http://www.eyeweekly.com/city/scrollingeye/article/22213
AMC Yonge & Dundas
Today on the Scroll: Celebrating movies, now more than ever, as Kyle Rae and friends cut the ribbon on their commercialized sarcophagus.
BY Marc Weisblott March 27, 2008 14:03
As far as ribbon-cutting events go, it was not unlike the opening of an envelope. But more like one of those FedEx-style envelopes, the ones made of Tyvek. An envelope that was mostly lost in transit over the past decade. Postmarked from Kansas City, Missouri. Meant to stamp out all the blight that was there before.
But that’s enough lousy postal-service metaphors, because the intersection of Yonge and Dundas now has a hotspot where urban-minded Torontonians can snobbishly gloat they would never go — a local equivalent of the Olive Garden restaurant in Times Square, and the Disneyfication lurking outside its windows.
If only the relationship between the city and this complex wasn’t so complex.
Bringing the suburban megaplex experience to downtown Toronto, the AMC Yonge & Dundas 24 takes up plenty of the space in Toronto Life Square, along with Milestone’s Grill & Bar and Jack Astor’s Bar & Grill. Plus a Future Shop, Extreme Fitness, Shoppers Drug Mart, Adidas Sport Performance store, a food court, Starbucks and everything else the city expropriated 13 stores for by 1999.
Proud parent is Councillor Kyle Rae, forced to shush a ribbon-cutting ceremony crowd feasting on hors d’oeuvres and drinks last night, as if he was admonishing Rob Ford from across the floor at City Hall. But, for this, he wanted to be heard.
“This was a labour of love where we decided to intervene in the marketplace,†beams Rae, “so that we would not fall into the cesspool of other cities in North America.†Rae praises all the parties involved “who had the balls to say 'yes'.â€
A special $10,000 donation is made by cojones-bearing management corporation PenEquity to Central Toronto Youth Services, whose executive director Heather Sproule attempts to speak over the din of those ostensibly here for the freebies.
Sproule evokes the name of Emmanuel Jacques, the 12-year-old Yonge Street shoeshine boy lured into an apartment above a body-rub parlour in August 1977, strangled and drowned in the kitchen sink. Presumably, it wouldn’t have happened had the block boasted something like “20,000 feet of spectacular outdoor signage and media opportunities including the world’s largest contoured Tri-Vision screen, Canada’s largest HD video display and 10 backlit static signs ranging in size from 300 sq. ft. to 4,100 sq. ft.†Twisted logic, but totally true.
What was originally dubbed the Metropolis complex — before naming rights were bought by Toronto Life — was illustrated through garish renderings that initially made it look like a nightmare scenario for public-space advocates. Too late now —it was for real.
Kyle Rae tells of the decade and change process of putting the site together, and how AMC became the principal tenant — sticking it out even as their share price bobbed and weaved, and would-be anchors like the Virgin Megastore, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and something called DisneyQuest bailed out.
The concept of the AMC megaplex — originating with Grand 24 in Dallas, Texas in 1995 — was sold as a key to renewing neighbourhoods, even if a consequence was that Hollywood movies would start having to suck even more than before.
More recently, the invasion of AMC — a non-acronym that still can’t help bring to mind the American Motors Corporation’s signature vehicle, the Gremlin — has spread throughout the 905: Concord, Mississauga, Oakville and Whitby, along with the Kennedy Commons in Scarborough. The company dates back to 1920, though, as started by Edward Dubinsky, who changed his name to Durwood (because, honestly, which name on his theatre was less likely to cause arson?).
Yet the legacy of Dubinsky is supplanting that of Drabinsky, coming up on 30 years since Garth (who has technically been a fugitive from US justice for the past decade) opened the Eaton Centre Cineplex in 1979 — 18 screens later expanded to 21 — all of which were, ah well, about the size of a postage stamp.
The opening of a VHS-rental emporium on every corner, plus the emergence of downtown repertory cinemas, kinda killed Garth’s buzz after a year or three. But, by then, he leveraged its success to take over the Odeon chain and make his company Cineplex a real player with mergers and acquisitions across the continent. (American spin-off Loews Cineplex was ultimately acquired by AMC in 2006.)
And by the time Drabinsky lost control of Cineplex in 1998, his first idea was falling into disrepair — it sure didn’t help the Eaton Centre’s status as a magnet for hoodlums, especially on the more loiterer-un-friendly Dundas end of the mall.
After the turn of the century, the original Cineplex was teetering dangerously close to the tawdriness of the still-standing Metro Theatre at Bloor and Christie, only instead of screening porn, it was a place to catch failed movies starring Saturday Night Live cast members for $1.50, anytime. Spill some sticky soda on the floor and you’d be lucky to find it mopped up within the same day, if ever.
The inevitable closing left a cinematic void at the intersection that lingered for seven years, when it often seemed like the hoarding at Yonge and Dundas was never coming down. For this they closed the Cinema 2000? “Totally concerned with SEX,†its sign boasted, in the space where HMV has lingered since 1991.
And then there was the Rio, a real-life grindhouse a couple blocks north, which incredibly stayed open until 1992 with quadruple features that offered something for everyone — invariably RESTRICTED to persons 18 years of age and older. You can see its exterior as a forlorn Corey Hart slouches past in the video for “Never Surrender,†and SCTV’s legendary Garth and Gord and Fiona and Alice.
There were other bijous, too, but the area has arguably lacked a credible first-run movie screen since 1986, when the Famous Players chain gave up on the Imperial Six — it was sold to Cineplex, refurbished for Drabinsky to mount Phantom of the Opera in the site that now houses the Mirvish-managed Canon Theatre.
Movie theatres along or near Yonge Street had dropped like flies in general throughout the 1980s, though: whether the Willow and Fairlawn to the north, to the Towne and University along Bloor, to the surreal-seeming twin cinemas in the Sheraton Centre and TD Centre — the shopping-mall movie experience prevailed. Scotiabank Theatre, the former Paramount multiplex at John and Richmond — whose neon sign caught fire earlier this week — has long provided evidence of that.
However, as of this weekend, that experience is smack dab in our downtown.
NOTES FROM AN OPENING NIGHT
Part of the AMC Yonge & Dundas 24 deal is the cinemas being used as occasional daytime classrooms for Ryerson University — helping ensure that Rye High retains its quirk. The fact that one must ride three or four escalators to get to class will offer opportunity for academic contemplation: study hard in school, or else you’ll end up having to work the rest of your life in the square’s food court.
The foyer of the megaplex has its own version of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel — a mural of movie stars past on one side, and relatively present on the other, all demographically and racially balanced enough to look like the by-product of a Kansas City focus group. Leads one to wonder which of these contemporary silver screen icons will face an untimely fate and become uncomfortable to look at: Elliott from E.T.? Drew Barrymore? Chris Tucker, Jackie Chan or both?
Conspicuously absent from such embellishment, at least on the lower level of screens, is any CanCon. Not a Maury Chaykin nor Jackie Burroughs in the bunch — but, hey, there’s a Coming Soon poster for the Toronto-shot The Love Guru starring Mike Myers.
The invitation-only opening last night actually came after last weekend's free preview of this AMC 24. A coupon distributed online, for free screenings of features that were a few months old, drew 9,500 people who doubtless spent at the snack bar.
And, gosh, is that snack bar ever a testament to the financial priorities of a movie exhibitior. The snacks are displayed in manner redolent of the world’s finest museums. Surveying the price list leads one to wonder if the day will come when the prices for a large popcorn or pop will have to make way for a “1†in front of the current cost, much like happened at gas stations over the last year or two.
So, when it was announced last night that the concessions would be free with the sneak peek of the digital auditoriums, you could imagine the stampede — even though the same people had just been plied with complimentary beer and wine, an endless flow of appetizers from Milestone’s and Jack Astor’s, and even dessert. A bag of MexiCasa nachos, when displayed in a tray that cost $6.75 — plus additional $1.75 for cheese — is certainly a difficult freebie for one to pass up.
Don’t forget the complimentary Butter Flavoring (sic) a term that was doubtlessly determined by the same AMC head office that trademarked the phrase "Silence is Golden" to remind moviegoers not to shriek or answer the phone during the show.
Movies on the menu for this opening: Leatherheads, starring George Clooney and Renée Zelwegger; 21 starring Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth; and Stop-Loss, the Iraq war protest drama starring Ryan Phillippe. And, by what seemed a huge margin, the least number of AMC attendees opted for the latter.
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