A few years ago, Seattle-based documentarian Rustin Thompson was all set to make, by his own description, a rather depressing film about the disappearance of the moviegoing experience in small communities. \u201cNo one sees my movies anyway,\u201d he remembered thinking, half-joking, so why not make an artistic, somewhat experimental film \u201cand show all these bleak, lost places of history.\u201d And then he met Tiny.<\/p>\n
For his newest documentary, \u201cThe Last Picture Shows<\/a>,\u201d which has screenings in Western Washington throughout July and August, Thompson toured the American West in search of what remained of small-town moviehouses, expecting to find a sad parade of shuttered theaters and deserted storefronts left behind in the wake of streaming.<\/p>\n His first stop was Burns, Ore., with a population of less than 3,000 \u2014 and a movie theater called the Desert<\/a>, opened in 1948 and still in business. Though Thompson wasn\u2019t initially planning to do any interviews for the film, jovial owner\/operator Tiny Pedersen wanted to talk on camera. \u201cIt turned out that he was so great,\u201d Thompson said, \u201cI turned to my wife, and I said, ‘You know what, I think I\u2019ve got to make this movie a little more hopeful.’\u201d<\/p>\n Pedersen, who runs the theater with his wife, says in the film that he still has a full-time day job; you can\u2019t make much of a living running a small-town cinema. (A recent turnout of 19 people, he said, was \u201ca good Friday night in Burns, Ore.\u201d) But he was cheerfully matter-of-fact when asked why they keep going: \u201cBecause we enjoy doing it and the community needs it.\u201d<\/p>\n What Thompson first envisioned as a story of something lost turned into something found: community \u2014\u00a0people working hard, for little money, to carry on a long tradition for their neighbors to enjoy. There\u2019s plenty of wistfulness in \u201cThe Last Picture Shows,\u201d which is filled with haunting photographs of theaters with boarded-up windows, incongruous \u201cNow Playing\u201d signs and empty spaces where cinema lights once sparkled. Of the 123 small-town theaters Thompson visited, roughly half of them were closed, demolished or transformed into something else. (The former Chief Theater in Tonasket, Okanogan County, for example, is now a Subway sandwich shop; you can still see the empty frames that once held colorful movie posters.)<\/p>\n But he also found hope, in places like Winthrop, Okanogan County, where an optimistic young couple 10 years ago opened the small town\u2019s first cinema in 60 years, The Barnyard Cinema<\/a>, and continue to run it today. He found it in Chelan, where the Ruby Theatre<\/a> continues to welcome patrons after more than 100 years. He found it in the beautiful Washoe Theatre<\/a> in Anaconda, Mont. \u2014 a 1930s art deco palace that\u2019s being slowly and lovingly restored. He found it in the Eltrym Theater<\/a> in Baker City, Ore., whose name is its original owner\u2019s first name spelled backward, its elegant neon bright since 1940. And he found it in the Auto Vue Drive-in in Colville, Stevens County \u2014 still family-run after several generations and more than 60 seasons. (It has since found new ownership<\/a> but is still in business.)<\/p>\n Thompson, an Emmy Award winner whose previous work includes the WTO documentary \u201c30 Frames a Second,\u201d is a University of Washington graduate who grew up in Puyallup and, since childhood, adored movie theaters. Before beginning work on \u201cThe Last Picture Shows,\u201d he had long been concerned about the loss of that experience he loved<\/a>. \u201cI was really getting depressed over all the great theaters in Seattle disappearing: Seven Gables<\/a>, Harvard Exit<\/a>, Guild 45th<\/a> \u2026 That was so distressing to me.\u201d<\/p>\n