next door to Highlander 2: The Quickening

  30. Colin – Many a mediocre movie (Outbreak, Batman Forever, Armageddon) were elevated by their presentation at the Uptown. We would go to see these mid-range misfires because they were at the Uptown or the York (Air Force One, Independence Day) especially as two of three THX-certified screens at the time. The Eglinton always seemed to skew more prestige (Braveheart, Rob Roy, Titanic). But once the Silver City multiplexes began showing up the writing was on the wall.

  31. Brad I really hope Celluloid Heroes finds a publisher because I’ve really enjoyed this summer series (and the previous installments in it). The movies, yes, but the stories you tell surrounding them. It makes me think about the movies I saw that made a big impression on my life too, where I saw them, and who I saw them with. Hopefully a publisher will see the potential in this book!

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