Our local Cinemark theater was supposed to have “Milk” start showing in wide release here on December 19, 2008 – but now it is completely off the schedule.

I remembered back on Nov. 17, that PHB ran an article about Cinemark CEO donating $10K to the Yes on Prop 8 Morons and that there was some backlash between the bs from Cinemark's PR people about being LGBT friendly corporation.  

I believe we are seeing some of it here.  Corpus Christi is a decent sized Texas city (over 250,000 folks) but we have only two movie theatres – both of them owned by Cinemark. 

More after the jump.

The main location, Century Theatres WAS listing “Milk” with its first showing on December 19th at 7:00 p.m. 

Our small but proud LGBT community (we had 18 folks of all flavors at our No on 8 protest – which in this fairly closeted hamlet is a GREAT outcome!) was planning for an informal get together at the Dec. 19th showing.  

We had made some innoculous flyers for the movie and we posted them at the local LGBT bars and the two local colleges – hoping we'd just start some dialougue and for our community more education on LGBT history.

This Wednesday night (12/17/08), I double check the listing so we can email folks again to remind them of the movie – NOW IT IS OFF THE SCHEDULE ENTIRELY!!!  I called one of our organizers and she agreed to go and ask about it

Thursday she pops over and asks them about it – a nameless semi-management minion they claimed they weren't getting the movie since it is “Controversial” – WTF!?!?!?!?! 

I now posit whether Cinemark is making “Milk” hard to find at all their theaters – we will have to make a road trip to San Antonio now (about 2 hours) to see an already well received and reviewed film – see this webpage http://www.fandango.com/milk_113554/awards for all the awards thus far.

(NOTE:These is the same theater my wife and I viewed “Brokeback Mountain” – when it was winning similar awards!!!)  

I plan to call and write Cinemark today – especially since PHB has so kindly made some names and numbers available – this is a HUGE disappointment to many of us – but my main reason for writing is to ask the big question: is this happening anywhere else?????   Is Cinemark censoring the public's opportunity to see this film????