
Despite their thirtieth anniversary being two years away, John Tutt, owner and operator of local establishment Princess Cinema and Princess Twin, already knows exactly how they are going to celebrate.
โWhat we like to do on our big anniversaries, like when you turn thirty โฆ we polish off the old classic that we opened the theatre with, Casablanca. So on our opening day, September 18, 1985, we showed Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Thatโs what weโll do for our next anniversary,โ reminisced Tutt.
Since opening its doors in 1985, Princess Cinema has slowly become an important landmark in Kitchener-Waterloo. What first began as a one-screen theatre in a building on Princess Street, where the cinema received some of the inspiration for its name, has expanded into a three-screen powerhouse.
โBack in 1985, K-W did not have any type of independent cinema, screening specialty cinema โฆ London had one, Kingston had one and it was a market that was completely untapped,โ explained Tutt.
โIt [also] gave me a job; I was fresh out of Laurier looking for work.โ
After graduating with a bachelor of business administration (BBA) degree, and having taken as many film studies classes as he could fit, Tutt turned his focus to a local scope.
While there were screenings sporadically throughout K-W, most notably in Arts 1E1 at Laurier, the humanities theatre at University of Waterloo and the K-W Art Gallery, but Tutt noted there was never a consistent spot to catch an independent or quirky film.
The name Princess Cinema was easy to find, Tutt only had to look at the street name on which his new cinema was located to find inspiration. Though as he thought about it more, Princess just seemed to make sense.
โThereโs a history in Canada of cinemas being named after royaltyโKing Cinema, Palace, The Royalโitโs a very common name. In fact going way back in the history archives of Waterloo, there used to be a Princess Theatre. It was one of those nickelodeon-style places somewhere along King Street in downtown Waterloo.โ
The building that the Princess Cinema currently occupies has been around since the 1870โs in various incarnations.
โWe opened there in โ85. That space was dark for five years, apparently. Before that it showed East Indian films and soft-core porn โฆ it was called the Majestic Theatre.โ
โA couple of guys would walk in wearing trench coats asking if any movies were on today.โ
What seems to confuse patrons the most, especially newcomers, seems to be the difference between Princess Cinemas, aptly located on Princess Street, and Princess Twin, the more noticeable one on King Street.
When one refers to going to Princess, they usually mean theyโre going to Princess Twin. The Twin is where you would typically go to catch a newer release. Tutt describes the programming at Princess Twin as โmove-overs from a Galaxyโ and more main stream, higher-budgeted indie films such as Juno.
If more specialized offers, documentaries and [movie] series are more your scene, then Princess Cinema is where you would want to go.
The idea of two similarly named cinemas can be confusing, but Tutt didnโt expect it to turn out like this.
โWhat made us expand was there were so many films we werenโt able to play at our small single screen over at the original โฆ so we put our bigger, longer-running movies over at the Twin,โ he explained.
โWe named the new Princess โPrincess Twin Cinemaโ because we thought weโd be closing down [original Princess] but we didnโt want to lose the name โฆ we thought [Princess Twin] would close in a year โฆ we kept programming it and it was still viable.โ
If you want more Princess, check out their website www.princesscinemas.com to purchase membership cards and upcoming events.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.