Grass Valley Theaters and Nevada Theatre
Theater owners 'Getz' great movies for our area
Define "Getz." Does it mean to own all nine movie screens in Grass Valley? Or does it mean setting up shop every Sunday for decades in a landmark Nevada City theater to assure a special kind of 10th screen? Maybe it means having to show every film that the major movie distributors make you show. Then again, maybe it means showing whatever film suits your movie-loving fancy one night a week.
"Getz" does not appear in the dictionary. If it did, you'd also read that Mike and Barbara Getz actively work to raise movie-going a notch or two in western Nevada County. It varies, but typically, seven or eight of the nine Del Oro, Sierra, and Sutton screens are filled the way powerhouse names like Warner Brothers and Universal, Fox, Paramount, and Sony want them filled. Newer powerhouses with names like Miramax, DreamWorks and New Line may be classier, but essentially the major distributors hold all the cards, and it's not just because Grass Valley, Nevada City and the surrounding population are small marketing potatoes.
For the one or two slots left to them, "Getz" means constantly exercising their long-standing relationship with the distributors, especially the subsidiaries with names like Sony Classics or Paramount Classics or Fox Searchlight. Mike Getz remembers with satisfaction pushing successfully, ahead of the curve, for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000). In addition to being nominated for several Academy Awards and winning for Best Foreign Language Film, this picture launched a small whirlwind of martial arts films with knock-off stylistics.
Sometimes there's a slot available for independently distributed films. Mike Getz remembers the coup of acquiring "Memento," which became the biggest independent film of 2001 after the major distributors passed on it. "Memento" is brilliant story-centric filmmaking, although it's not difficult to understand why the majors didn't have a clue about this uniquely braided mystery.
Last year's "What the #$*! Do We Know!?" did well locally because Getz got it. You can't get further from "big, big, big" and "formula, formula, formula" than this sorta-science piece with a new wave cinematic do.
The best example of Getzing is "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill," which is running at the Del Oro. It is different movie fare and not only because it's a documentary. What makes this grand little story about a man and a flock of birds in San Francisco so special is its disarmingly strong thread of positive spirit. This film extends the definition of Getz a little further, since Mike Getz actually helped the filmmaker find an independent national distributor.
Usually, the movie-chasing activism filters through the Nevada Theatre film series. Since this means only one showing of a film (occasionally three times, when the Nevada Theatre is not booked with live theater commitments), there's little chance to acquire a film until a couple of months of distribution have gone by. Sometimes a film just can't help but jump into the local mainstream after it makes a splash at the Nevada Theatre.
If assuring freshness and independent spirit in your movie-going repertoire means something to you, you'd do fine diving one Sunday evening a month into the Nevada Theatre film series. If you swim in the mainstream, as most folks usually do, you may roll your eyes at the choices sometimes. But with all there is to do around here, and given the modest population count, the choice is substantial.
You can't always Getz what you want. But if you try, sometimes you just might find you Getz what you need.
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