Now Playing: Sipping Cinemas

Movie bars find that a drink or two can help

As the screen lovers raise their glasses in a toast, so does just about everyone in the audience. Wooroo! Such synchronized celebrations take place nightly at a growing number of movie bars in the South and Northeast, where patrons may chase a good flick--or drown a bad one--with beer, wine or cocktails. Seated in executive-style leather swivel chairs ranged around butcher-block cocktail tables, customers have only to beckon a waitress for refills or to order sandwiches. They manage thus to combine the comforts of home with the fillip of a night out. Indeed, sipping cinemas may be a shot to stimulate the film industry.

Two real estate men originally from Columbus, Brothers Jim and John Duffy, 34 and 32, got the idea for movie bars when they had to fill some vacant space in a shopping center between Disney World and Orlando, Fla. Their aim was to build a theater with an atmosphere as close as possible to the customers' own living rooms. There are only 175 seats in their Village Cinema 'n' Drafthouse. Early arrivers get to see old movies and slides from the Duffy brothers' collection of W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin and the Marx brothers. Admission is only $1 a head. Food and drinks cost less than they do at competing entertainment spots: deli sandwiches average $2, a pitcher of beer or a carafe of wine, $4.50. "It's very difficult to get people to go out," says John Duffy. "We wanted to provide a revolutionary idea, the little 'oomph' to go to a movie."

The oomph worked well enough for the brothers to open two other movie bars in Florida and sell the franchises for two Cinema 'n' Drafthouses in Jacksonville and Atlanta. They have contracted to open five more franchises in the next year. The movies, changed each week, are usually comedies or action fare with stars like Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen and Burt Reynolds.

Two copies of the Duffy movie bars are dispensing drama and drinks (and pizza and pepperoni) in East Hartford and North Haven, Conn. The Poor Richard's Pub and Cinemas were also started by two brothers, Richard and Rene Dupuis, 45 and 35, who wanted to branch out of their family charter bus business. They too will open more. Says Rene: "A young couple can go out, see a movie, have a pitcher of beer, a couple of sandwiches and a box of popcorn for under $10. There aren't many places left like that."

Movie bar operators are actually helped by the weak economy, according to John Duffy. "When you see a downturn," he says, "people are more inclined to go out to a movie, and usually alcohol consumption goes up. People are interested in getting away from the problems of the world so we've tried to create a happy atmosphere." Hollywood could even latch onto the trend with a new genre of happy-hour movies in which hero and heroine do almost nothing else but celebrate days of wine and Four Roses.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.