http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/StateTheatre_WEB.mp3
Interlochen Public Radio went on the air 50 years ago. A lot of big ideas have shaped northern Michigan since then. We’ve highlighted a few in our summer series, 50 Years of Big Ideas, but by far the most recent idea is the refurbishing of the State Theatre in downtown Traverse City.
In 2005, when the Traverse City Film Festival first launched, the theatre lay empty and was in bad shape. Today it’s a non-profit, volunteer-run movie house that’s transformed downtown and made its mark on lists that have ranked the theatre among the top in the world.
IPR takes a look at this very big idea that began to shape Northern Michigan only six years ago.
Selling Themselves Short
Fifty years ago, going to the movies was a big deal. The lobbies were plush, the ushers wore uniforms and the seats were comfortable. The screens were really big. For example, you could see how expensive and well-made Bogart’s silk dinner jacket was in “Casablanca.” It helped you realize how swanky and influential Bogie’s character really was.
But theater owners started to realize they could make more money by dividing big movie houses into a few little theatres. Screens got smaller. Seats got smaller. Projectionists were let go.
During the 2009 Traverse City Film Festival, Michael Moore wondered why theaters don’t offer a better experience to movie-goers.
“It’s stunning that directors or filmmakers haven’t been asked to design theaters so people will have a good experience and sit in a seat that’s comfortable where everyone, no matter how short or tall they are, can see the screen or not get kneecapped by the seat in front of them or not have their feet stick to the floor … and have the movie sound and look as good as all the time and effort we’ve put into making it look that way so you have that full experience,” says Moore.
The multiplexes also routinely show commercials. Moore says this contributes to the feeling that you’re at home watching TV.
“I think a lot of people who are over the age of 30 have given up going to the movies,” Moore says. “Which is sad because, my friends, we make these movies for you to see them on a screen, a big screen, in the dark with lots of people around you and it’s a communal experience. That’s what it’s supposed to be.”
The Ship Sails Again
In 2005, Michael Moore and a group of fellow film fans launched the first Traverse City Film Festival. For a few days each year the festival transforms several downtown venues into temporary movie theaters.
The first year, downtown’s long-shuttered State Theatre was one of them. But it wasn’t pretty. The State Theatre needed a lot of sprucing up.
John Robert Williams is one of the founding members of the Traverse City Film Festival. He said they called it “grandpa’s basement.”
“It was a hodgepodge mess of old wood here and there and the seats had been put out and put in and there was no carpet on the floor and there was really a dearth of maintenance around here,” says Williams. “I think we hauled out 19 dumpster loads of trash out of the building.”
The State was still a little rugged. It still had its cheap, plastic fold-down seats. But the festival rented some of the world’s highest-performing movie projectors. And John Robert Williams says there was something about reviving that old theater downtown that felt inspired.
“One night, we suddenly got the marquee lights running out front,” Williams recalls. “People were stopping, taking pictures, cars were going by honking their horns, yelling, giving thumbs-up. It was like this dead old ship had suddenly come to life even though it was not that pretty on the marquee, it was there. And I think that that spark and that flame that started drawing people downtown is the one critical point that can’t be missed in all of this that now, if you saw the State Theatre with the marquee dark, you’d wonder what was wrong.”
Getting It Just Right
Today the marquee is lit year-round. And what began as an event for a few days in August grew into a vision for a downtown theatre that would be a hub for activity, even in the winter.
Michael Moore challenged volunteers and donors to restore the theater in just six weeks. Some of the most expensive projectors were installed. Some of the most expensive sound systems were installed. And John Robert Williams says he and Michael Moore spent hours shopping for, testing, and spacing the theatre’s seats.
“He’d be in front of me, I’d be in front of him, and I’d have a tape measure, and we’d walk around each other for a few minutes,” remembers Williams ‘Is it comfortable enough? What does it feel like? Is there enough legroom?’ ‘Nope.’
“So, we’d move things back and forth and we finally figured out what would be that space, [if Moore] could walk by me or I could walk by him. We laid it all out and we were missing 100 seats from what had been in here. We didn’t have enough floor space anymore. So, oops, at the last minute, ‘I guess we have to add a balcony.’”
Ever since the theater was built in 1916, there was a proscenium arch on the stage, a decorative element the screen fit inside. Getting rid of the entire arch left space for a much larger screen.
“And you’d walk into the room and it was like this enormous white wall and it was like, ‘Dang!’” says Williams.
“And then we started running film – this was just test stuff before the film festival. I sent a text to Mike and said, ‘You’ve got to come down here and look at this thing!’ He walks in. Of course, as a joke I think, he went and sat in the front row. He’s looking way up and he said, like, ‘This is too big.’
“‘Mike, nobody’s going to watch it from here.’
“‘No, someone will watch it from here.’ He’s always worried about every viewer. ‘No, let’s back up and go back.’
“We finally sat in the middle of the theater and we were like two kids in a candy store. Here was this enormous image but it was like, ‘Dang!’”
Take Note, World
Since it’s renovation in 2007, the State Theatre has had nearly a million people see shows there. In 2011, USA Today said, “In this era of cookie-cutter multiplexes, it's hard to believe that going to the movies was once a grand night out. But a handful of old-fashioned movie palaces help keep the glamour alive.” The paper went on to name the State Theatre as one of the ten great places to see a movie in splendor.
And some of the most revealing comments come out of the mouths of the movie-goers themselves. Recently, Richard Mueller visited the State for the first time to see Quentin Tarantino’s, “Django Unchained.”
“I’ll tell you what: I’ve been to many theaters. This reminds me back in Germany when I used to go the show at 11 o’clock on Saturday mornings, go up in the balcony. I just … it’s phenomenal here. It’s just absolutely phenomenal. It brings me back to my teenage days,” says Mueller.
The downtown, volunteer-run movie experience has been so popular, the State Theatre group has plans in place for a second theater right on the shores of Grand Traverse Bay. And this summer the State will sell its millionth ticket.