David Strohmaier doesn’t seem like a raider of lost movie history.  He’s a friendly sort who invites you into his home where you’re greeted by his cat.  Strohmaier even offers you something to drink and fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.  But some things strike you about his house.  His office is filled with the latest video editing computers available.  There are posters from classic films on the wall.  Yet off to the side are two film projectors whose lenses peek through projection booth portals.  Walking into his living room, you’d think you were in a classic movie theatre.  Curtains cover up a movie screen and surround sound speakers, well, surround you as you sink into a comfortable sofa.  The lights of his converted family room dim, the curtains part and on the screen shines Strohmaier’s documentary, “Cinerama Adventure.”  Not only has Strohmaier raided his memory to create the ultimate home theatre environment, but he’s brought back a nostalgic look at the 1950s wonder, Cinerama.   

Had it not been for a few die hard fans, Cinerama would be a footnote in film history.  Within the confines of old movie palaces during the 1950s, Cinerama immersed audiences into the middle of a three-paneled screen and seven-channel stereophonic sound virtual reality ride.  The film, “This Is Cinerama,” begins with a rather monotonous explanation by journalist/world adventurer Lowell Thomas about the origins of film.  This takes place in the middle of the movie theatre screen in the old Academy Format, an aspect ratio more akin to old-fashioned TV screens.  Then, the screen widens from one panel to three and the audience now realizes they’re on a roller coaster ride, all from the comfort of their theatre chairs.

Cinerama was such a hit, it spurred 20^th Century Fox to introduce CinemaScope, producer Mike Todd to unveil Todd-AO and exhibition companies to either upgrade their theatres to widescreen cinema for Cinemascope, or build cinemas specifically for Cinerama and other film projection processes.  The impact of Cinerama is still with us today.  Widescreen movies, multichannel surround sound and even the term “rama,” all stemmed from Cinerama.    

But Cinerama had run its course by the early 1960s, as more practical and less expensive widescreen processes were developed.  To many fans of the format, it was still superior to almost any film presentation ever conceived.

By the 1990s, a few people revived Cinerama for modern audiences.  Projectionist John Harvey built a Cinerama installation in his house, eventually moving the equipment to the New Neon Movies [theatre] in Dayton, Ohio. Websites popped up on the Internet with pictures, theatre programs and reams of information about a bygone era.  Billionaire Paul Allen of Microsoft fame restored one of the last movie theatres in the world built for Cinerama in Seattle, Washington.

Here’s where David Strohmaier enters the picture.  Sensing that Cinerama’s legacy was in danger of being lost, he began to interview a number of people involved with making Cinerama films and re-constructed history in “Cinerama Adventure.”  He’s included a number of clips from the era and clips from actual Cinerama films.  These are presented in the “Smilebox” process, which is a curved version of letterboxing common on DVDs.  This is the only way in which to see all three panels that Cinerama is famous for in a fashion that is reminiscent of the original curved screen experience.  The end result is an exciting and poignant film. It shows audiences not just a film format and its impact on the world, but of the people who sometimes risked their lives to bring these films to the masses.

Strohmaier’s 2003 film has been shown around the country to audience and critical acclaim.  The only downside to the film’s popularity at festivals and screenings is that it hasn’t been picked up by a distributor, yet.  Why hasn’t it been picked up?  The story has adventure and intriguing stories about the folks who put Cinerama on Broadway and beyond.  It’s a documentary which keeps your eyes glued to the screen for 93 minutes.  It’s a celebration of the passion for movies.  If Strohmaier has raided Hollywood history, he has certainly delivered audiences a wealth of jewels.

Strohmaier and I sat down in December of 2003 and discussed “Cinerama Adventure.”

Beginning With A Passion For Cinerama

William Kallay, From Script To DVD: What was the goal of making this documentary?

David Strohmaier: I suppose if there was a cause, it would be the fact that motion picture history has forgotten about Cinerama.  How important was this stuff when it first hit?  It was a matter of luck and timing.  It happened at the right time.  A bunch of entrepreneurs got together and forced it to happen with their own money, their own spit and bailing wire and created the widescreen revolution.  How about stereophonic sound and surround sound that we still use today?  It hasn’t changed yet.  Even if it’s digital, it still hasn’t changed.  It started with Cinerama.  CinemaScope was wonderful and powerful.  As commercial as it was, that wasn’t it.  It was Cinerama, folks.  You have the guys who split hairs, “Yes, but ‘Napoleon’...”  That was one movie and they dumped it.  Fox Granduer was a bunch of newsreels.  And the other one; the big John Wayne movie.

FSTD: “The Big Trail”?

Strohmaier: “The Big Trail.”  Cinerama created all this other stuff. The timing was right.  So it’s about

David with a 3-strip Cinerama camera

time that it’s given its due.  I think the thing that really pushed it over the edge for me was I was watching a LaserDisc of one of Martin Scorsese’s favorite movies.  I forgot the name of the LaserDisc.  He’s going through the whole history of widescreen.  And I was watching it and I could tell he was getting ready to go into the widescreen thing.  Okay, good.  We’ll see a clip from “This Is Cinerama,” “The Robe.”  No Cinerama whatsoever.  It was all CinemaScope!  And that pissed me off, because here’s a historian, a very valid, well-respected historian, who perhaps maybe never saw Cinerama.  I got to give him the fact that could’ve been a possibility.  But here he lived in New York and was a movie nut.  He’s a little older than me.  That made realize that this is going to be forgotten, other than what John Harvey was able to pull off in Ohio. But then you’ve always got the historians who say, “But that was a fad. I think it lasted twenty minutes and they abandoned it.”  You get those guys.  You know, fourteen years ain’t no fad!  I mean, bell bottoms, how long did they last?  Five, six years maybe?  Give it some respect.

FSTD: If you look in some of the history books on cinema, a lot of times widescreen and Cinerama are written as footnotes.  And a lot of times when they talk about the history and facts, the facts are wrong.

Strohmaier: Quite often.

FSTD: So it’s only been in recent years that I think that people like yourself have actually gone into the history and really tracked it down. I was really surprised at how popular Cinerama was.

Strohmaier: You could barely get tickets.  You know, in ’64, when I saw ‘How The West Was Won’ in Denver, Colorado on a family vacation, we had driven by the theatre.  I had seen Cinerama earlier as a kid in the ’50s. I said, “Dad! That’s ‘How The West Was Won.’ They’re playing it at that theatre!”  And I’m figuring is it going to end tomorrow night?  We called the theatre and they said, “No, it’s going to be playing here about another 10 months.”  “Can we get tickets?”  And they were able to get us in.  I’m thinking back as a fourteen year-old kid, but there were probably ten empty seats in the building.  And it had already been playing there for over six or seven months.  They played these things for two and three years.
 
FSTD: That’s why it’s kind of funny with people nowadays just going crazy over the “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy.  They wait in line and see it four and five times.  But people have been crazy about certain films for years.

Strohmaier: Yes, and that’s the way movies used to be distributed. “It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World” played for twelve months or something like that.

FSTD: A very long time.

Strohmaier: Long time.  “This Is Cinerama,” in its New York run, played for over three-and-half years.

FSTD: That is amazing.

Strohmaier: People watching the opera scene for over three-and-a-half years.

FSTD: That is amazing.  And in ’73, they had the 70mm version.

Strohmaier: And that was hugely successful.  I remember the billboard. I moved into town [Los Angeles] right about then, so I remember all these billboards around town with the roller coaster on it.  I was driving somewhere the other day and I saw a Launderama.

FSTD: Bowlarama.

Strohmaier: There’s a Bowlarama in Glendale.  I think it’s something that happens once a month.  I don’t think it’s a place called Bowlarama. But I think they put up a sign, Bowlarama, and once a month on a Saturday, they have a special tournament or something.  I remember reading about it in L.A. Magazine. These are vestiges of what once was.

How Cinerama Adventure Was Made

FSTD: Tell us how you got “Cinerama Adventure” made?

Strohmaier: The interesting thing about this documentary is that the creative thing was all done here

on this computer [pointing to a high-end Apple Computer].  Once you've done that how do you get it onto a 35mm print?  How do you keep a certain amount quality without things falling apart?  That's where Eastman Kodak came in.  That's where Accent Media came in.  That’s where Technicolor Labs came in.  Crest National.  Riot.  There’s a whole laundry list of these [companies]. Laser Pacific, in particular.  They all came forward.  And I stayed out of work for the last two years to facilitate this.

FSTD: What made you go with the HD version of “Cinerama Adventure?”

Strohmaier: It was Laser Pacific’s idea.  And the reason they wanted to do it, besides just being good people, is that the American Society of Cinematographers [ASC] got behind the project and started twisting people’s arms around, saying, “We want this project done.  It’s about movies.  It should be on film.  So what can you do to help?”  Due to their clout, all these things started happening, including everything you can imagine, like getting composers and sound design.  Richard Anderson, who does all the big features in town at Weddington Productions, was in charge of the whole dub; getting the seven channels lined up on film.  That went on for six or eight months, because they had to do it in between other jobs.  Because they volunteered to do this for free, and because no way is there any way I could ever pay to have this stuff done, I had to sit there and go into another crisis and wait for their schedules to loosen up.  But they’re giving you hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stuff.  You can’t say no.

FSTD: On what format was the film originally intended?

Strohmaier: It started off to be an NTSC documentary.  The frustrating part is you never knew if something was going to fall through.  For example, one of the companies promised a film-out from the HD to film. That fell through three weeks before we had to have the film-out.  And that was the company that if they could have done it, it was going to be dangerous anyway because they could only do so many frames-per-second.  And then you’re tying up that machine for three weeks at Cinesite.  If some big guy needs a commercial done right away, you’re bounced.

 
FSTD: Was your video footage converted to 24p?

Strohmaier: Everything was converted to 24p.

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