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Working Blue:

the Fox Cinema Reborn

Jenn Farrell
OP Contributor

It's not completely dark inside the small theatre. A row of yellowed
sconces cast a pale, greasy light along its walls. About a dozen men are
scattered in seats near the back. Their faces are ghostly in the reflected
light of the screen, barely visible as they slump low and stretch out. The
seats sigh and sag beneath them, red brocade worn smooth, patched here
and there with silver duct tape, which peels up into sticky rolls at the
edges. A man in a baseball cap lights a cigarette, adding to the off-ramp
motel aroma of smoke, unwashed linens and semen. The movie stammers
out on the screen, a film-cutter’s nightmare of choppy editing and scissor-
wielding censors. It’s a parody of M.A.S.H., and the Hot Lips character is
naked, bent over a bed. A naked man stands behind; another lies on the
bed beneath her. The three move in unison as the music builds in tempo.
The theatre patrons shift in their squeaking seats. A bulb in one of the wall
sconces sputters. The cigarette man gets up, only to return moments later.
This is the third time he’s left his seat. But that’s normal, because this is
the Fox Cinema, where two skin flicks play on a continuous loop for twelve
hours a day, and seven dollars buys you as much time as you need.

The Fox Cinema, tucked quietly away on 2321 Main Street in
Vancouvers Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, is the last 35mm adult
theatre in North America. There are other video-based theatres in the city,
but the Fox operates in a time warp where nothing from the last twenty
years of smut exists. The skin flicks that are the Fox’s bread-and-butter
belong to what is now affectionately known as the “golden age” of porn.
These sometimes lavish film productions were driven to extinction in the
early ‘80s, when cheap video production and the booming mail-order
industry united to spawn what the industry calls the “one-day wonder’:
hastily produced video movies, short on setting and cinematography, long
on fucking and sucking, quickly edited and released to the public to meet
its ever-growing demand for hardcore.

On a warm night last September, in front of the Fox, a lineup formed with-
out a furtive raincoat-clad soul in sight. These bright young things, chatting
and smoking, were there to experience Return to Porno Chic. The event
featured (besides cheap beer and a DJ ee at intermission), the

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there, watching, reading the film, the whole experience, and | just dug it.
Then | started wondering if this really was the last one”

After contacting adult video stores and other sources in Canada and the
U.S., Otis confirmed that it was not just the last theatre in the Lower
Mainland, but in all of North America. As it turns out, adult film houses
have quietly disappeared from the landscape—much like the drive-in. Otis
considered the possibilities. Surely he wasn’t the only one who felt this
place, and these films, had cultural and social value? Not to mention the
fun factor. He decided that if he could secure the screening of some of the
more famous films, he could host an event. Otis approached the current
owners of the Fox, a reserved middle-aged couple from mainland China.
“It took about five months to convince them to let me take over for a day,’
he says. “The process speeded up a bit when | brought in a translator. They
thought | was crazy. But | just knew | could get a crowd out for this.”

He was right. The first Return to Porno Chic event drew a three hundred-
plus crowd, and the subsequent two events (A Charlie’s Angels take-off
entitled The Coming of Angels, and a screening of old porno trailers) have
been equally well attended. Otis notes that women outnumber the men at
the Return to Porno Chic nights. “And that’s important for me,” he adds. “To
create a space where women feel really safe, and where they can cut
loose.” And apparently they do. He tells the story of a lively birthday girl
stripping during the intermission, and other impromptu antics. “They just go
nuts, get really vocal, and have a great time. It’s cute and fun, because it’s
not some sleazy stripping thing. They love it.”

The Fox hasn’t always enjoyed the heyday it’s experiencing now. Prior to
1983, it was called the Savoy, a repertory cinema that took a beating from
the video rental explosion, as did so many small theatres in those years.
In its dying months, the Savoy tried to stay afloat by screening adult
movies, but was met with objections and protests from women’s groups.
The Savoy closed its doors in the summer of ’83, but only weeks later was
reborn, controversy-free, as the x-rated Fox. Otis estimates that there are
about 130 films stored in the upstairs projection room. “Lee, the owner, just
plays two different movies on a rotating schedule every week. If you miss
something you wanted to see, you have to wait until it comes around again
the next year, basically. And the worst part is, with the films being so old,
they break easily, and Lee has to fix them himself, which means every
movie gets a little shorter every year.”

Consider the Fox to be the last bastion against the ‘eihiincte

oliferation of pa -on the Internet, the magazine rack, and the video

it’s easier than ever to partake of the