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Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

RIP Neptune Theater

Waitwaitwait — what? I just saw this story on the Seattle PI blog about Landmark Theaters closing my favorite old Seattle theater, The Neptune, in February 2011. I was already bummed today over the news of Leslie Nielsen passing, and then came word that Anne Hathaway and James Franco are hosting the Oscars, which I thought at first was a joke or a hoax, and now this. Well, criminy.

One of the coolest things about Seattle is all the great old movie theaters we have here. The Egyptian, The Neptune, The Varsity, Guild 45th, Seven Gables and Harvard Exit are all Landmark (so are Metro and discount cinema Crest — which is cool in its own way — but not counting either as a “movie house” for this purpose). The funky Grand Illusion is also cool (but not Landmark) and then we have Northwest Film Forum and SIFF. The access to awesome movie theaters showing heaps of indie, foreign, silent and obscure artsy film here was one of the main reasons I fell in love with Seattle when I first came here 16 years ago.

And now the Neptune is closing, on the heels of Queen Anne’s historic Uptown Theater shuttering Sunday.

I can’t even begin to count the movie memories I have of The Neptune. It’s a beautiful old theater with some spectacular architectural features, and it has the added bonus of being around the corner from Thai Tom for a yummy dinner before the movie, and next door-ish to Trabant Chai, which serves up some of the best chai and coffee in Seattle for that post-movie chat. The Neptune is a perfect date night destination for Seattleites seeking something different than your standard multiplex experience. And now it’s going away.

I’m glad it’s going to be refurbished as a performance space for Seattle Theater Group — at least it will still be open and used for the arts in some capacity. But I can’t help but mourn the slow-but-steady loss of things that I love about this city.

At least we still have the rest of the theaters (for now), Fremont Arts Abbey, and Scarecrow Video. RIP, Neptune.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

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