Eddie Pensier writes:
Blowhard, Esq.’s recent post on the glorious Art Deco Pantages Theater brought to mind another theater of the same era in New York that has unfortunately been a casualty of New York’s notorious real estate developer wars: the Metro on Broadway between 99th and 100th.
I snapped this photo of the Metro’s façade this morning. It is all that remains of this historic building.
This 2012 article says that Alamo Draft House is slated to reopen the Metro “in 2013” but so far nothing has occurred.
The Metro (then known as the “Midtown”, a strange name for a distinctly uptown theater) in 1944.
Interior architectural details, all of which have since been demolished.
In my youth, my friends and I would go see films at the Metro occasionally. One such was (if memory serves, which it rarely does) The Hard Way, with James Woods and Michael J. Fox. This action film ended, as many do, with a chase scene. And in this film, the chase scene wound up in a movie theater.
The Metro Theater.
That’s right: the movie theater in the movie was the same movie theater in which we were watching the movie. As soon as the audience around me realized this fact, we all burst into spontaneous cheers and applause.
If we’d known the term at the time, we would have called it a meta-moment.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
And you were watching a meta movie on top of it all. It works both as a knowing (but not winking) parody of the buddy cop action-comedy genre, as well as an awesome entry in the genre on its own non-meta merits. That’s tough to pull off, just enough of a parody and just enough of a genuine attempt to make a killer entry in the genre.
The late ’80s and early ’90s had a lot of those, capping off the maturation of their genres. In addition to The Hard Way, there was: RoboCop and the loose cannon / revenger cop movies, Total Recall and the sci-fi action movies, Heathers and teen movies, and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and the slasher movies (Scream was weaker and more obvious). For TV, throw in Twin Peaks and the soap opera / murder mystery shows. The Hard Way is the most under-rated of the bunch, I don’t know why.
Plus it’s shot with an anamorphic lens — filmmakers really used to care about making their work look stylish. Even an action-comedy got the anamorphic treatment back then. You don’t realize how cool it looks until you watch it after a newer screwball comedy like Anchorman or The Hangover.
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