Daniel P. Finney

dafinney@dmreg.com

Merle Hay Mall Cinema, the last of the great big-screen theaters in the Des Moines metro, closes Tuesday after a last showing of the latest "Hunger Games" movie, "Mockingjay — Part I."

Sarah Oltrogge, an Iowa historian, is organizing a final "pack-the-house" event for the 4:15 p.m. show Sunday. They hope to fill the remaining seats a final time (the theater once had 785 seats, but some are gone, because it's selling off the seats for $25 a pair).

The theater's closing marks the end of an era in Des Moines. The 60-foot screen is the largest in Iowa, save IMAX theaters. The movie house has just one screen, showing the biggest summer blockbusters and family-friendly Disney movies like "Frozen."

"They don't make theaters like this anymore," lamented Mike Catrenich, the soft-spoken, kindly manager of Merle Hay Mall Cinema.

Catrenich has worked at Des Moines theaters since he was 14. He's 55 now and out of work, holding out hope for one more good theater managing job before he can retire. He's known the end was near for the kind of theater he loves, but he stuck with it.

He kept the theater neat and tidy, bucking the old cliche about sticky floors. He hired friendly young people to serve concessions with a smile.

And when lines were backed up, Catrenich would delay a film's start so people could get to their seats and not miss a frame.

But time finally caught up with Catrenich and the Merle Hay Mall Cinema.

And maybe time has caught up with moviegoing. Something more than the size of the screen is changing with the Merle Hay Mall Cinema's closing. Increasingly, we live in a world where one thing isn't nearly enough to entertain us. We need multiple things.

Several years ago, I went to a ballgame at Principal Park. My buddy and I had cheap seats in general admission, and behind us was a water fountain that kids could run through.

It was a spring night with a chill in the air. A boy and his sister splashed in the stream. The boy asked to borrow his sister's towel, but she refused. "You know you have to come to the game prepared," the girl said.

When I was a boy, going to the game prepared meant bringing your glove to maybe catch a foul ball. But times change. Things move fast now. Concentrating on a ballgame or a movie for a few hours isn't enough fun. There must be more.

More is coming, of course. Soon a joint called Flix Brewhouse will open at Merle Hay Mall. They'll serve craft beer and burgers to your table while the show is on. I'll bet they'll have free Wi-Fi access, so people can browse the Internet and send texts during the film. This is the way now.

In one sense, these are good times for movies in Des Moines. There are more movie screens than ever. They're smaller and come in huge multiplexes with as many as 20 theaters. They offer stadium seating, digital projection and deafening sound systems.

More screens mean more showtimes, which means very little waiting. When I was young, if you wanted to see a big movie, you had to wait in line — sometimes for hours. My sister and I stood in line outside the old River Hills on Crocker Street for what seemed an eternity on a hot August day to see "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" in 1988.

Those lines outside, by the way, led to the term blockbuster. It was first applied to "Jaws," a 1975 movie so popular people were lined up around the block to see it.

That seldom happens now. Oh, some brave souls pack the house for the opening of a big superhero movie at 12:01 a.m. But if you want to avoid crowds — and I usually do — just pick one of the umpteen afternoon showings and have a theater almost all to yourself.

As a rule, I try to avoid being atavistic, the kind of person who believes things were better "back in my day." Yet it was at the grand old theaters such as Merle Hay Mall Cinema where I fell in love with movies.

My sister took me to see "The Empire Strikes Back" at the River Hills, one of the biggest and grandest in Des Moines. I was 5 years old, and it was my first movie in a theater.

Everything about the experience was wonderful, from the hot, buttered popcorn to the red carpet in the lobby and frigid air conditioning. And the movie? It was a battle between good and evil told 100 feet tall and 1,000 feet wide.

Or at least that's how it felt.

To go to a movie was more than an outing. It was an event. It was something you looked forward to all week and talked about for days afterward. It was a thrill.

Now, movies are available on demand through cable and satellite providers, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and scores of other sources. People can watch movies on their smartphones and tablets.

A movie is just another menu option in the endless digital entertainment feed streaming through our lives.

When that last frame flashes 60 feet wide and the speakers fall silent and the lights come on and the curtain closes, something special will leave Des Moines on Tuesday evening.

The people who want a burger and beer with their movie or the people who watch movies on cellphone and tablet screens probably won't feel it passing.

They are the new generation — what the education professors call "digital natives." They're the all-pointing, all-tapping, all-sharing, all-tweeting people of the future. The world is changing to meet their needs and wants.

And people like me are left behind, to ponder life having grown up between the last of the analog age and the dawn of digital age, to grouse about yesteryear and to hold on to fading memories of days when movies played in theaters built like temples and adventure stretched as far and wide as the eye could see.

DANIEL P. FINNEY, the Register's Metro Voice columnist, is a Drake University alumnus who grew up in Winterset and east Des Moines. Reach him at 515-284-8144 or dafinney@dmreg.com. Twitter:@newsmanone.

PACK THE HOUSE

When: 4:15 p.m. Sunday.

Where: Merle Hay Mall Cinema, 3800 Merle Hay Road.

What: Pack the house a final time at the big-screen theater with a matinee showing of "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1."

Cost: All seats $5.50. Cash only — no credit or debit cards accepted, exact change preferred.

ABOUT MERLE HAY MALL CINEMA

Jan. 27, 1966: Open house and VIP grand opening for brand-new "Merle Hay Plaza" theater.

First movie: "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," starring Richard Burton.

OWNERS

1967-1972: American Broadcasting Corp. (ABC).

1972-1988: Dubinsky Brothers Theatres.

1988: Excellence Theaters (later Carmike), which closed it.

1988-1992: Closed.

1992-2014: Reopened as "Merle Hay Mall Cinema" by Charles Caligiuri and Leonard Fazio

The last show on the screen before closing in 1988 was "Hoosiers."

The Plaza was the first theater in Iowa to offer rocking chair seats. One ad stated: "Discover for yourself the charm and beauty of this completely modern theater. Years ahead in concept and design, and first in Iowa to be fully equipped with Rocking Chair seats — the most relaxing seating ever conceived. Ah, what comfort!"

— Sarah Oltrogge, Iowa historian