My Life with Cinema Books: Personal Reflections on the Closing of an Era
On June 1 Stephanie Ogle posted a “closing” notice on the sign that sits in front of her store, Cinema Books. For those regulars, like myself, who showed up that day there was a real sense of shock and sadness when we realized what was happening—Cinema Books was closing. I lingered in the store that afternoon, looking over the tightly packed shelves and stacks of books piled here and there, and I listened to Stephanie’s conversations with other customers. Everybody in their own way was saying the same things. “I’m so sorry you are closing.” ” I wish I’d come by more often and bought more books.” “There will never be another bookstore in Seattle like Cinema Books.”
I’ve felt a deep sense of loss since that afternoon. I bought a copy of the latest issue of Film Comment—Stephanie always notified me when the newest issue came in and held me a copy, and finally left after telling Stephanie I would be back later in the week. Then all the way home I thought about my Cinema Books memories, and I realized I felt a bit guilty because in a small way this closing was my fault. Certainly, the world of book reading and book selling has changed radically since Seattle burst on the scene as a film town, and books stores have struggled to compete with online book sellers for over a decade. And yes, it was large-scale building projects around her Roosevelt location that finally broke-the-back of Cinema Books financially and made Stephanie feel that she couldn’t continue. But still I knew that, particularly over the last few years, I could have come by more often. I could have bought more books.
A mainstay of the Seattle film community for 38 years, first on Capitol Hill and then in the University District on Roosevelt, Cinema Books is a unique place. Not just a bookstore, but a place where filmmakers, film aficionados and those just looking for a specific book about a film, or a director, an actors biography, or a particular screenplay or movie magazine could go to browse and chat with Stephanie about movies and books. And that continued even in those final weeks during Stephanie’s closing sale as local filmmakers and regular customers came into the store to chat with her and share their Cinema Books stories.
When I returned to Cinema Books on Wednesday I spent time looking through each section of the film books, carefully perused the new releases, and even walked through the area where Stephanie kept her large inventory of celebrity photographs and movie posters. I talked with Stephanie about her screenplays, and finally we chatted a bit about the beginning of the bookstore.
In 1976, Darryl MacDonald and Dan Ireland decided that Seattle was ready to have it’s own film festival. About the same time Stephanie, her brother and sister-in-law decided that they wanted to open a niche bookstore in the city. The only question was what should their specialty be. To Stephanie the answer was clear—with theaters regularly getting sell-out crowds to see foreign and independent films, with the first the first Seattle International Film Festival generating new excitement, and with so many folks seeing and talking about movies—their store should sell books about film.
They wanted to find a store close to a theater, and luck was on their side. There was a space open across the street from the Harvard Exit Theater. They moved in and Cinema Books was born.
In the 1970’s, Capitol Hill had three first run movie theaters and numerous new and used books stores. Cinema Books business grew fast. Local film critics William Arnold and Richard Jamison wrote articles about the store—newspaper film critics still had a major influence on who went to the movies in 1977. While Jamison’s article essentially panned ten books as Christmas purchases, Stephanie says every one of the ten titles was a big seller for the store. There was also an early collaboration with SIFF that helped promote both the festival and Cinema Books.
After three years, Stephanie bought out her co-owners and became the stores sole proprietor. Then in 1984 she accepted an offer from Randy Findley, owner of the Seven Gables Theaters, and moved her store to its present location on Roosevelt just below the Seven Gables Theater.
I discovered Cinema Books in 1985, after returning to the Northwest from working on the east coast and in Denver. My first purchase was Richard Schickel’s D.W. Griffith: An American Life. Almost immediately, I was swept up in the Seattle film scene, and I worked as a volunteer at three film festivals (1988, 89, and 1990). For two of those years, I even lived just a block away from the store. And it was my early Cinema Books purchases that got me started collecting film books, first about directors, and then about screenwriting and film criticism. The bulk of my fifty-book collection has come from Cinema books.
The 1990’s were Cinema Books’ busiest decade. The Seven Gables theaters were sold to the Landmark chain, which succeeded in bringing more first run films in to Seattle theaters (a major stumbling block for Findlay that had forced him to sue national distributors). SIFF settled into its new home at the Egyptian Theater and continued to grow. And the decade saw an explosion of start-ups and start-up money coming into the store to buy coffee table-type film books. Stephanie was busy. She not only ran the bookstore, but for a few years she taught a class in film history at the University of Washington.
During the 90’s my collecting grew and my interests, as reflected in my Cinema Books purchases, diversified. Key purchases from this period were: Ian Hamilton’s Writers in Hollywood, 1915-1951, Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle’s Tender Comrades (interviews with actors, directors, and writers, all victims of the blacklist), and the 3th edition of David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film. Thomson is a favorite author, and I’ve purchased each subsequent edition of the Biographical Dictionary and many of his other film titles, including the provocative Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles, all from Cinema Books.
The first decade of the new century started on a strong note for both Stephanie and Cinema Books. In December of 2001, she was awarded Film Forum’s George Bailey Award for her work promoting film. Stephanie didn’t know she was going to receive the Bailey Award until the last minute. But it came at an opportune moment, just a few weeks after she had cancer surgery. She was still weak, but she attended the ceremony anyway—which, she recalls, “went very smoothly”. Receipt of the George Bailey Award recognized the key role Cinema Books played in the development of a strong Seattle film community during the 1980’s and 90’s.
I remained a regular customer at Cinema Books into the new century, and my purchases reflected an evolving critical eye, or maybe just a growing eccentricity. There was: The World and it’s Double: The Life and work of Otto Preminger by Chris Fujiwara, Writing with Hitchcock by Steven Derosa, and American Movie Critics edited by Phillip Lopate, a book Stephanie thought lacked certain key pieces of writing, but which I felt worked as a good general introduction to a broad spectrum of American film criticism.
But by 2005 my life was changing in some dramatic ways. That year, I published a book on teens and reading, Teen Reading Connections. Then I married my wonderful wife, Claudia McNeill in 2007, having left my full-time job in May to write a fiction book Rudy Becker, Stargazer for tweens. That book was self-published in late 2011. For a few years money was tight, and my book purchasing dropped; although I still visited the store every couple months to pick-up my Film Comment and chat with Stephanie. On some of these visits, I noticed that the store seemed less busy, particularly during the 2008-2010 recession years. But Cinema Books persevered, surviving the astronomical rise in academic press film books prices, the tolling of the 520 Bridge, and the installation of parking meters along Roosevelt.
My purchasing picked up again in 2012. Two of my favorite film books: J. Hoberman’s Army of Phantoms, about American filmmaking during the Cold War; and The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend by Glenn Frankel were bought during the period 2012-14. When the Seattle Screen Scene website interviewed Stephanie in 2014 and posted the interview, I hoped it would boost interest in the store. But 2014 was a disaster for Cinema Books financially; construction across the street started and continues today. The noise during the work weekday is deafening, and her customers stopped coming.
It still doesn’t seem possible that after 38 years Cinema Books won’t be around for me to visit after July 15th. For me, the closing represents the end of a special era of film community in Seattle. A new Era, one more connected with the use new technologies, now dominates the Seattle film scene. There are still places I want to watch movies, the diminished Landmark chain, the Egyptian, and Film Forum. I’ll still attend SIFF each year, if for no other reason than to talk with other film fans waiting in line. But it seems to me unfair that there will no longer be a place in Seattle for a unique institution like Cinema Books. Yes, websites can sell books. But they can’t create and maintain a community—a place where people can meet, browse, and talk about the things they love, in this case movies and books.
As for Stephanie, she’s not sure what she’s going to do. But after 38 years, she’s bravely turning the page and starting a new chapter in her book of life. The only thing she’s said for sure is that she’ll continue to watch movies. And she’ll still regularly go to theaters because she likes to see films with a real audience. I do too!
Everything ends. But no matter where time and the world takes me, I’ll always have great memories and books to remind me of my life with Cinema Books.
January 2018. In a holiday email, Stephanie says that she is feeling fine, still seeing lot’s of films, and enjoys running into old Cinema Books customers and reminiscing about their “past friendship in film.”
© T. Reynolds 2015, revised January 2018