Taking a Break this Season

Movie Club Members (past and present),

I’m writing you to let you know that the Movie Club will be taking a break this season (2010-2011). During the 2010 season we found that attendance was noticeably dwindling, and, for the first time, we were no longer covering our exhibition costs.

As a non-theatrical venue doing licensed exhibition, our choice of mainstream artistic films has been limited to a small subset of those already available on DVD. Our distributors also restrict the types of advertising that we may do. Operating within these limits, it is hard to imagine what we could do differently to ensure that we cover our expenses in the future.

With this in view, our board has voted to donate the balance of the Ouray Movie Club’s checking account and our capital items (movie screen and popcorn machine) to The Friends of the Wright Opera House.

It is our hope that the Movie Club finds a new home in future years under the auspices of “the Friends of the Wright.” If you would like to make sure that the tradition of the Movie Club continues in Ouray, I urge you to step up and make a donation to Friends of the Wright, if you haven’t already done so. (www.savethewright.org)

Once the Friends have acquired the Wright, I will gladly provide guidance to them with regard to screening movies in the future. If you would like to help with a future movie club at the Opera House, please drop me a line by email and I will create a list of interested volunteers to provide to the Friends.

Thanks to all of you who have supported us over the years and to Dan King and Sandra Boles who helped get the Movie Club off of the ground many years ago. Also thanks to everyone who volunteered their time operating popcorn machines, selling tickets, sweeping up, helping us assemble or disassemble the screen, etc. Special thanks to the following volunteers (in no particular order): Myrna Spaulding, Sandra Boles, , Kathleen Norris Cook, Carla Deger, June Kirchner, Suzie Jones, and John Draper. Forgive me if I’ve overlooked anyone.

In the meantime, I will be maintaining the official Movie Club websites:

ourayfilm.com
Find us on Facebook

Please feel free to use these sites, especially the Facebook site, to continue to keep up on regional movie screenings, provide reviews of movies you’ve just seen, etc.