Film Church
On reverence and the movie theater
By Jodeen Revere
8/19/24
“Mom,” I say to my dying mother. “I’m going to a movie. I’ll be back by 10:00.”
“Have fun dear,” she says. “Tell me all about it when you get back.”
This has long been a part of my mother and I’s relationship, way before she was ill. She loves film and educational television shows and we are always recounting what we have watched. I see lots of films that she might not be drawn to, but she wishes to hear about them nevertheless. She doesn’t want to actually watch Holy Motors, but she most definitely wants to hear my recap. I don’t really want to watch the History Channel’s segment on Hannibal (not Lector) and his elephants, but I love hearing her blow my mind with her ability to retain dense amounts of information about history. I do not have that software.
I walk to the old Greyhound bus station in downtown Boise (now the headquarters of Idaho Film Society) that houses a cozy 50 seat movie theater. I’ve been frequenting the Station for months. It is very hard for me to stay away for longer than a few days. Its pull on me is real.
The sign on the roof says “Somehow... Heartbreak Feels Good in a Place Like This...”.
The original mottled gray art deco ticket counter with a pair of lean leaping greyhound silhouettes etched into the front panel, is now the concession stand. $2 popcorn is served up in old school red and white striped paper bags. The proper amount of delicious unbuttered popcorn: exactly two cups. A box of Jr. Mints that fit in the palm of your hand, instead of some 64 oz diabetes inducing brick of candy. Every detail about the Bus Station is to the correct scale. Human sized, not MEGA sensory overload.
The first three months they were soft opening. Films were free and played 5 nights a week and twice on Saturday and Sunday. Each film, one show only. A sense of urgency and purpose. If you want to see this, this is when it is showing. A restructuring from watching anything at all anytime you want in a coma on your couch, therefore, paralyzed with choice and choosing nothing.
Besides, films were only ever meant to be seen in a theater on a big screen. Full stop.
Original creamy beige/gray/black speckled linoleum floors, a variety of mid-century modern lamps cast sexy indirect mood lighting, mismatched vintage furniture and potted plants arranged invitingly around the spacious lobby. The floor to ceiling front windows painted a milky white layered with murals of 1950’s travelers boarding stainless steel buses to far off destinations. The opacity allows light in yet separates the outside “real” world from the inside “pretend” world. It feels like a portal.
1970’s Japanese Jazz/Funk softly fills the echoey space.
Photo by Benjamin Huynh (@benjaminjhuynh)
A timeless weigh station for travelers craving new experiences and adventures.
The primary patrons at the bus station are young and sincere. I have talked to several people who started arriving early on because it was a novel free activity. Now, they are genuinely curious about films that are not part of a franchise, or a remake or a cartoon come to life. One guy said he was never really much of a movie person at all, but after a couple of weeks of watching a different film every night, he said he felt that he had lived one hundred life times and how valuable that is, to see the world through different lenses.
I have seen films as recent as from the last year, old classics, cult films, arthouse films, foreign films, campy trash and obscure horror.
There are no trailers, or commercials, or pleading St. Jude ads or cringing through The Twenty With Maria Menounos! (who the fuck is Maria Menounos anyway?) or idiotic million dollar ad campaigns with talking M&M’s. Generally soundtrack music plays pre show. You are left with your own thoughts, to gather yourself up for the watching of the film.
You do not need to be entertained while you are waiting to be entertained.
Reclaim the time to daydream, to anticipate, to do nothing but sit with yourself.
When it is go time, the curator for the evening, stands awkwardly in a pool of light against the blank screen, thanks everyone for being there, explains that IFS is a place for filmmakers and film lovers to meet up and enjoy the art form they love the most, and shares why they chose this particular film. Applause and whistling. Lights go down, film goes up.
Then, the miraculous part. A palpable reverence settles like a cloak on the audience. We exhale as one, turning our attention to the story. “Once upon a time...”
Silence. No phones going off. No screens lit up. No one is talking to their neighbor, no running commentary, no loud whispering of “Who is that? What is happening? I don’t understand” no crinkling of candy wrappers, no squeak of plastic straws against plastic lids on waxed cups. No one is eating a full meal balanced on their knees loudly chewing.
If you want to eat, stay home. There is only breath and undivided attention.
Rapturous tears sting my eyes.
May this golden silence in the screenings at The Station reign supreme, so mote it be.
I am here this evening to see a Japanese film called After Life. It is about a weigh station where the recently deceased go. They are tasked with choosing one memory to take with them into eternity. When the memory has been chosen, a creative team goes into pre production before a film crew shoots a reenactment of this memory. Once the “movie memory” has been witnessed, the person and their lone memory are released into the cosmos to live out this narrative loop for all time.
Credits roll. Cue applause and whistling.
As I leave the screening room, I stop at the in house bar that is tucked into the corner where the phone booths used to be. I sit in actual, not battery powered candlelight, sipping a Ghia, sharing my thoughts with my bartender friend Joe. I am an actor and a writer and have always loved stories through film, theater and books. How important the attention and the silence during the experience is to me. It is a holy communion to sit in a movie theater, or watch live theater, in concert with other people. Only the sounds of a laugh, a gasp, a sniffle from tears. How there is something extra about coming to the Station. It doesn’t take me out of my life, or away from my dying mother, but brings me closer to the truth of that experience. Closer to the truth of all of my experiences, because I sort through my life by being witness to the lives of others.
Joe smiles and tells me that the space in the bus station where the theater is located used to be the bus station chapel.
Of course it was.
I finish my drink, hug my friend and push through the heavy doors and back into the outside world. Fortified. Peaceful. Thoughtful.
Walking through the dark hot night, I pick up my pace as I set course for my moms house and her reality. Our reality.
To discuss her memories. Our memories. I can’t wait to share this film with her.
“Tell me everything,” she’ll say. Her dimming eyes still shine as she waits to hear how the story ends.
Photo by Lila Streicher (@lilarays)
Jodeen Revere is a lifetime Idahoan, actor, writer, Thai massage therapist and yoga teacher. She has worked extensively with Boise Contemporary Theater, Migration Theory and Alley Rep. She also does commercial work, voice over and appears in local independent films. Her solo show “The Persistent Guest” the story of her trifecta of cancer diagnosis, had its world premiere at BCT in October 2022, opening the season. Jodeen has also received the Alexa Rose Light of Day grant to tour The Persistent Guest in various cities around the United States over the next year. She has done readings at Ming Studios, Campfire Stories, The Spot in Ketchum, a holiday reading at The Mode in December of 2023 and is a two-time story teller at Story Story Night. She loves books and film and theater and dance and all things story.