by Erica Boni

These days we have the Prytania and the recently rekindled Joy. But in days gone by, going to a single-screen movie theatre merely required walking down the street. And now there's a book to prove it. On Thursday night, the Prytania theater hosts an event to celebrate the release There’s One In Your Neighborhood: The Lost Movie Theaters of New Orleans, a coffee table book two years in the making that reveals the details of hundreds of lost theaters throughout the city.

The lights were bright once again on Canal Street last night, as Miss Irma Thomas flipped the switch to light the sign of the newly renovated Joy Theater sign. The Theater, which went off line in 2003, received a $5 million renovation after a group of investors bought the decades-old movie house over the summer. The new incarnation of the Joy will host music, theatre, parties and movies.

April 13th,  when the first elephant to grace the United States arrived from India (1796), the day of Butch Cassidy’s birth (1866), Samuel Beckett’s birth (1906), when Sidney Poitier became the first African-American male to win the Academy Award for Best Actor in Lilies of the Field (1963), and when Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to win the Masters (1997)…oh it was all so so simple then.

Unlike most days in this town, there’s a lot to do, so listen up:

Rene Brunet, owner of Uptown’s Prytania Theatre, is New Orleans’ most boyish 89-year-old. Since taking over the theater in 1992, Brunet has become a local institution, enthusiastically greeting moviegoers at the door with a smile, and one of his many movie-themed ties.