The movies stink, so we're closed. Go see `Jackass 2' somewhere else.

Chicago Tribune ^ | September 29, 2006 | Bob Secter

[Mike Bates]

HOOPESTON, Ill. -- The "closed" sign went up a few weeks ago on the flashy neon marquee outside the Lorraine Theatre, but the 84-year-old movie palace on Main Street hasn't played its last picture show. Business isn't bad. It's the movies that are wretched.

"Both theaters in Hoopeston are closed ... because of such poor film choices available," explains a recording on the Lorraine's customer hot line. "Go to Danville to see `Jackass 2.'"

Car dealers wouldn't tell buyers to take a hike until better models came out. No chef worth his ladle would shoo paying diners off to the competition because his kitchen is in a slump. Yet that's essentially what Lorraine owner Greg Boardman did this month.

He put his two screens here on hiatus rather than sell tickets to the gross-out and freak-out fare he said Hollywood distributors have made available in recent weeks. Boardman said he'd rather show nothing than such recent offerings as "Beerfest," "The Covenant" or the "Jackass" sequel, which topped the nation's box office last week despite getting savagely panned by critics. A Tribune review labeled it "an insult to sophomoric movies everywhere."

"There's just so much lousy material out there--people vomiting on the screen," explained Boardman, 52, a local boy who now lives in California and uses the Internet to run the Lorraine from there. "I have one of the finest sound systems in the world, and I don't want to waste it on such drivel."

[MoochPooch]

It is the writing not the acting that is hurting movies today.

I agree. I find that the plots are weak or illogical, the ideas PC to the point of naive. It's as if the writers are too immature to understand nuances.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

And just how he is going to do that?

There are distributors across the country that specialize in getting these films from the studios that own them.
Believe it or not, the studios are interested in making a buck and these distributors DO exist.
There are many theatres across the country that do run these older films. Where do you suppose they get them?