The Last Balcony: An Oral History of the Uptown
Chris Klimek
I wrote an oral history of my favorite cinema, the Uptown Theater on Connecticut Ave. NW here in DC, for the Washington City Paper. I love the oral history format. Cutting this down to publishable length tested me. My apologies to the various people whose comments were cut for length.
AMC Theatres declined to make attendance figures available for publication, but they told me they've ticket up slightly in the last year. I hope that means the Uptown will stick around a long time.
Appendix! A probably-incomplete list of films I saw at the Uptown, compiled from memory, by year.
1993: The Abyss [Extended Edition]
1996: Vertigo
1998: Godzilla (the awful Roland Emmerich one), The Thin Red Line
1999: Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, Sleepy Hollow
2000: The Perfect Storm
2002: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
2004: Spider-Man 2
2005: Good Night and Good Luck, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, King Kong (the underrated Peter Jackson one)
2006: Mission: Impossible III, Superman Returns
2007: Spider-Man 3, Blade Runner: The Final Cut
2008: Iron Man, The Dark Knight
2009: Watchmen, Terminator: Salvation
2010: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
2011: Super 8
2012: The Hunger Games, The Avengers, Prometheus
2013: Iron Man 3, Jurassic Park (20th anniversary 3D rerelease), Gravity
2014: Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2015: Tomorrowland
2016: Ali, Independence Day: Resurgence
2017: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
2018: Ant-Man and the Wasp