This string of comments is misleading if read from the start. Parkway never closed. Former owner Bill Irvine sold it to his friend and business neighbor, Joe Minjares, who owns the neighboring Pepitos restaurant. Joe has been carefully restoring the interior for many months. Screenings have continued virtually unabated. To keep the place solvent, Joe removed a block of seats in front of the stage, allowing music (New Year’s Eve), plus speakers, live theater, poetry slams, etc. He has had several midwest premiers, bringing in the producer (as he did with Love in the Time of Cholera), the director (Reilly—a documentary about Charles Nelson Reilly) and as he is doing this weekend with the director of Billy the Kid, Jennifer Venditti. He also shows football games, including the Super Bowl, there.
I live 100 feet from the theater and know Bill and Joe well. I reassembled one of the theater’s original Simplex/Peerless carbon arc projectors for the lobby, where it sits today. (photos here http://nc.startribune.com/blogs/classiccars/?p=44 ) Bill is a big-time fine-cinema fan and so is Joe, who also has Hollywood acting and writing experience, including screentime with Christian Slater in Untamed Heart. This is a moviehouse by film fans for film fans. (Here’s Joe’s IMDB line, for readers' information: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0591406/ )
This string of comments is misleading if read from the start. Parkway never closed. Former owner Bill Irvine sold it to his friend and business neighbor, Joe Minjares, who owns the neighboring Pepitos restaurant. Joe has been carefully restoring the interior for many months. Screenings have continued virtually unabated. To keep the place solvent, Joe removed a block of seats in front of the stage, allowing music (New Year’s Eve), plus speakers, live theater, poetry slams, etc. He has had several midwest premiers, bringing in the producer (as he did with Love in the Time of Cholera), the director (Reilly—a documentary about Charles Nelson Reilly) and as he is doing this weekend with the director of Billy the Kid, Jennifer Venditti. He also shows football games, including the Super Bowl, there.
I live 100 feet from the theater and know Bill and Joe well. I reassembled one of the theater’s original Simplex/Peerless carbon arc projectors for the lobby, where it sits today. (photos here http://nc.startribune.com/blogs/classiccars/?p=44 ) Bill is a big-time fine-cinema fan and so is Joe, who also has Hollywood acting and writing experience, including screentime with Christian Slater in Untamed Heart. This is a moviehouse by film fans for film fans. (Here’s Joe’s IMDB line, for readers' information: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0591406/ )
Kris Palmer, Minneapolis