Dan Beeston is

Brushing Off Invisible Spiders

The Regent has no clothes

16th April 2011

The Regent Cinema is being demolished.

I know a number of people who are very passionate about keeping the Regent as it is. Indeed it's coming down to D-day and the last ditch attempts to get someone in power to drop their balls are underway. They think it's a travesty that such an important part of Brisbane's heritage is being removed.

BALLS!!
(pic by sanchom)


Luckily, it's not.

That is to say... it's not going to be demolished. It already has been. And it was indeed a travesty.

The Regent was build in the 1930s but in the 1980s the cinemas out the back and the entryway were renovated. There was a huge outpouring of concern that such an important building was going to be violated but this was in the days of Sir Joe so we're lucky it didn't become a car-park.

The battle to keep the Regent in its original condition was lost thirty years ago.

But what about the foyer? Well it remains as it was back in the thirties. It's also heritage listed so they can't touch that. The renovations destined to turn the place into office space and two tiny theatres will take place around that grand old room leaving it untouched.

What a waste of space.

Look, call me heartless but I've never been one for saving old buildings. These creations are but the blink in the eye geographically speaking. They have all the permanence of a sand castle in the long term. If the Regent foyer had value it would be being used, but you know what people value more than grand old architecture?

$6 movie tickets.

Turns out we're happy to wander past painted fibro in the suburbs to get to our movie theatres if it means we pay $6 instead of $14. And what's more? How good are those new cinema seats where you can pull the armrest up or put your drink in it? It's function over form and 'by gum' is it functional.

"Oh, but the HISTORY of the foyer" they call out.

What history? Eighty years of selling shitty confectionary at outrageously marked up prices? Eighty years of dropped choc-tops and 7 year olds crying because they've had too many malteasers? The magic of the movies takes place in the dark, not in the line up to the candy bar.

Although next time we're out there, get me to point out the bullet holes in the ceiling. It would be a shame to lose those.

Greybeard

"The magic of the movies takes place in the dark, not in the line up to the candy bar." Oh yeah! The yawn, the arm stretched across her seat, the happy fumblings . . . or did you mean the films?

Anyway, you're an iconoclastic young snipperwapper, you have no respect for the icons of our yoof (where "our" = baby boomers = the backbone of the nation) and you'll surely get your comeuppance. Probably in about 30 years when you will have attained Oldfarthood and be moaning about the loss of YOUR icons.

Wish I could be there in person to see it but I'll be living off your tax dollars at ShadyLinks - a retirement pod-farm in which we're all jacked in to a virtual world of heroes and monsters - a constant whirl of violence & sex. Thanks in advance.

The Wah

"Look, call me heartless but I've never been one for saving old buildings. These creations are but the blink in the eye geographically speaking. They have all the permanence of a sand castle in the long term."

You're heartless and, more importantly, your line of argument holds no water. You are saying that supposedly impermanent things like buildings arent worth saving? You only have 75 years or so on the planet, maybe you should be immediately rendered down for organs and sold to the highest bidder? Your marriage will end some day, if only when one of you dies, so why attempt to stay together? When you get sick and they need to use expensive medicines to save you, you'll say no because we have "all the permanence of a sand castle in the long term"?

The impermenance of a thing in no way reduces its beauty and artistic merit. Not everything has to be created, or preserved, with a utilitarian context. The beautiful things that humans create are worth saving as they show what wonderful ideas and objects we are capable of bring into being. To preserve beautiful things from the past is a way of honouring, appreciating and learning from history.

But then again, humans, like all species on earth, will only be in existence for an average of 2 million years, which is a eyeblink compared to the trillions and trillions of years the universe will exist. So, we might as well destroy all our creations and kill ourselves immediately.

Dan Beeston

I'm not talking about rendering down a fit human being or breaking up a happy marriage. I'm talking about getting rid of something that only has sentimental value. It's no longer useful. This in more like rendering down a senile Grandpa.