My Movie Theater: Grace Byron

My Movie Theater is a new series from Dirt x MUBI in which our favorite writers pay tribute to their hometown theaters. 🍿

Grace Byron on rip-offs, ghosts, and entering blankness.

Not long before I moved away for college, I went to see a Wes Anderson film at the one “art cinema” in Indianapolis. While I’ve come to find him lifeless, like any pretentious child in the Midwest I once found Anderson’s work a portal to the outside world. After the film, my friend and I wandered onto the white bridge that connected the mall to the parking garage. We were years away from transitioning, but whining about men anyway when suddenly it started to rain: the thin, slick, cold kind that comes down like sleet. It felt like the scene in My Neighbor Totoro when it starts raining and Satsuki must run home without an umbrella. But the bridge was covered, so instead we watched the sudden spring shower with delight.

The Keystone Art Cinema, I would later learn, was part of a chain. It was located in the Fashion Mall, a few miles further down 82nd than the Castleton Mall. After loading up on free coffee from Half Price Books, we’d drive over to see a movie. When I tell people about Half Price Books most people know about it even if they’ve never been to one. They are not as charming as the innumerable used bookstores in New York, where I now live. It’s true, most Half Prices have been renovated. None of them smell like smoke anymore. But at least they do not know how to price books. Every used bookstore in Brooklyn knows exactly how much someone like me will pay for a used first edition Elizabeth Hardwick. 

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I took my boyfriend back to Indiana this Christmas. We went to Half Price (where they, it should be noted, bought more books than me) and the Fashion Mall. I pointed out the Keystone Art Cinema. Nothing held the same halo as when I was sixteen. Surprise. Instead I was more drawn to the windows of Gucci and a STAUD sale in Nordstrom even if I couldn’t afford it. I decided to see what was playing at the Keystone Art Cinema just for kicks. It was once the place I saw The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (twice), Like Crazy (which made me weep openly in the parking lot), The Bling Ring (I was most intrigued by the scene where the main boy almost masturbates on camera), The Future (with my dad, who dutifully struggled through that awkward mess with me), and, of course, Moonrise Kingdom. 

When I moved to college I occasionally dragged my sister to Keystone when I was home on break (We both loved Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me?) but it felt sad somehow. When you saw a movie late at night you had to walk through the deserted, closed-down mall to get to the parking garage. The doors locked behind you, glowing quietly fluorescent with goodbyes. Not everything I discovered on Apple’s MovieTrailers.com played there. Some movies, I learned, only played in New York.

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