(lively jazz music) (switches clicking) (dramatic movie music) - [Movie Character] This prophecy is helping enslave us.

- They're automated, if I schedule a program, it'll play its own show.

If everything is operating properly, you can just turn it on and then walk away and it'll, you know, at 6:54, it'll start playing the trailer.

- [Movie Narrator] I see everything.

- You look down Main Street and you see this big tower with all these neon lights.

When it's on at night and it just kinda lights up, that's this look and feel of a main street that you would have to have millions of dollars to build from scratch today.

It's a kind of a miracle that it's still here.

And as new owners of the theater, I feel like it's our job to honor that history.

(car engines rumbling) - It feels like a very important part of this town, and so we feel very supported by the town, loved by the town.

- It's just one of those kind of classic Americana things that a lot of small towns had back in the '30s and '40s.

This theater was built in 1939, the last real year of the Art Deco era that had been going on for a few decades.

The theater was built by the Behr brothers.

It obviously had to stay operational and just functioning throughout the 85 years.

And so there have been a lot of changes.

It was originally a one screen, it had 550 seats or so, and it was a one-screen movie house and it had a stage for live performances.

And eventually, in the early '90s, a wall was built down the middle and it was twinned into two screen.

And then in 2010 to 2012, when it got its 35 millimeter upgrade to digital projectors, it got a third screen.

I applaud all the, you know, the history of this building because it's still here, it's still showing movies like it always did.

My wife and I ended up owning this theater.

It's really worked out really well.

Yeah, we're a married couple, we're business partners, now we're movie discussion buddies, you know, like we get to decide all these different things, like what movie to bring in, and talk over the finances.

We've found that each of our strengths are perfectly suited for what it takes to own and operate a small indie theater.

She's more the bookkeeper, the math nerd.

- Tim and I have joked that he had to buy a movie theater, or we had to buy a movie theater, in order for him to get me to go to the movies, which is not entirely true.

We've gone to the movies plenty of times 'cause I know it's his favorite thing.

But I'm an introvert and I don't like crowds, and so it's not my favorite thing.

It's pretty perfect for us, you know, it's not perfect, it's really hard and it's really overwhelming, but for us it feels like the perfect fit.

(Rachel laughing) - My wife and I moved back down to Los Angeles, lived in Burbank 'cause I got a job at Warner Brothers.

Even working for Warner Brothers, it was both a dream come true and so tough, you know, like it's that Hollywood churn.

You know, you're a cog in a big machine, you get torn up and kind of spit out the other end.

(popcorn popping) And after five years, in 2015, we decided to move out of LA.

My dad's originally from Minnesota, from Minnetonka, but now that both my parents are retired, they spend half the year out here in northern Minnesota.

They floated this idea to my parents, "Anybody know anybody who might want to buy the theater eventually?"

and that message got to us.

Do you guys want to move to Minnesota and own the Park Theater.

- We are in a very tourist-driven area.

So in the summer it's really, really busy.

Tourists come from all over.

That's when we make a lot of our money that is sustaining us for the year.

During the slow season, it can be a lot more difficult.

Another challenge is, and something that we didn't realize when we bought the theater, is how much money the studios take (ticket whirring) from our ticket sales.

So when I was doing our year-end numbers, I think about a quarter of our gross income went back to the studios.

- We hope to do some more remodel, renovation, write those grants and raise that money to keep the Park Theater beautiful, and also maybe peel back the layers and look at the Art Deco bones that it originally had in the late '30s.

- [Vendor] Make sure people get the corn, not the kernels.

- Yeah, well, we all streamed like crazy and stayed indoors during the pandemic, and that's still an option.

I stream at home.

It's just, yeah, I think people are still coming out because they wanna leave their living room and you want a different experience.

It's a good size theater for this town and this area.

There are big multiplexes further away, but if you're in town, you wanna see a good movie, it's been working for the Park Theater for about 85 years.

And so somehow it's, we're just wanna keep it working.

And the trick there is, yeah, balancing the, that art and commerce.

- Love this place.

(ticket seller laughing) - It's been wonderful.

Tim and I have lived a number of different places, and we've loved all of them for different reasons.

This place feels like home.

It feels kind of magical.

It's bigger than ourselves.

I think part of what's magical about it is it's a dream that we didn't know was a dream.

(piano flourish music) - [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.