I drive through Mount Lebanon in the South Hills maybe five times a year. Since 2004, when the Denis Theatre shuttered, every time I drove past it I thought for five or ten minutes about the possibility of buying it and reopening it. The thought always wore off quickly. For one, I'm not a South Hills guy, and so the theater doesn't have the sort of nostalgic or community attraction that it might if we were more often on that side of town. Secondly and more significantly, I have no idea what the future holds for film exhibition, and I don't know the business well enough to imagine how to stay ahead of the curve.
Good news: the Denis Theatre is comng back. It'll be a while, but it will be an indie and international house again. This is a fantastic development for the Pittsburgh film scene. I particularly like the statement about attracting nontraditional arthouse audiences-- kids and senior citizens. In the theatre that existed in my mind, I was busing vans of senior citizens in for wistful screenings of Singin' in the Rain between other programing.
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