Marooned in the Filmless Suburbs.

• Author: SHARRETT, CHRISTOPHER
• Position: Brief Article

A NUMBER OF MOVIES of the past two decades have dealt with the ennui of postmodern suburban life, with a corresponding amount of articles deconstructing both these films and the tract-housing misery they explore. However, there has yet to be a "Blue Velvet" or "American Beauty" that explores a very palpable suburban crisis: If you live in the suburbs, you don't see very many films.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that there are no movies outside the big cities. On the contrary, there's no shortage of eye candy in the multi-screened cineplexes that take up vast acreage near equally vast shopping malls. The problem is that, if you are a film scholar or even an astute buff who wants to see works many would regard as arcane, you face an increasing problem if you don't live near New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago.

A while back, a few colleagues of mine suggested I see Erroll Morris' "Mr. Death," a documentary about Fred Leuchter, a nerdish execution specialist who becomes a spokesman for some Holocaust revisionists. It had good word of mouth, and I expected it to pop up at a venue near me sometime during the 1999 Christmas season. I should note that I live very close to a university town containing a couple of repertory cinemas noted for their independent, third-stream fare, but "Mr. Death" wasn't to be found. The closest theater showing the film was more than 40 miles from my home, and its run there was a little over a week. I just recently saw "Mr. Death" on videocassette, over six months after its release. This isn't a very unusual situation. On the contrary, it represents a part of the story concerning film availability in the new marketplace.

It should be noted straight off that a key issue in not being able to find nonblockbuster films is the simple fact that small-scale theaters catering to such pictures are a dying breed. The repertory cinema mentioned earlier is an emblem of the situation. Having gone through a couple of managers after the original owner sold the business, the theater is just now getting back on its feet. Many of us noted that the theater had a rough time filling its several small screens (it's noteworthy how the smaller theater has gone the route of subdividing in the manner of the multiplex, providing some "safe" choices for the consumer to make sure the doors stay open) with anything but mainstream fare, seemingly unable to get cooperation from distributors who might provide prints of the better foreign and...