This Friday, October 20, at 8:00 PM, your
Humble Columnist will join local college professor, writer, and all-around Cool
Guy Steve Smith on the stage of the venerable Sunrise Theater in a concert
titled “Raise the Roof.” Seems that when the old building was refurbished as a
performance space and movie theater for
the Arts Council of Moore County, they
put all the money into neat stuff like the new 35mm projector and the surround-sound
system. When the roof sprung a leak (as old flat roofs are prone to do), the
Arts Council had to go in the hole so that they can continue to bring you
the “Sunflix” series (i.e. the movies that Carmike Cinemas think are too
smart for us yokels) and other artsy fare without requiring the audience to use
umbrellas indoors. In the best Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland tradition, local
film-meister Will Redding said “Hey, kids! Let’s put on a SHOW!” So they did.
Mickey and Judy are long gone, however, so you’re going to have to settle for
Steve and me. And oh, yeah, a bunch of really great musicians.
The concert will feature local acoustic
music legends Danny and June Infantino, Al Simmons, The Harrington Chapel
Senior Choir, Randy Hughes, and Paul and Sharon Murphy, performing an eclectic mix of music. As a special treat, Jimmy Jones, the guy who wrote the rock
tunes “Handy Man” and “Good Timing” will be on hand with his band the
Silverliners, since he lives right here in Moore County.
As one of the few people I know around
here who’s actually from around here,
the transformation of the Sunrise Theater into a venue for the Arts Council of
Moore County bears a considerable weight of irony. Things may have been different when the Sunrise first opened its
doors as a movie theater in the Forties, but when I was a kid growing up in
Southern Pines in the late Sixties and Seventies, the Sunrise was not what you
would call a palace of art. Whereas the swankier Town and Country Cinema showed
“A” list movies like “Patton” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”, the Sunrise featured
such cinematic gems as “Godzilla vs.
the Smog Monster”. I and my fellow junior Siskels and Eberts would sit in the
beat-up seats, throwing Atomic Fire Balls at the screen and jeering at the
cheesy special effects before going home to re-create those exact same effects
with our toy tank models, a match, and a can of lighter fluid. (By the way, did
any of you ever actually eat those
Atomic Fire Balls? I never saw them used as anything but ammunition.)
Then there were the chop-socky epics
like “Enter the Dragon” and “Fists of Fury.” 3:00 o’clock on a Saturday
afternoon was not a safe time to be downtown as hordes of pint-sized Bruce Lees
hit the streets after the Saturday matinee, grunting and howling like they had
stomach cramps and practicing their newly-acquired kung fu moves on the nearest tree, garbage can, or little brother.
You might say that I have a soft spot for
the old Sunrise. Its bill of fare gave
me a lasting fondness for cinematic
cheese that stays with me till this day. I never thought I’d see the day when
the old place would host the likes of “Cole Porter’s Anything Goes”, or the
movie “Sunshine” , which I assume is the award-winning Hungarian film about
Jews and not the egregious 1973 howler in which Cliff DeYoung sings John Denver
songs to his wife as she’s dying of cancer, which is just cruel if you ask me.
So, I’m sure I’ll feel a little pang when I
step onto that stage, a small twinge of nostalgia for movies like “Creatures the World Forgot” (featuring a former
Miss Norway as a cavewoman in--and frequently out of --a fur bikini) and
“Blacula” (how can you resist a movie about black vampires starring a guy named
Thalmus Rasulala?) I’m sure I’ll miss the way my feet used to stick to the
floor of the old theater because they never, I mean NEVER, cleaned the place
up. And I’ll bet you can’t get Atomic Fire Balls in the lobby, either. But time moves on and so has the Sunrise. So
come on down and help us keep the next chapter going. It ought to be a good
time in a good cause. And if you donate some money, I promise I won’t try to
sing “Handy Man.”
Dusty Rhoades is an Aberdeen lawyer, a
Southern Pines native, and, apparently,
a frustrated movie critic.
OUR GRACIOUS HOST
(BOOKS-N-BYTES)
COPYRIGHT 2000 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.