When my brother Tim and I were little, my parents would drop us off at the Lansing Cinema for a double feature. We would watch Tim Conway in the Apple Dumpling Gang . One Saturday, we watched the four-hour long epic, Gone with the Wind . The theatre was dark and musty. The velvet upholstered seats were stained and lumpy - and a few had duct tape across the arms since they were no longer safe to sit in. Popcorn was less than a dollar for a huge bucket. We could pay for our tickets, popcorn, drinks, and candy and still have change for a ten dollar bill. We had never heard of a cineplex or multiplex. The Lansing Cinema auditorium was huge and probably sat several hundred viewers. Most of the time, it was half empty. Heavy velvet drapes would part slowly, creaking as they moved, and the projectionist would start the film. A real person operated the projector, and if the movie started to skip or went out of focus, the whole theatre would yell to wake him up and fix it. At old mo...