ABSTRACT
Watching Nashville at a suburban multiplex, summer 1975 The patrons who drove up to the suburban movie theater on a lazy summer night in late June 1975 had a choice of four movies playing on four different screens. The innovation of a single movie theater featuring multiple screens – called a multiplex – had taken off in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. While the first multiplexes featured only two or three screens, by 1975 a theater that had only four screens was starting to seem old-fashioned. Often located in or near the equally new 1970s consumer phenomenon of the shopping mall and featuring ample free parking, multiplexes appealed to the car-based culture of suburbanites.
