Renovate the Alamo: Struggling small-town theater fortified by community
PHOTo / Amber waterman
David Weiss at the Alamo Theatre in Bucksport.
There's much to recommend in the town of Bucksport, although many travelers pass it by on journeys along coastal Route 1 to other centers of maritime and cultural activity.
It takes a conscious effort to investigate a spur off Route 1 that forms Bucksport's Main Street and find evidence of both historic and economic significance, from the 18th Century Jed Prouty Tavern to the Verso Paper Corp. facility.
Bucksport's Main Street, like many in Maine, has seen its share of ups and downs.
There's the pharmacy and clothing store, the ice cream shop and granite benches inviting strollers to take a load off while shopping.
Amidst the downtown shops is the Alamo Theatre, at 85 Main St., a brick movie theater that dates to 1916. The 140-seat theater is of great sentimental value to residents, a fact demonstrated in recent years by the way the community pitched in to keep it going — a struggle in the age of online entertainment.
But to understand the Alamo's saga, it's first important to know the theater is an incidental operation of another operation that occupies the back end of the building. This is Northeast Historic Film, a nonprofit archive of film and video that was founded in 1986. The NHF and the Alamo are bound together, thanks to a Blue Hill couple who, in the 1980s, developed an interest in old films and thought they deserved preservation.
At the time, David Weiss, an Oregon native, and his then-wife, Karan Sheldon, worked in Boston in film production. They decided to try a year doing the same in Maine. Not long after moving to Maine, they unearthed a 1930 documentary, “From Stump to Ship,” about the logging industry. To get the film to a wider audience, they used a grant from the Maine Humanities Council to take the film on tour. They hoped to draw 100 people per stop. Instead, the first show drew more than 1,000.
That kind of interest was a revelation, says Weiss, today working in a barebones office tucked below arched windows on the Alamo's second floor.
“It's why we exist,” he says. “Not so much because it was a wizard piece of filmmaking — although it was pretty good — but because we represented to people something of significant interest to them. That's the value of archival film. 'My grandfather worked in the woods.' You can't just turn on TV and see that.”
The response led Weiss and Sheldon to hunt down old footage for more documentaries.
“We asked the fatal question: 'Gee, I wonder who's got all the old film?'” he recalls.
Unlike a newspaper, whose back issues are collected in a morgue, there wasn't any central film repository. “Everybody had some — and nobody had equipment to run it,” he says. “We realized there was a niche.”
They started collecting old film, at first storing in their Blue Hill home, then at folk singer Noel Paul Stookey's studio. But, Weiss says, “When you're running an archive, you're thinking permanence. So we started looking for bricks and mortar.”
The Alamo Theatre was constructed in 1916 and closed in 1956. The building subsequently housed a range of businesses, from a supermarket to a bar.
By the early 1990s, the building was up for bid in a foreclosure auction. Weiss and Sheldon jumped on it as a home for the archive, but initially didn't think of using it for its intended use, as a theater.
“The minute we moved in, everybody in town says, 'Oh, you're going to reopen the theater!'” Weiss recalls.
The couple was game. They bought hideous seats from another defunct theater, initially projecting movies on a wall painted white. The town, in support of cultural events, soon provided a grant that started significant renovation.
Meanwhile, vintage film piled up. “We sent out a press release that says, 'We exist,'” Weiss says. For storage, they used the bar's walk-in cooler. Everything from amateur home movies to institutional holdings poured in.
In the early 2000s, NHF had outgrown the storage space. The organization built a three-story, 12,000-cubic-foot, climate-controlled storage facility, linked to the rear of the building. To help pay for it, the organizers secured a $1 million private donation as well as a $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Today, NHF stores more than 12 million feet of film and thousands of hours of videotape from archives, universities, artists, historical societies, museums, businesses and individuals, primarily from New England. Because NHF doesn't break up collections, this includes rare film, such as the earliest known color footage of Mahatma Gandhi, recorded by a Blue Hill resident who traveled to India in the 1930s.
It houses a study center, reference library and vintage equipment. NHF's annual $400,000 budget is covered by the rental of storage space, services such as media transfer to digital formats and sales of stock footage. All kinds of requests come in, from Ken Burns' request for people drinking in public and behaving badly during Prohibition, to Oprah Winfrey's request for animal attacks.
How do they pinpoint the required footage?
“We sprinkle fairy dust, turn around three times, and clap our heels together, and then we try to remember everything we can,” says Jane Donnell, manager of the theater, distribution and membership. “And we have two databases we work from.”
As a self-sustaining, independent nonprofit that doesn't have to cater to the demands of a parent institution, NHF is a leader in the field. Its summer film symposium draws archivists, scholars and artists from around the world.
When the front-of-the-building operation, the Alamo, sank into the red several years ago, the way forward wasn't clear. In 2010 and 2011, the theater grossed about $100,000, but had expenses of about $114,000.
“We're really a nonprofit archive,” Weiss says. “We're not going to subsidize losses to the movie theater at the risk of film preservation. The theater had to hold its own.”
The Alamo faced problems seen everywhere. “I think little-town theaters are hard-pressed by the growth of big-screen televisions,” Weiss says.
Weiss and Donnell had heard of sponsorship programs at other theaters, mostly those showing classic or art films. Starting in 2012, they tried the idea for mainstream films. Individuals and nonprofits get an advertisement for $100; businesses for $200.
Response was immediate. “It gave us a bit of a tailwind on the finances,” Weiss says. “People liked having their name on the screen and marquee. They felt good about helping to support the theater.”
The sponsorships come to about $4,000 per year. “It's not huge,” says Weiss. “But it helps when we're struggling to break even.”
The theater gets a further break because it runs movies several weeks after release. Many residents are willing to wait, paying less for admission and popcorn, rather than drive to a multiplex elsewhere. Cost-cutting and deferred projects got the 2013 budget down under $90,000 and the theater broke even.
But a new problem loomed. Studios were switching from film prints to digital, forcing theaters to buy digital projectors. Things came to a head last fall. Donnell found it nearly impossible to book film prints of popular movies. The theater had to close or buy a projector for $50,000.
Weiss and Donnell convened a meeting, inviting local people with proven interest in the theater — the town council, sponsors and restaurant owners. Sixty people came.
“There wasn't one person who even considered letting us close,” says Donnell.
Fundraising began online last January, followed by “Save the Alamo” buckets all over town. Donations poured in. “People came with fistfuls of money,” she says. “They put it in my hand and says, 'Don't close my movie theater.'”
Early on, Weiss approached the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation.
“They were impressed with the community support,” Donnell says. The foundation granted $50,000, divided into two $25,000 matches in order to encourage continued community gifts. In the end, the campaign raised $105,000, half for the projector and half for other improvements such as an expanded sound system.
This May a new projector was installed. There are still two 35-millimeter projectors to screen old movies.
The Alamo and NHF have helped revitalize the downtown, according to Bucksport Economic Development Director David Milan, adding that they add to the town's “quality of place.”
“I think in this day and age of global business, many companies and many employees can live anywhere,” Milan says. “People often talk about quality of life, but quality of life is something that's different to everyone. In Bucksport, we spend more time on quality of place. If we create a place where all kinds of people are welcome, and they want to live there, then businesses and investment will follow. That philosophy has worked well for us over the last 15 or 20 years, and the Alamo and Northeast Historic Film have certainly been a key asset that distinguishes us as a community. It's a competitive advantage. Not everybody has a hometown theater, and its close connection with Northeast Historic Film is unique.”
Today, the theater is breaking even. Over the years, it's also hosted music and cultural events. Weiss and Donnell envision an expanded schedule, and hope to receive a liquor license to broaden attraction. A made-over kitchen has boosted theater rentals for private events.
“I don't think it's a get-rich scheme,” Weiss says. “But I'm feeling pretty positive about our prospects.”
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