No More Spine-Tingling Hours at the Movies

At last it’s over--if not our long national nightmare, then at least our lengthy municipal backache.

No longer need you stroll in for a movie at 7 and stagger out for a muscle relaxant at 9.

The new seats have been installed at Ventura’s downtown theater complex.

They’re the plush Ambassador model, the pride of the Irwin Seating Co. of Grand Rapids, Mich.

“They’re higher-backed, more luxurious, more contoured to fit the human form,” an Irwin executive named Joe Hoy told me. “As a company, we’re devoted to these creature comforts. . . .”

The old seats were hardly Ambassadors. They were more like Interrogators.

*

Crews working all night installed the Ambassadors over the last two weeks, but the official unveiling was Friday morning.

One of my so-called career’s odd perks is attending such events.

I’ve celebrated opening day at the morgue and ribbon cuttings at highway offramps. With enthusiastic sanitation officials, I once toasted a spanking-new sewage treatment plant. We drank to it with raised glasses of a designer water that the engineers called “effluent.” Like Evian, only bolder. Ahhh.

The unveiling of the seats was accompanied by a lot less pomp. Nobody cut any ribbons or made any speeches. A few people plopped onto Ambassadors in the empty theaters. Ahhh.

A Century Theatres spokeswoman named Nancy Klasky showed me how they worked. Alternating rows have seats that rock. In every other row, the seats are stationary, but the armrests lift up. That way, you can cozy up with your one true love, or astonish the stranger next door with a sudden display of solidarity.

“It’s state-of-the-art,” Klasky said.

In the lobby, a banquet table was laden with flower-bedecked platters of kiwi fruit and Mandarin oranges, baskets of blueberry muffins and cinnamon buns, trays of bagels, pitchers of orange juice and half a dozen pumpkin pies.

It was enough to feed an army but barely a platoon was on hand. A few city types--who can imagine a seat-unveiling without elected officials?--chatted in the lobby. Ventura Councilman Brian Brennan gave the Ambassadors two thumbs up: “The only thing that’s missing is the remote,” he said.

George Medeiros had been walking down the street when movie ushers hailed him over.

“They asked me if I wanted to eat some free pastries and see a free movie,” the Ventura artist said. “I’m glad they did.”

Like many others, Medeiros had complained to management about the agony of the seats.

“They pushed against my lower back,” he said, groping for a description of the Interrogators’ savage ergonomics.

*

Ordinarily seat installation would be a news story only if the seats in question were, say, electric chairs.

But the tale of the seats at the Century 10 is more poignant than most.

The theater was supposed to save Ventura’s decaying downtown. It was so important that the city put up more than $7 million toward building it and a nearby parking garage.

The storms of El Nino delayed construction. Cynics said it would never get built--and, if it did, it would flop.

Despite the naysayers, it opened with great civic fanfare on Oct. 23--a quirky, colorful edifice that fit perfectly with quirky, colorful downtown Ventura.

There was only one problem. It soon dawned on the populace that they were paying $7.50 a head to twist slowly, slowly in thinly padded straightback chairs that could have been designed by a chiropractor with big debts and no conscience.

Bear with us, pleaded the management. Those aren’t the real chairs. They’re place-fillers. The factory was backed up. The real chairs will arrive in February. Really.

*

Where the Interrogators came from nobody seems to know.

Klasky ventured they may have come from a high school auditorium.

That must have been one tough high school.

But they’re behind us now, replaced with 1,800 cushy Ambassadors and yet another reminder of an eternal truth: No matter how grand the plan, the devil is in the details. If you’re building a luxury car, make sure it has a drink holder that works. If you’re building a world-class airport, make sure the baggage carousels don’t loft suitcases into orbit.

And if you’re building a movie theater, make sure your seats are so inviting that patrons would pay $7.50 just for a good two-hour sit, never mind the movie.

Ahhh.