Rss Feed

Posts Tagged ‘movie theaters’

  1. Excelsior

    July 24, 2010 by Watson

    I’m going to be perfectly honest. My generalization is holding. Over 35? Things are great, nothing is wrong, we just want a movie theatre and a pool and a pavilion and an amphitheatre and we have a tattoo parlor. 35 and Under? Uh, we need to fix some things.

    I’ve been having a ‘tete a tete’ with the Mayor’s Wife, one Mrs. Becky Hontz, a lovely woman who adores her town and is proud of it. And I applaud her for that. In her emails to me (and comments in the previous post) she alluded to the fact that there are very nice houses and a couple of restaurants and a nice grocery store and a new pavilion going in on the river out in Watsontown. And I replied that yes, I believe you are right, that this is a very pretty place to live and there are nice things there.

    I also replied that over the course of eight years (2000-2008) there was a 6.8% decrease in the population of Watsontown. A decrease. An ebb and flow is certainly healthy for communities, jsut like being flexible is good for humans. But a steady decrease of almost 7% of the population indicates two things to me: 1 – the population (the average age of which is 41) is aging and dying and no one is replacing the population with a younger crowd. 2 – no one is doing anything to entice younger, child rearing people to this town.

    Now, I’ve looked at the statistics. I’ve seen the job stats and the population stats and you know what? These things happen. But it would be a mistake to say that everything is fine because there are a few houses that look nice and a tattoo parlor in the downtown area.

    I was also told that making the movie theatre a Community Center was not going to fly and to hold film festivals was probably a bad idea because “(t)his is Watsontown, not Sundance.” That floored me, to be honest. I was literally flabbergasted and had no words.

    I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Like a lot a lot. I saw this article in the New York Times about movie theatres in small towns helping to boost the economy. And I thought to myself, “Self, this isn’t the wrong thing to do. It’s just the wrong way to go about it.” So, with that, I’m going to announce this:

    I’m putting my efforts to buy the movie theatre on hiatus. I’m going to be finishing my wedding invitation, then a short film about a time traveler. Then I’m going to spend a lot of time writing. Then I’m going to get married. And after that, then I will revisit this mission of ours.

    Do not mis-read. I am not giving up. I am not stopping. I am simply taking an extended hiatus to figure out what’s going on in my life. I have a lot of things going on personally and at this moment, I have to take care of me.

    So, it’s up to you now. In the months that I am gone, I want to see some traffic on the Facebook page, not just bellyaching and sadpuppy. I want more followers on the Twitter. And for those of you with a video camera, I want you to post a YouTube video on the Facebook page telling me why we should do any of this.

    And I’ll compile all of them so the world can see that this is important.

    And if anyone is going to tonight’s borough council meeting, tell them I said hi. I might want to chat with them in the future.

    Trivia: The first motion picture to be filmed in Hollywood was shot on October 26, 1911. The Gem Movie Theatre, build on the spot of the current Watson Theatre was opened in 1912. There has been a theatre on that spot, since Hollywood was invented.

    The Watson Theatre is literally a part of film history

    Category regular | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,, | No Comments

  2. HOLY CRAP AN UPDATE

    May 24, 2010 by Watson

    So I lost my job two weeks ago.

    And it was not entirely unexpected. Which means for the past few months, I’ve been focusing more on paying rent and surviving and maintaining my employment/benefits status than I have been on the Theatre.

    Oh, also, I’m getting married in the fall.

    You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve been distracted. That’s not to say I won’t be working to get this up and running. I am still learning and figuring out and working on getting this to happen. It just might take a little longer. Email me, I should be getting back on the email wagon. And the Facebook page. Let’s try to keep up some enthusiasm, yeah?

    Sorry I’ve been gone for a while. I’ll try to get things going again. :)

    (Oh, I’m employed again, so it’s ok.)

    Category regular | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,, | No Comments

  3. Work Hard and Be Kind

    March 24, 2010 by Watson

    In the fall of 1934, a small theatre called the Lyceum, previously known as The Gem, burned to the ground. It was 22 years old. Six years later, another theatre was built, on that very spot and there it stayed open and family-run for the next seventy years. Johnsons, Deiblers and Whistlers all made a go at it. As the The Twentieth Century came to a close and priorities shifted from communal to individual (brought about by expense and availability of such personal devices as the iPod, the iPhone and the internet), from community to commercial (the mall), the Watson Theatre found there was no place left for it and in September of 2009, the Watson Theatre closed its doors.

    I moved, along with my family, Mark, Teena, Darian and Kirsten, to 301 Elm St. Watsontown, PA, 17777 (we were told by a former resident that once you live in Watsontown, you never ever forget the ZIP code. He was right). I bought my first comic book at LeVan’s Newsstand (along with uncountable portions of penny candy). I saw a glut of films on the Watson Theatre’s screen. Hell, I was hit by a car on 1st Street, at the bottom of that hill, where the road makes a T. I knew the Yannaccones, the Wolfes and the Hills. The Burdens, the Bowers, Wayne and Roxanne (who had the Boxer dogs), Genny, the old woman who lived across the street from us and who was consistently robbed by “the Goddamned Gypsies.” I played on the bike path and in the forest. I saw my first nudie magazine, rotting under a tree that some other kid had stolen from his dad and hidden there.

    We would play hide and seek on summer nights and the town was our playground. We would run rampant and our imaginations ran free. We created a trio of comic book superheroes. We went “corning” the night before Halloween, a time-honored practice that is likely still a perennial favorite. And good for you, if you do. The World needs a bit more corning.

    But every weekend, no matter what movie was playing, we would go see a movie at The Watson Theatre. Offhand I can only think of two of them that we saw, but I can say that if someone mentions a movie title that came out sometime in the early 90s, odds are, I saw it at the Watson Theatre.

    We moved, ultimately, to Lewisburg and it was from there that I graduated. My path took me from the Central Susquehanna Valley, to Lancaster, and back again. I moved to New York City, five years ago and since then I have been working as hard as I can to get to a point where I can live a normal life. I’m not there yet and lord knows when that will be.

    Over the past month, I have had criticisms leveled at me ranging from “It’s too expensive,” to “the people just don’t care enough” to “Why did you only make it a month? That’s unrealistic” to “You only want to make money off this town” Fact of the matter is, I came up with the idea to buy the Watson Theatre and turn it into a non-profit organization in the span of one week, nearly 5 months after the Watson Theatre closed. I executed my fundraiser in 5 days, got it up and running and over the course of 5 weeks, I actually raised over $3000 from people from all over the country to help a community and a theatre that they had never heard of. I think that even though I didn’t make the money to buy the theatre, it’s obvious that this is needed, not just in Watsontown, but everywhere.

    But I also got a lot of emails telling me that I should keep it up; that this is needed; that the people want it and need it and that they want their kids to go there and that they went there as a kid and Watsontown needs the Christmas party; and that, essentially, the theatre is the centerpiece of the town. I think that’s true.

    It’s very easy to let the few sarcastic and hopeless folks get to you. I’ll be honest, today, I was feeling it. I was really ready to say, “You know what? I’m not even going to try. Nobody cares enough to keep the damn thing running when it was still running, why would I even think they would help get it back on it’s feet again?” It’s hard not to feel that way when you get these comments. The negative overpowers the good, and when you think about it, the good really did overpower the negative over these five weeks. Most people I talked to told me it was an amazing thing that I was doing.

    So. Let me tell you what I want to do. You tell me if it’s worth doing. And in the future (not sure when, but we’ll figure it out soon), I’ll come to Watsontown and we’ll have a chat. But first, let’s talk about what I want to do.

    I want to make a non-profit organization to buy and run the Watson Theatre as a community film center. That means I can’t possibly make any money on the theatre or on the town. I can’t make one cent. The money goes back into the theatre to make it operate properly for you. Let me repeat that: I will not benefit monetarily from this.

    I want to show classic and independent films. I want to show films from the community. I want to teach classes for the community. I want to have a movie club for the community. I want to get people excited and riled up about movies. I want people to go to the movies and to feel that same sense of exhilaration that I do. The flickering picture on a giant silver screen gets me every time.

    On his last show on his 7 month run on The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien said one last thing to his audience before he got onstage to perform “Freebird” with Will Ferrell. I will never forget it as long as I live and his words stuck with me. He said, “Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. It’s my least favorite quality. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

    So, yes. I’m going to find a way to buy this movie theatre. And I’m going to work hard to keep it running and to keep you the audience attending films. And I’m going to let the negativity run off my shoulders because I’m taking Conan’s words to heart.

    You should too.

    Category regular | Tags: ,,,,,,,,, | No Comments