Maplewood is having an outdoor movie night, but its kind of a protest

It sounds like pure fun. Oh, and it will be.

The backyard movie night planned for Maplewood on September 7 is more than just a good time. It’s kind of a demand and a bit of a protest.

Maplewood used to have a movie theater. Now they have none. During the pandemic, the 93-year-old Maplewood Movie Theater closed down. It never came back. There were a few failed attempts at bringing it back as a movie theater.

Now it is sitting vacant and for sale. Meanwhile, plenty of people in town want a place of their own to see a movie. They don’t want to head to West Orange or South Orange.

To show the powers that may be there’s interest in a local theater reopening and hoping to stir up some investor interest, a backyard movie night was thought of. Residents and the local film society organized it so that on Saturday, September 7 in the backyards of 15 different homes all over town, the play buttons will be pressed all at the exact same time on the original “Beetlejuice” from 1988.

It will show on big outdoor screens on people’s lawns, where many neighbors will gather across these 15 locations to show how much they want a movie theater back in Maplewood.

It’s called the Backyard Movie Night, and it was dreamed up by the Maplewood Film Society as a way to “attract potential investors while engaging our late movie-loving community,” co-founder Lisa Cohen explained to New Jersey Monthly. “Our creative town needs an in-person movie theater.”

The film society did their own survey of residents and found 80% strongly desire a theater of their own back in town. What about those nearby ones? They’re all cookie cutter and homogenized showing basically blockbusters.

“Audiences are craving non-mainstream films onscreen, including archival classics, independents, documentaries and foreign films,” says the film society’s Angela Matusik. ”We love movies of all kinds.”

Hopefully investors take note.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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