Chris on 
Far be it from me to point at Merrill and say that they have one up on Wausau, but in one simple way they do. They have a cinema. They have a place that shows current releases of movies. We do not.
Yesterday I went and say the movie Fast and Furious at the Crossroads Cinema. To be honest, the movie was absolutely terrible, but I missed the showing of Earth, which I assume would have been better. I did not go because I wanted to see Vin Diesel or Paul Walker, but rather because it was the final day of the Crossroads movie theatre here in Wausau.
I am a movie guy. I like movies. I like going to movies. I like watching movie previews. I like the behind-the-scenes stuff that movies enable you to experience. Like Pat McCurdy said, I like movie stars. The loss of a movie theatre in Wausau is very troubling.
I saw Star Wars at the Grand Theatre. I saw Quicksilver at the Rogers Theatre with my girlfriend Angie Laska, and Will Fleischman and Tara St Claire. My BFF Jill and I used to sneak flasks into the Crossroads and booze it up during lame movies.
Wausau recently lost its own screenwriter and Emmy nominated film maker Erik Cieslewicz to the East Coast after he shot his own movie right here in Wausau. We also lost the Central Wisconsin Film Festival, and I am unsure as to where James Rubino is right now; I assume he is training to be an astronaut or a Navy Seal or something amazing.
What does it say about our community that we cannot support a movie theatre, even a small one? Is it a reflection on movies in general? My good friend Andy likes to watch movies at home — is that the trend? Media on our terms?
Also, what does it mean that we have what can only be called a homogenized selection of titles available now through the Cedar Creek Cinema? We lose the voices coming into the community through cinema. We see only mass produced, mass marketed, corporately acceptable movies. I am all for a good blockbuster from time to time, but I also think that the corporate power structure limits the voices to such an extent that we lose the interesting rogue story teller.
I am a movie guy. I spend a little money on renting movies each week, and they know me at my video store. I used to buy DVDs, but that got expensive. There were lots of problems with the Crossroads, but I think we lose more than we know by losing it. I think that we are losing so much, and sometimes we even choose to self restrict, and I think new voices in media should be celebrated and brought to our small town.
Will you miss the Crossroads?
Maybe somebody should buy the Fill-No-More and turn it into a cinema!
A couple of things: I don’t think the loss of Crossroads is huge at all. Cedar Creek and Crossroads were both owned by Marcus. Marcus plays only mass market big releases, with a few exceptions sprinkled in (they actually brought Bill Maher’s Religulous to the tiniest theatre at Cedar Creek for a week). Crossroads just played second run big box office movies. The biggest loss was probably when Rogers and Marcus exchanged some theatres in the Stevens Point and Wausau areas which game them control of their respective cities (being Rogers in Point and Marcus in Wausau). One could also argue the loss of Cedar Creek to Marcus was also worse.
The point is… the little indie flicks or even the bigger ones like Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona never came to Wausau before and they won’t now unless someone turns Crossroads into an art cinema. Crossroads was a shitty theatre and I hated when I movie I wanted to see played there, just like everyone else I know.
It *is* sad indeed that Wausau has no theatres though, that is just silly, as this area should be able to support multiple theatres… it has nothing to do with art or the little guy though.
Possibly I am part of the problem, but I like Cedar Creek pretty well because I go there to watch, like, Star Trek and Wolverine. I like watching ‘small’ movies but I mostly like watching them at home, through netflix or the Internet. I think the communal experience you get from a theater is probably best suited to mainstream movies anyway. So while this closing is maybe bad in theory if I am honest it doesn’t affect my movie-life much at all…
“Far be it from me to point at Merrill and say that they have one up on Wausau, but in one simple way they do. They have a cinema. They have a place that shows current releases of movies. We do not.”
* * *
Well, I guess Rothschild has one up on Weston, too, huh? It’s all about municipal boundaries, after all, right? Cedar Creek doesn’t count and it would be there even if Wausau didn’t exist, right? Just like the Holiday Inn that we don’t have. And Wausau doesn’t have a ski hill either. We have to rely on the Town of Rib Mountain’s. For shame! We should have some pride and build our OWN! And do you know how many people go bowling in WESTON?! It has the biggest bowling alley by far! What the heck are we allowing to happen here?! Wausau doesn’t even have a PERKINS and we have to go to SCHOFIELD, for cryin’ out loud!
If a good Denver Omelette is what you are looking for…
You can fly into Mosinee on a commercial passenger jet, but not Wausau! But things could be worse. The people in Cincinnati have to go to KENTUCKY and the people in Geneva, Switzerland have to go to freaking FRANCE!
…this has more to do with changes in home entertainment technology than anything else…
I gotta say I’m in the same place as Patrick. I hated going to the Crossroads. It was a dump when I went there in high school 18 years ago. I don’t think it’s too big a loss.
I think it highlights more of a cultural void than anything else. We now have even less of a chance to see some of the movies we may want to see. This past year, during Oscar season, I wanted to see The Wrestler, but it didn’t come anywhere near here. At least Crossroads offered 4 additional screens.
As to your points, Jim, I see what you’re saying, but to me, I think Dino’s point is more of an issue of accessibility. At least you could get to the Crossroads easily on the bus routes. I don’t think that’s available to Cedar Creek, or am I wrong?
The community supports a theater. Cedar Creek is that theater. Crossroads sucked in my opinion, it won’t affect my movie-watching one bit.
My thoughts are along the lines of Matt and Jim’s.
You wonder why this “community” cannot support a movie theater. And, of course, a major pet peeve for me is when people want to look at Wausau as a stand alone entity… which it truly is not.
Wausau is just a very big piece of a larger metropolitan area… and that larger area is our “community”.. and this community can support a rather large movie theater – the one at Cedar Creek.
Afterall.. where is “Wausau” Harley Davidson… in Wausau? No.. it moved to Rothschild from Schofield. The only people who truly care about the legal municipal boundaries are those that have to… for the ordinary person… this entire area is Wausau.
Sorry Dino…I have to side with JHF, Matt and, I can’t believe I’m going to say it…Jim R., although I will be less snarky about it than he was. (Dino, what did you ever do to JR to get a response like that?) Anyway, ask someone from a metro area where they are from and they’ll answer the largest city in the area…i.e. “Milwaukee” when they’re actually from Brookfield, Waukesha, Germantown or the Falls. Same for Madison, LaCrosse and Wausau. HD-Wausau is a good example along with Wausau Tile, Wausau Supply and Wausau Homes. None of the four are anywhere close to Wausau city limits.
Wausau’s movie theatre has been Cedar Creek for some time now. Only now it is official and I agree…no great loss. It’s cultural,….with wide flat screens, surround sound, cheap popcorn and BEER…why go out? Plus you can pause to go to the bathroom…and get another BEER!
Well, I think we can see from the opening when I say that Merrill (the city where Sally Sarnstrom sought to override the constitution as School Superintendent) has a cinema, that you might catch on to a little bit of the old tongue in the old cheek-aroo.
I think it is indicative that our central wisconsin area has lost a movie theatre. I think that is problematic.
I am still a fan of the Cosmo, their new screen is amazing, and you can’t argue with a $3 large popcorn, and $3 large sodas, and $6 movie tickets.
First post: Take it easy on me, please! :)
To Jim’s point, I would argue that Wausau has plenty of which to be proud. For example, We have Big Trash Pick-up Day; and, by extention, we have scads of vintage TVs on street corners with what I think are old-timey red price tags on them. More seriously, we have UWMC, NTC, and some of the best city parks in the area.
As we lose one cultural source of civic pride like a cinema(I get that Crossroads Cinema specifically wasn’t the first thing I thought of when I thought “civic pride”), we do need to acknowldge what we have to be proud of is slowly shrinking and avow we are willing to fight back by saying “Hey, here’s what we need to have today so we can be proud of our community.” (Acting on this…that’s another thread.)
Back in the 19th Century, one of the “best” indicators of civic pride was a big telescope. What are the best symbols of civic pride today and how do we stack up?
To the other main point, “Wausau” is a very malleable concept. I hope the actions of our local governments move us closer to what we consider “Wausau” to be, in each of the many meanings it may have.
Welcome to CW, edbdqt! Don’t worry…we’re all in it for the conversation. Hopefully, you find this a comfortable place to hang out and share your ideas.
I think your post is very well-said, and strikes to the heart of the argument…Thanks for sharing.
I was writing up a response to this, even though I’m not longer a member of the community, being mentioned by name seemed like an invitation to add to the discussion.
Unfortunately it ballooned into something too big for the comments section, so here’s the whole thing: http://elvideodemelodica.blogspot.com/2009/05/stockholm-syndrome.html
Here’s a snippet from the middle:
“So how does this all tie back to the Crossroads? It’s one less option. There’s now a monopoly of locations to see films (there already was in terms of companies, but like I said, Marcus would occasionally stick some limited release stuff in Crossroads). This is the antithesis of what my generation wants. Where I live now, there are nine movie theaters within a twenty miles radius; two of them are art houses, one shows first run Bollywood films. The Fillmor, while most of the blame for its downfall (in my opinion) falls on the management, even well managed would probably not be able to stay in business and offer what we want:
New, fresh, different, exciting.
Because that doesn’t sell in the Wausau area. Despite getting media coverage from Citizen Wausau, The City Pages, WSAW and The Wausau Daily Herald, I couldn’t get people to show up and watch the film I shot of their city with an admission price of free. Because it wasn’t made by a studio, had an army of publicists getting the word out to convince them it was a safe bet for a good night. And who knows, maybe those fine folks that did come out that night thought it sucked. But hey, they gave something a shot that didn’t have ads on during the latest reality show.”
Sorry to send you to another site, but it’s way to big to just be a comment :D
I’m not sure who said it first, but ‘nostalgia is the beer goggles of history’.
In pondering the end of the Crossroads and the Roger’s, it is easy to look back to the days of our youth, and think fondly of the importance of both of these movie houses has in our own history, as well as the history of the Wausau area.
The reality is, most of us didn’t frequent these theaters in their later lives. For those who did, you probably remember that the sound was off, the picture was fuzzy and the theaters suffered major maintenance issues.
My last couple of experiences at both the Crossroads and Roger’s were simply horrible. I didn’t get a movie experience, I experienced frustration of not being able to hear dialogue, reels breaking and indifferent management who didn’t care there were issues.
In their glory, both were great places to be. That is what I will remember. In their end, they were battered and broken icons that suffered technical and attendance problems.
I think I’ll head to Merrill and take in a movie. Their history is still alive, and quite frankly I want to live in the moment and enjoy the theater while it is still here.
I saw 1 film there in 8 years. Crossroads offered mediocrity for theatrical experience…
…one good theater with one screen and one excellent sound system and comfortable, tiered seating would be a life-enhancing change…it’s about the quality of aesthetic experience…
Agreed, Barry. I was spoiled by living in Milwaukee and frequenting the “Luxury Cinema” with stadium seating, leather chairs, etc…
It made the experience much more elaborate and enhanced the escapism I was seeking by going to a movie in the first place.
Something as simple as a chair that raises to the level of my head is a luxury that would help at Cedar Creek. I hate leaning back in my chair and not having the chair to rest my head on…It’s the little things.
Erik- Just an FYI, we have shown indie movies in the past at Malarkey’s, and we have filled the house, not as hard to due at our bar as a theater, but we have a high def projector, and pro-audio sound. I would love to due it again. I called the some indie film group at the UW-Madison, but I could really get any info I wanted.
If you would like to show your movie, or have any leads in that industry, I am very interested in learning about them.
Thanks
[...] started as a response to Dino’s Wausau Has No Movie Theaters. Sadly it’s ballooned into a whole post. All the same, I was happy to see that Dino got folks [...]
@Tyler, thanks for the heads up. I had heard rumblings of stuff like that happening at Malarkey’s, but never really saw anything of real substance on dates or times, hitting up your web-site probably would’ve helped and the folks I talked to really didn’t seem to know either.
I’d love to see another screening of Microcosm organized at Malarkey’s. All of my producers are still in the area. I’ll see if any of them are up for it and have them contact you if they are.
Maybe I’m a bit of a masochist, but the quality of the seating and the snack selection and so forth is irrelevant to enjoying the movie going experience.
To that point, one of my most sensual movie experiences was seeing “The Pillow Book” at the Majestic Theatre in Madison. For those of you didn’t have the pleasure of attending a movie there before they closed, the seating was (I think) original from 1906, the screen was small and at an angle, the seats were smaller, the bathrooms indicated by a handwritten sign “WC” were older than dirt and the floors were dirtier. You weren’t supposed to sit on the balcony level because it wasn’t safe. The “things that make the heart beat faster” when I watched that movie weren’t surround sound, or cup holders, they were Vivian Wu describing the smell of paper and how surprising the power of the pen was. For that, the Majestic will always be the movie theatre that lives in my heart when I’m old.
Thinking about it, that movie centered on the pleasures of the written language and it does a good job informing this conversation about the quality of Crossroads. Do we say Shakespeare is less beautiful scrawled on a bathroom wall? It seems some here would argue for that point.
Back to the topic, my children and I had seen several movies at Crossroads recently. I noticed the door that didn’t open properly, the disrepair on the signs, aisle lights that hadn’t been replaced. They didn’t; they just saw a truck raining gumballs and joined the laughter of several dozen other children (and a few parents). On the way home we talked about what they liked and didn’t like and they commented on how funny that scene was, not about the sound system that was out of date.
And that’s what’s frustrating about the closure of Crossroads. I have to drive to another community to share the experience of the joy of community provided by movies, a sense of community that I know will be less than expected because a lot of the movies I want to see and I want to share won’t be shown.
AHA!!!
As a proud regular customer of the Cosmo, I’d invite everyone to come on up and enjoy a place where cinema hasn’t been ‘commoditized/suburbanized/homogenized’. It is a small town, family run theater where the staff actually looks you in the eye and smiles when they greet you, and where you feel like a customer, not a number.
The icing on the cake is both prices and screens/seating, that cedar creek can’t touch. The only plus I know of for Cedar Creek over the Cosmo is number of screens.
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Not to mention the Chips Hamburgers statistics: Merrill 1, Wausau 0
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