CINEMA GROUND-BREAKING TIME

Ground-breaking ceremonies are rarely earth-shattering events. As news, the turning of the first shovel of dirt ranks right up there with the cutting of the ribbon and the dedication of the plaque. Tuesday’s publicity ritual for the Cineplex Odeon Cinemas at Universal City was no exception.

Cineplex chairman Garth Drabinsky and MCA-Universal president Sidney Sheinberg (whose company owns half of the theater chain) made the traditional proclamations and promises. And some earth was turned. Another building will soon sprout in the east end of the San Fernando Valley and we’ll be called back for opening ceremonies.

But if there was no news, there was at least an excuse to pause and reflect--positively, for a change--on the future of movie exhibition.

No one will know whether the $10-million, 18-theater, 6,000-seat complex will be worth the drive up the hill until it opens next June adjacent to Universal Amphitheatre, but from the designs, we can hope.

Conceptually, the Cineplex Odeon Cinemas at Universal City (why couldn’t they have just called it the Universal Bijou?) is an attempt to restore moviegoing as an event while hewing to the economic realities of the 1980s. It is the multiplex as movie palace, if that’s possible.

The two-story, 120,000-square-foot complex will house theaters seating from 250 to 800 people and will have two continental cafes serving such traditional sidewalk fare as espresso, sandwiches and pastries. The lobby will be a glassed-in atrium 50 feet high by 80 feet wide with marble columns and a staircase that looks like it was lifted from Tara. The concession stands will be so large that 54 cash registers may be ringing simultaneously.

Outside, a glass canopy will protect patrons from the weather. Drabinsky said an enclosed six-story parking structure will be built to accommodate 2,000 vehicles.

For those of us who fell in love with movies in ornate, single-screen theaters, none of this stacks up to bas-relief on the walls and Jujubes in the lobby, but it measures a quantum leap from the miserable little malltiplexes that marked the exhibition industry’s last great trend. Ironically, if the Cineplex-Universal theaters live up to expectations, the Canadian-based Cineplex Odeon Corp. will have established North America’s best and worst (it owns those 14 enclosed rabbit cages in the Beverly Center, too) movie complexes in the same city.

Drabinsky said the two 800-seat theaters at Universal City, each having 200-seat balconies, will be equipped for 70-millimeter projection. They will also feature Lucasfilm THX sound systems, regarded by many in the industry as the state-of-the-art.

Cineplex Odeon Corp., which Drabinsky launched with an 18-screen complex in Toronto’s Eaton Centre in 1979, is the largest movie exhibitor in North America, with 1,350 screens in 460 locations. Besides the Beverly Cineplex, its existing Los Angeles theaters include the restored Gordon on La Brea Avenue (renamed Cineplex Odeon Showcase Cinema), the restored Fairfax on Beverly Boulevard (now the Cineplex Odeon Fairfax Cinemas), the Plitt Century Plaza in Century City and the Brentwood on Wilshire Boulevard.

Drabinsky said Tuesday that Cineplex Odeon is planning more theaters in Santa Monica, Encino, Tarzana and Marina del Rey.

The company, which claims to have 60 architects and engineers on the payroll, currently has 120 building, expansion or restoration projects under way in the United States and Canada. It will soon begin restoring the two Brentwood theaters, and plans to add two theaters at the Plitt Century Plaza.

Sheinberg said Tuesday that Cineplex Odeon will manage the theaters on Universal’s 420-acre lot. Obviously, one studio cannot produce enough product to fill 18 theaters.

The question is whether all of the studios taken together will ever have 18 worthwhile movies out at the same time.

But that’s another story.