Exhibition

This is not an article I ever wanted to write. As virtually the entire world copes with the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses everywhere have tried to find ways to survive. This is particularly true of the cinema business where nearly every movie theatre has been closed – properly, for the sake of public health – by government mandate. Hardest hit have been small, independent theatres and art house cinemas. Now I have to share the news that among them, the Bethel Cinema, my local movie theatre, is shutting its doors for good.

Lionsgate, in conjunction with Fandango, YouTube and the National Association of Theatre Owners, is launching Lionsgate Live! A Night at the Movies, a four-consecutive Friday night live-stream of movies which kicks off tonight with The Hunger Games on the distributor’s YouTube page and Fandango’s Movieclips YouTube page.

Crises bring out the worst and the best in people. The history of B&B Theatres began in 1924 when a man named Elmer Bills opened his first theatre in Salisbury, Missouri. A decade later he hired a boy named Sterling Bagby as a concessions clerk. Bagby eventually went on to start his own theatre company and for the next roughly forty years the families were friendly competitors. In 1980 the two families merged their companies into what is now B&B Theatres – Bills and Bagby – and the business is now run solely by the Bagby family. One thing that remained constant throughout the past century in both of those companies was the idea of family, which included their employees.