The Magic Lantern has closed … again

Just received an e-mail from Joe Davis, the owner of the Magic Lantern . The news, as you will see, isn’t good:

Hello everyone,
The Magic Lantern has experienced a major downturn in sales over the past 2 months and this has prompted me to decide to close the doors for good. So there won’t be a schedule now or in the future. Thanks for all the support over the past year, it’s been fun and I was rather proud that Spokane got another year of good cinema under it’s belt.

Joe

If life equipped us with personal sound tracks, mine would be playing Queen, with Freddie Mercury warbling the words, “Another one bites the dust.” This is, by my unofficial count, at least the fifth time the place has closed since it opened in the early ‘70s. Maybe sixth. Or more.

Funny how this happens. Some of the closures were due to bad business practices. Others were due to the changing moviegoing habits caused by home video, etc. Still others were caused by the fact that Spokane is, at its very core, a mainstream-movie kind of town.

Whatever the reason, the theater’s closing is another sad chapter in an overall sad story of Spokane’s attempts to screen alternative film.