Paramus Picture Show

I went to when it was a theater showing movies and when they converted over to do live concerts. I saw quite a number of good acts here.They were trying really hard to keep the place open. Shame that it closed and some really good bands up-and-coming bands played here as well

I saw “Executive Action” there in 1973. I still have the herald (fake newspaper) that they gave out to accompany the film.

As of December 2020, a Blick Art Supplies store occupies most (maybe all?) the space that this theater occupied. It was a really cute theater. Not grand or anything but well maintained. The kind of movie theater that we will likely never see again.

This reopened as the Paramus Picture Show on July 25th, 1997. Grand opening ad posted.

Article Paramus Picture Show opening article Fri, Jul 25, 1997 – 22 · The Record (Hackensack, Bergen, New Jersey, United States of America) · Newspapers.com

Reopened as Cinema 35 on October 31st, 1973. Grand opening ad posted.

Looking at old newspaper ads from the old movie ads twitter account it’s true that cinema 35 had mono sound.

35 years ago yesterday ET made its Paramus debut at this theater and made box office history while the Route 4 sevenplex had Grease 2 in Dolby Stereo. The film would become one of the most popular in this venue.

I believe ET played from June to the fall of 1982 here until Halloween III played, another Universal film.

Cinema 35 was not equipped with 70mm. When I worked there in 1992 it did not have stereo, so I’m not sure if it ever did.

Formal splits were illegal because they were agreements to not compete among certain exhibitors, harming the distributor. Tracks included the distributor, guaranteeing them screens for their less than big pictures in return for not complaining about exhibitor splits. This may seem silly today, but back then when most theatres were single screen, and a large multiplex might have 4 screens, getting screen time for small pictures was a challenge for the distributors.

Neither splits nor tracks were absolute. Every now and again a new exhibitor would enter the market who would “bid” for films, and if the “bid” was high enough, get to play the film.

There were always clearances, which were always of dubious legality. Exhibitors then as now pay a percentage of the boxoffice vs a guarantee minimum payment to play a film. Obviously, exhibitors would rather have as an exclusive a run in a given area as they can get away with. Back in the days of 35mm film, were there were a limited number of prints, the distributor would want their film playing in the highest grossing theatre in a given area. Now that 35mm film is all but gone, the excuse for clearances is even more questionable. Several studios have recently discontinued the practice.

These days film terms are negotiated between the distributors and the exhibitors. Actually, the big circuits negotiate, the small independents are told what it will cost, take it or leave it.

The Cinema 35 opened in November of 1973 with the film Executive Action. I was there opening weekend and still have some of the promotional material that they gave out for their Grand Opening.

The theatre was built intended to be part of the Jerry Lewis Cinema circuit. Jerry Lewis Cinemas were franchises generally marketed to people outside the exhibition industry, unlike their competitors which were company owned locations. The Cinema 35 was originally owned by a lawyer, I forget his name.

Network Cinemas, the corporate name for Jerry Lewis Cinemas went bust before the Cinema 35 opened, and the Cinema 35 never had the Jerry Lewis name or signage. While the Cinema 35 has many independent owners over the years, the last of which renamed it The Paramus Picture Show, as far as I know, the theatre was never part of the UA circuit.

Back when ET was originally released, films were distributed by what was called in the industry “track”. If you look at newspaper ads from back then, you would see theatres grouped as “Blue Carpet Theatres” and “Red Carpet Theatres”, among others. What these “tracks” were, were an unofficial product splitting arrangement between distributors and exhibitors, where the owner of a given location would agree to play all of a given studios films in return for being unofficially guaranteed that they would get every film. Officially, films were put up for “bid”, where the various theatre owners would bid against each other for how much they would pay for the rights to play a given film at a given location. Product splitting was an unwritten agreement not to bid against each other. Tracks were phased out in the mid 1980’s, when the Justice Department started looking into the anti-trust implications of product splitting.

Remembering that the Stanley Warner was just a twin or triplex at the time, there were more studios than screen. The Cinema 35 ran on the same Universal track as the UA Fox in Hackensack. A few years later, as the Stanley Warner expanded to their eventual 10 screens, they tried to pull the Universal titles from the Cinema 35, and the owner of the Cinema 35 sued them. I believe he won the battle but lost the war, in that by being forced to bid against a large national circuit for films proved too costly for a single screen independent.

ET opened at this theater and not the Route 4 Sevenplex. I wonder why? I knew when ET was reissued for the 20th anniversary it played at the Route 4 Tenplex and for its 30th it played at AMC Garden State 16. Did Universal have a contract to show movies at that venue?

I remember after I moved to Saddle River, New Jersey from Illinois with my family in June 1983, I saw “Jaws 3-D” and “Smokey and the Bandit, Part 3” at this theater when it was Cinema 35 (for some reason, they showed mostly Universal films at Cinema 35).

And, before I began my senior year of college in September 1985 at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck (I graduated from FDU the following June), I saw “Back to the Future” at Cinema 35 that Labor Day weekend, before classes began that Wednesday. That was actually the second time I saw “BTTF;” I saw it for the very first time at the also-now-closed Showcase Burton Cinemas in Burton, Michigan, when I went home for the summer. Little did I realize that encore of “BTTF” I saw at Cinema 35 would be the last film I would ever see there (they didn’t have anything good I wanted to see during the remainder of my senior year at FDU after that).

When my best lady friend and I made a return visit to the NYC area in September 2014, I was wondering if Cinema 35 was still around, and perhaps she and I could take in a movie there. Sadly, it wasn’t, and we decided to see “No Good Deed” at the AMC Garden State Plaza (I was surprised to see Cinema 35 had been turned into a retail store).

RIP, Cinema 35. Every time I see the original “Back to the Future” now, I think of the time I saw it at Cinema 35 (when the “BTTF” trilogy was rereleased for its 30th anniversary last October, I saw all three films at the NCG Eastwood Cinemas in Lansing, Michigan; the memories of my senior year in New Jersey came back a bit).