A little more press

Well this week I was interviewed by a guy from Uptown Magazine, in Winnipeg. (That's in Canada, for you geography buffs.)

The reporter's name was Walter Forsberg. (I meant to ask him if he was any relation to the Forsbergs who used to live here, but never got around to it.) He toured the theatre, took pictures and we talked about the history of the building quite a bit, along with the peculiarities of small town theatre ownership.

Walter is a movie reviewer and a columnist for that particular magazine so the results of the interview should be posted or published shortly, after which I'll put it on the Roxy website if they'll let me.

New neighbors

Well, the Lariat Bar next door to the Roxy has been closed since April and I can't say I've missed it. We've enjoyed the added parking, and the best part has been freedom from having to clean up beer bottles, cigarette butts and worse from our sidewalk on a regular basis.

Now the Lariat will be reopening with new owners in a couple of months. I'm glad to see it being remodeled and reopened, but I'm hoping the new guys will take note of what goes on outside their business, not just inside, and apply the cleanup crew accordingly.

By the way, there have been rumors running rampant around town that the Roxy is wheeling and dealing to buy the Lariat building from the new owners. Let me state for the record here that no such deal is in place. While we were hoping to acquire the Lariat property and turn it into a second Roxy screen, that didn't happen for reasons I won't go into here. For now, we'll be staying single. (In screen count, that is!)

No lines this week

Usually in the movie biz, we know (sort of) what to expect, crowdwise, before a film rolls in. This week, we have one really good movie and one other one. Unfortunately, neither are expected to hit hard.
"Balls of Fury" is the late show. It tags onto the "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story" idea and applies it to ping pong.
The other movie, the good one, is "Becoming Jane," featuring one of our favorite actresses, Anne Hathaway. Looks good, and it's an adult art film, which is a rare thing at the Roxy, so if you want to see more like this, now's the time to show your support.
And for those waiting for "3:10 To Yuma" -- cheer up, it's coming next week or so we're told.

Ferris Wheels: The ones you see now are all phonies

Here's a picture of my wife, Lynn, and me on a real, old-fashioned Ferris Wheel in Kalispell, Montana last summer.

Actually you can't really call it a Ferris wheel. In the carnival industry, it's just a wheel, because Ferris is the name of the guy who invented the first big wheel for people to ride on. The name has stuck with the public and become synonymous with the wheels at county fairs, but for those in the know, there's really only one Ferris Wheel, and that's the original -- and it's gone now.

But anyway, one of my small pet peeves in life is the gargantuan device that passes for a wheel at the county fairs these days. Even the fair in Forsyth has had one of these wheels for a few years. It's called the Century Wheel, which implies that it's 100 feet tall, but nope -- it's 65 feet.

Century Wheels are bigger than the old-fashioned wheels you used to see at carnivals, for sure...but they're just not the same.

Why? Because the seats, instead of being loveseat-like chairs that are carried on the rim of the wheel, the newer wheels have "gondolas" that hang down below the rim.

As a result, you never get that lighter-than-air, king-of-the-world, high-above-it-all feeling on the newer wheels.

On a traditional wheel, when you go over the top, your head and shoulders are above the top of the wheel. On the way down, you can see the scenery and view the fairgrounds with nothing in front of you. On the newer wheels like the "Century Wheel" and the "Giant Wheel," you are never outside of the machine. And if you're with your wife, you can't even sit next to her on the new wheels because you have to sit on opposite sides of the gondola to balance it.

So I was delighted to find out that the Northwest Montana Fair in Kalispell had a real old fashioned wheel. The kind that used to be at every carnival everywhere. The kind you don't see around these parts anymore. So naturally I insisted that we queue up for a ride. And it was great. The operator even let us go around an extra time at the end, because I'm sure he saw how much fun I was having.

My wife and my friends may not understand this affinity I have for the real old-fashioned wheels. That happens to me a lot...people don't see the awesomeness in something that I see. But then, it works the other way too...my wife loves "Dancing With The Stars," and I just don't get that.

But anyway. Real wheels. The Big Eli, as they're sometimes called. By the way, they're only made by the Eli Bridge Company. Remember that next time you visit a county fair.

Superbad - it was great until it ended

OK, so here's a glimpse into the "inside" of the movie biz.

Wednesday afternoon, we got a call from the Miles City theatre telling me they had booked "Superbad" for this weekend and they were supposed to get our print. A half-hour after that phone call, our booker called me and told me the same thing.

Good to go, right?

Now it's not as easy to send a print of a movie to Miles City as it is to just send it back to the film exchange. Miles City likes their film to arrive on two 6000-foot reels, rather than the six small ones it normally comes on. So we put the film onto the big reels, and pack up the regular "shipping" reels into the box they came in, and haul the whole mess over to my day job where George from Miles City will pick it up the next day.

Normally it goes that way, and everything's fine.

THIS time however, George called me up today and said they had received another print of Superbad from the film exchange, so there is no reason for him to come and get our print. So that means I have to haul everything back to the theatre, put the film back onto the small shipping reels and then haul it to the post office to ship it out a day late.

This is the kind of thing that makes me long for "digital cinema."

What in the world is (are?) "The Nanny Diaries?"

Sometimes (usually in the early spring or early fall) we play a movie that slips under my radar. With most movies, I have a fairly good idea of what they're about before we book them.


This week's film slipped through the cracks. Well, I do know a few things about it. It's a chick flick, it has Scarlett Johansson in it, it's a comedy, it's rated PG-13. But that's about all I know. For some people, just knowing it's a chick flick will be enough, I guess.

Cruisin' Main in Forsyth

Another Saturday night in Forsyth and it's looking pretty dead downtown.

I remember when "cruising" was really a big deal. Driving around endlessly, listening to music on our tape decks, pulling over into parking lots to talk to our friends, and honking and waving at girls. Back and forth up and down Main Street for hours. Hoping that special girl would return your wave. If she did, and especially if she smiled, that meant you could flash your headlights at her, which was a signal for her to pull over somewhere to talk, which could (if all the stars were aligned) lead to her getting into your car for a cruise or two.

Like many social situations, the path to cruising fun was littered with land mines. There was always the risk that, when you gave a girl the lights, she would ignore you. At that point it was up to you to decide: Did she just miss seeing the signal? If you were pretty sure she did, you could flash again the next time you saw her. But this was risky: If she ignored the signal a second time, it was the ultimate cruising humiliation, a total rejection. Proof that she had no use for you.

If you successfully pulled a girl over and then got her into your car, the next step was to get rid of all the other people in the car. Fortunately, they were usually cooperative. "Wow, I said I'd be home by 9:30...better drop me off, man."

It was a fun game to play, and even if you didn't win at it, you still had a pretty good consolation prize: An evening of socializing with your friends and listening to great music.

Kids now don't cruise that much. This town used to hop at night, but these days it's much more sedate. I'm not really sure what the young people do for fun. Sit around and watch videos? Listen to music on iPods? Update their MySpace pages? Play video games? Somehow staring at various TV screens all the time seems sort of boring. Of course I'm staring at one as I type this, so what do I know?

I still enjoy just driving around. I'm lucky to have a wife who enjoys it, too. I have a much better car stereo now, too. It's a little less fun these days because of the gas prices, but that doesn't matter too much, because there are no girls cruising Main tonight anyway. Even if there were, honking and waving at them could put me in jail (or divorce court).

Launch this sucker

Well, who knows where this will lead, how long it will last or where it will go, but I'm now an official member of the "blogosphere," whatever that is.

I'm the owner of the Roxy Theatre in Forsyth, MT. I'm married to my lovely wife, Lynn. We have no kids, but we do have six teenage employees and a bunch of nieces and nephews. I tend to be the quiet type out in public, but I have kind of a big mouth online, which hopefully won't get me into too much trouble. (So far, so good!)

The main reason for this post is just to see if everything's working, so please don't be too disappointed at how boring it is. I hope to change that almost immediately. Happy reading!