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digital sound and quality, the community of Madison
takes pride in their local movie theater,
the Grand.
[music] Well I got involved in the Grand
about 20 years ago when Rick Gail,
who's the local newspaper editor came up to me and
said that he and I ought to get together and reopen
the theater which had been closed for a couple of
years.
So the city actually owned it then and the city
actually owns it now.
So Rick Gail and I formed a partnership and reopened
the theatre running it four nights
a week as we do now.
And Rick dropped out a couple of years into the
partnership after we got it going and my partner
now is Kristy Kuechenmeister is also the
office manager over at the radio station has been
with us there for 29 years so Kristy and I are the
operators of the theatre.
No we really don't make any money with the Grand
Theater.
We do it as a, as a public service.
It's kind of fun just to have something to get
people in and see some cars on,
on main street.
I guess one thing that intrigued me about the
whole thing, I kind of like the mechanical side
of the whole thing so the projectors and playing
with all the toys in the theatre was kind of
fascinating and now that we've entered into the
digital age where we have the computers,
I'm looking at computers all day at the radio
station so now we look at the computers all night
when we come over here to the Grand Theater so it's
just kind of, kind of fun little challenge to keep
it all going.
The Grand Theater opened in the early 1900s and ran
as a single screen theatre for a lot of years.
About 1939 I believe it was the film caught on
fire and the theatre burned down to the ground
and the projectionist at the time was killed in
that accident but no one else was injured.
And then in about 1941 or 1942 The Grand was built
again and operated as a single screen theatre til
probably sometime in the, in the 80s when another
screen was added and it is what it is today.
A lot of the architecture here at the Grand is from
art deco period back in the 40s and into the 50s.
Got a lot of wings and circles and kind of
geometric circles and designs and things like
that.
We try to maintain a lot of that when we did a lot
of the restructuring or rebuilding of the theatre
when the heating was added and this kind of thing.
We tried to leave a lot of the older décor in the
theater so that it would maintain the décor and a
lot of memories for people of all the,
the decorations we have on the wall.
To get the theatre into the digital age,
we started checking around to some of the companies
that do the digital conversions and getting
some price quotes and we just started raising
money, contacting people, sending letters out,
doing articles in the local paper and elsewhere
about what we were doing and we started raising
money.
I think our biggest donor of the whole project was a
$5,000 donation that came in from a former Madison
resident who now lives in California.
But most of it was done with a thousand dollar,
five hundred or a hundred dollar donations so it was
an awful lot of donations that came in to raise the,
the, it was about 106,000 we raised there and the
rest of the money coming from some city reserves,
therefore the theater.
We took about three days to do the whole
installation to remove the old equipment to get
everything new installed so it was three solid days
and we were back in business by the first
matinee we showed on a Friday afternoon.
Some of the changes we made,
we put in new screens in both theaters,
put in new masking around the screens,
did a little painting, new projection equipment,
surround sound speakers which we didn't have
before.
Before it was just an old speaker sitting behind,
one speaker sitting behind the stage and now there
are three cabinets behind each,
each screen and surround sound speakers around the
walls and several hundred watts of power and it's
like being right in the middle of it now with all
of that and the picture is nice and crystal clear
with the digital presentation.
[music]
People that come here from larger cities
are surprised how low the prices are for price of
admission.
The average price in the country I think is 12 to
15 dollars right now and we're still averaging
around five dollars here at the Grand and the
popcorn's good and it's a lot cheaper than other
places too.
[music]
I think The Grand is unique in that it's
really supported by the community.
There are a lot of small town theatres that closed
many years ago and the Grand has always had great
community support and it's just kind of a gathering
place for the community, something for the kids to do.
[music]
Some of the people that have donated money
for it probably haven't ever set,
set foot in it but they see the importance of
having a movie theatre in their community as
something that other communities don't have.
I remember coming here with my folks in the 50s.
We'd come and watch Three Stooges,
and Ma Pa Kettle, and a lot of Westerns,
really enjoyed them.
We moved to Madison when I was five and I've been
going here ever since.
I like coming to the Grand Theatre because I get
candy and slushies and I get to see movies.
It's local.
It's locally run locally so we don't have to drive
a hundred miles to see a nice movie and have fun
and, very reasonable.
It's not very far and it's very convenient just to go
with my friends whenever we feel like it like a Friday night.
See a movie at the Grand Theater in Madison,
MN, showing Friday, September 13th through
Monday, September 16th in theater one its Disney's
"Planes" rated PG.
Animated kid's comedy, that's "Planes" PG in
theater one.
And in theater two, Matt Damon and Jodie Foster
star in the science fiction fantasy,
"Elysium."
That's "Elysium" rated R in theater two.
Show times seven and nine Friday and Saturday,
once nightly at seven and Sunday and Monday at the Grand.