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As you pull in, the parking lot is pocked with potholes and the lines on the asphalt are faded. Outside the building, the sign proclaiming “All Shows 3.00 per show, Super Tuesdays all shows 1.00 per show” has missing and lopsided letters – all seem to be typical signs of the recession. But inside, the theater is bustling – a business that seems recession-proof.
Movie Magic Cinemas near the Bangor airport hasn’t seen a drop in clientele – it’s seen an increase. When gas prices rose sharply, some of the regulars who travel from long distances stopped coming as often, but this spring Movie Magic has seen a tremendous increase since last year, according to manager Katrina Simpson.
The theater building boasts an arcade with new games. Adults play “Deal or No Deal” and children play first-person shooters like “Gun Blade” for tickets, which they can redeem for prizes as small as lollipops and erasers or as large as MP3 or DVD players.
On Tuesdays, when movies are $1 per show and snacks are $1.50, the building bustles – by far their busiest day.
“We’ve had Tuesdays where we have two or three thousand people,” Simpson said. She estimated 300-400 patrons on an average day.
One patron, Anthony Cushing, travels all the way from Dover-Foxcroft to watch movies. He said it’s his way to escape, and the low ticket prices make it possible to buy snacks.
“You get your dollar’s worth here,” he said. He used to come to Movie Magic every week until his salary was cut.
“I don’t even mind the potholes. It’s all just part of the experience.” For him, it’s worth it if he’s “gettin’ in here for a buck.”
Cushing isn’t the only one to come from a long distance.
“We had one customer who walked here from Orono before, just to come here and watch movies,” Simpson said.
The theater sees a lot of regulars, and most come on Tuesday. “People recognize you out and about,” Simpson said. “I’m here a lot, so a lot of the regulars know me by name. I was coming out of a restaurant the other day, and somebody held a door open for me and turned around and says ‘Hey, you’re the movie lady.’ The customers make it fun.”
For Jonathan Allen, a student, “you get what you pay for.” Allen, who only went to Movie Magic once, said he would rather recline in a nice theater than see a movie weeks after its release. “It’s not cool to pay 100 bucks for a piece of popcorn, but at least you expect that,” Allen said. “[Movie Magic] is just ghetto all around.”
One customer, who called herself only Bonny, said she usually comes to the cheap seats to see a movie a second time or when there’s little money in the budget for entertainment.
“We used to come here a lot when my husband was in school,” she said. Now she goes less often, prefering to see feature films when they first come out.
According to Simpson, Movie Magic sometimes gets features that don’t play at local first-run theaters.
“We try to pick up independent and art films,” Simpson said. “In that case we may be able to pick them up as first run, but we still have to wait a while.”
When Bangor Mall Cinemas declined to run “No Country For Old Men,” the 2007 Coen brothers Oscar winner for best picture, Movie Magic picked it up and saw it become one of the theater’s top-ten-grossing films in the last two years.
Independent films generally do well compared to the more mainstream pictures the theater generally shows.
“We’ve built up quite an audience for them, and you see the same people come in for them, every time,” Simpson said.
The complex has eight theaters, just two fewer than the first-run theater in Bangor and two more than Spotlight Cinemas in Orono. On any given week the theater shows around 10 movies, the same as Bangor Mall Cinemas, playing mature films in the morning while kids are in school and more family-oriented films in the afternoon. This week, five of the 10 movies showing have been in the theater for at least two weeks, compared to three of 10 at Bangor Mall Cinemas, while other, less popular films have already been cycled out.
