This is a story about a small independent movie theater in Muncie, Indiana, a specific ninety-second short film that has been shown before every single feature the theater has screened since October of 2003, the specific projectionist who has been running that short film for the past twenty-two years, and the specific arrangement that the theater’s staff has — quietly, without ever discussing it in a staff meeting — sustained around her.
The theater — which I will not name, at the request of its current owner — sits on a small side street in downtown Muncie. It has one screen. It seats approximately two hundred and forty people. It was built in 1928 as a vaudeville house, converted to a movie theater in 1946, and has been in continuous operation as a movie theater ever since. It shows, in the specific mix of a small independent theater in a mid-sized Midwestern city, a rotating selection of independent films, small-run documentaries, foreign-language pictures, and the occasional second-run mainstream release.
The theater’s projectionist — I will call her Estelle, because she chose the name, and because when I asked why, she said, “It sounds like the name of a person who has been doing a specific job for a very long time and does not, at this point, need to explain herself to anyone, which is what I am,” which I found sufficient — is fifty-seven. She has been at the theater for thirty-one years. She has been the theater’s sole projectionist for twenty-six of those years.
She has, over the past twenty-two years, before every one of the approximately four thousand seven hundred features the theater has screened, run the same specific ninety-second short film.
She has never, in twenty-two years, told anyone why.
The short film
I want to describe the short film carefully, because it is the specific thing this story is about.
The short film is, in the specific way of short films from that era, on 35mm celluloid. It runs approximately ninety seconds. It contains no dialogue. It contains, in the specific way of certain kinds of short-form filmmaking, no titles or credits — no indication of who made it, when it was made, or what it is called.
The film shows the following.
It shows a small girl, approximately six years old, standing on a beach. The beach is not identified. The girl is not identified. She is wearing a specific yellow sundress and is barefoot. The camera, which is stationary, is positioned approximately fifteen feet from her at a slight low angle.
The girl looks at the camera for approximately eight seconds. She does not smile. She does not frown. She looks at the camera with a specific quiet direct attention that is, in Estelle’s careful description to me, “the specific attention that a small child pays to something she is trying to understand.”
The girl then, without any prompting visible in the frame, begins to build a small sand structure in front of her. She uses her hands. She does not use a bucket or a shovel. She works, in the specific patient way of small children building small things they care about, for approximately seventy seconds.
The structure she builds is, in Estelle’s description, “small and specific. It is not a sandcastle in the ordinary sense. It is a specific shape that I have, in twenty-two years of watching this film approximately five thousand times, come to believe is a small model of a specific building I have not been able to identify.”
At approximately the seventy-eight-second mark of the film, the girl finishes the structure.
She stands up. She looks at the camera again. She smiles — briefly, in the specific way of a small child who has finished a specific piece of work and would like the specific person watching to know she has finished it. Her smile lasts approximately three seconds.
The film then cuts to black.
At approximately the ninety-first second, the film ends.
There is no music at any point in the film. There is no sound of any kind. The specific ninety seconds run in complete silence.
The film has been shown, over twenty-two years, before approximately four thousand seven hundred features. It has been seen, by Estelle’s careful estimate — based on the specific ticket sales records the theater has kept — by approximately forty-seven thousand paying moviegoers.
Nobody, in twenty-two years, has ever asked the theater what the film is.
Everybody, in twenty-two years, has been shown it.
The origin
I asked Estelle, in the course of three phone conversations, whether she would tell me the origin of the film.
She has told me, in each of the three conversations, that she would tell me some of it. She has told me that she would not, in the strict sense, tell me all of it. She has told me that there are specific parts of the origin that she has decided, over twenty-two years, are the specific parts she would like to keep to herself.
I have decided to respect this. I want to describe only the specific parts of the origin she agreed to share.
The specific parts she agreed to share are the following.
Estelle came into possession of the film in July of 2003. She has told me the film had, at that point, been in her possession for approximately six weeks by the time she made the decision to start showing it. She has told me the specific decision to show it was made in the projection booth of the theater on a specific Tuesday evening in October of 2003, approximately fifteen minutes before the start of the theater’s regularly scheduled 7:30 p.m. showing.
She has told me she made the decision, in her own account, without discussion with anyone else. She has told me she loaded the film into the specific short-film reel that the theater used at the time — which was, in 2003, a common practice at small theaters that would sometimes run local advertisements or public service announcements before features — and she showed it before the 7:30 p.m. film.
She has told me that at the end of the 7:30 p.m. showing that evening, exactly one person out of the approximately one hundred and forty people in the audience asked, on their way out, what the short film had been.
That person, in Estelle’s account, was the theater’s owner at the time — a man in his late fifties named Wilfred, who had owned the theater for approximately eighteen years and who had been Estelle’s employer for the entirety of Estelle’s tenure up to that point.
Wilfred had, according to Estelle, approached her at the concessions counter as the theater was emptying out.
He had said, in Estelle’s account: “Estelle. What was that.”
Estelle had said, in her own account: “It was a short film.”
Wilfred had said: “Yes. What was it.”
Estelle had said: “It is a specific short film I have decided to run before every showing at this theater going forward.”
Wilfred, according to Estelle, considered this for approximately fourteen seconds.
He had then said, in Estelle’s account: “Okay. That is fine.”
He had then walked into his small office off the side of the lobby.
He had not, in Estelle’s account, ever asked her about the short film again.
The eight years with Wilfred
I want to describe the eight years between October of 2003 and Wilfred’s death in March of 2011, because those eight years established the specific pattern that has, over the past twenty-two years, been sustained.
During those eight years, Estelle ran the specific ninety-second short film before every one of the approximately one thousand seven hundred features the theater screened. Wilfred did not, in any of those eight years, ask her about the film again. He did not ask her what it was. He did not ask her where it came from. He did not ask her why she was running it. He did not, in the specific way of a small-theater owner who could have made a specific set of small managerial decisions about what was shown at his own theater, ever tell her to stop.
He simply, in Estelle’s account, let it continue.
I asked Estelle, in our second phone conversation, whether she believes Wilfred understood, in any way, what the specific film was.
She has told me she is not sure.
She has told me: “Wilfred was, in my thirty-one years of knowing him, a specific kind of theater owner who did not, in the strict sense, need to know everything that was happening at his theater. He needed to know that the projectionist was doing her job. He needed to know that the concessions counter was making money. He needed to know that the specific mix of films the theater was showing was, in the ordinary way of small-theater programming, keeping the theater in business.”
She has told me: “He did not, in the strict sense, need to know what the specific short film was. He needed to know that I had decided to show it, and that I had decided to keep showing it, and that whatever the reason for my decision was, it was the specific kind of decision he was willing to let me make.”
She has told me: “I believe he understood that I would tell him about the short film if I ever needed to. I believe he understood that until that specific moment came, he did not need to know. I believe he decided, in the specific quiet way of a certain kind of employer, to trust me.”
She has told me: “I have thought about this, in the years since he died, a great deal.”
She has told me: “I have decided that Wilfred was, in the specific quiet way that has since made this whole arrangement possible, one of the specific people I have been most grateful to in my professional life.”
The transition
Wilfred died, in Estelle’s account, in the second week of March in 2011.
The theater passed, in his will, to his adult daughter — I will call her Ruth, because Estelle has asked me to use that name for her — who had, at the time of her father’s death, been living in Indianapolis and working as a marketing consultant.
Ruth was, at the time she inherited the theater, forty-two years old. She had, in Estelle’s account, spent the summers of her childhood in the theater’s projection booth watching her father work. She had, in Estelle’s account, always known she might one day inherit the theater. She had, in Estelle’s account, decided approximately three weeks after her father’s death that she would move back to Muncie and take over the theater’s operations rather than sell it.
She has, at the time of this writing, been the theater’s owner for fourteen years.
I asked Estelle, in our second phone conversation, how the specific arrangement around the short film had been handled during the transition.
She has told me the arrangement, in its own quiet way, transitioned smoothly.
She has told me that in the first week Ruth was formally the theater’s owner — approximately six weeks after Wilfred’s death — Ruth came into the projection booth during a specific quiet Wednesday afternoon showing to talk with Estelle.
Ruth had, according to Estelle, sat down on the small stool that Estelle keeps in the corner of the projection booth. She had said, in Estelle’s account: “Estelle. I want to ask you about the short film.”
Estelle has told me she had, in her own account, expected this question. She had expected it because she believed Ruth would, in the specific way of a new owner inheriting a specific ongoing arrangement, need to understand what the arrangement was.
She has told me she had prepared, over the previous six weeks, a specific version of an answer.
The version, in her account, was the following.
She had said, in her own account: “Ruth. I have been running that specific short film before every feature at this theater for approximately seven and a half years. Your father knew I was doing it. Your father decided to let me continue doing it. I have not, in the seven and a half years, discussed with your father why I am doing it. I do not, in the strict sense, wish to discuss it with you either. I would like — if you are willing — to continue the specific practice under your ownership.”
She had said: “I am telling you this because I would like you to have the specific option, at this point in your ownership of the theater, to decide whether or not the practice should continue. I would understand, in the specific way of a new owner making specific new decisions, if you decided to end it. I would not, in that case, hold it against you. I would like you to know only that if the practice does end, I will be the person who is most affected by the ending of it, and that I have — over seven and a half years — come to depend on the specific act of showing the film in a way I would find difficult to describe.”
She had said: “I would like you to decide.”
Ruth, according to Estelle, considered this for approximately two minutes.
She had then said, in Estelle’s account: “Estelle. I have watched the specific short film approximately forty times over the years that I have visited the theater since 2003. I have never, in those forty times, asked you or my father what it was. I did not ask you because I understood, in some quiet way, that it was your specific film. It was not, in the strict sense, part of the theater’s programming. It was part of the specific relationship between you and the theater. I have decided, in the years since I first saw it, that whatever the specific short film is, it is your business and not mine.”
She had said: “I would like you to keep showing it.”
She had said: “I will not, at any point in my ownership of this theater, ask you to stop. If you ever want to tell me what it is, I will be here to listen. If you never want to tell me, I will never ask.”
She had then, according to Estelle, gotten up from the stool. She had, according to Estelle, put her hand briefly on Estelle’s shoulder. She had then, according to Estelle, walked out of the projection booth.
Estelle has told me she has, in the fourteen years since, run the film before every single one of the theater’s features.
Ruth has, in the fourteen years since, never asked her about it again.
The other employees
I asked Estelle, in our final conversation, what the other employees of the theater think about the specific short film.
She has told me the theater has, in the twenty-two years since the practice began, employed approximately thirty different people in various part-time capacities — concessions staff, ticket takers, cleaners, and the specific rotating group of ushers that a small theater in a small city cycles through over decades.
She has told me that in the twenty-two years, exactly nine of those employees have asked her, at some point during their tenure, about the specific short film.
She has told me she has, in each of the nine cases, given the same specific answer.
The answer, in her own careful phrasing, is: “It is a specific short film I have decided to run before every showing at this theater. I have been running it since 2003. Wilfred, who owned the theater before Ruth, decided to let me continue running it. Ruth, when she took over, decided to continue the practice. I would prefer not to tell you what the film is, or where it came from, or why I am running it. I understand if this answer feels unsatisfying to you. I understand if it feels strange. I have decided, in twenty-two years, that this is the specific answer I am willing to give.”
She has told me that in each of the nine cases, the employee — after receiving the answer — has, over the following weeks or months, come to accept the specific arrangement. She has told me that in every one of the nine cases, the employee has, at some point, said something to her that has, in her own careful accounting, “communicated to me that they had, in some quiet way, decided to be one of the specific people at the theater who understood that the practice was to continue without further discussion.”
She has told me she has, over twenty-two years, come to think of the theater’s staff — past and present — as, in her own phrasing, “a specific ongoing group of people who have quietly agreed to let me continue doing what I am doing.”
She has told me: “I do not, in the strict sense, deserve this. I have not, in the twenty-two years, done anything to earn it. I have only, in the twenty-two years, kept doing the specific thing I decided to do in October of 2003. The staff of this theater has, over twenty-two years, quietly decided to let me keep doing it. This is, in some quiet way I cannot fully articulate, one of the specific gifts of my life.”
What she has, over twenty-two years, come to understand
I asked Estelle, in our final conversation, what she has, over twenty-two years, come to understand about the specific practice.
She has told me she has, over twenty-two years, come to understand several things.
She has told me: “I have come to understand that the specific act of showing this film, before every one of the approximately four thousand seven hundred features this theater has screened, is not, in the strict sense, a public act. It is a private act that is happening in a public place. The people who watch the film do not, in most cases, know that they are watching a private act. They are, in the specific way of most moviegoers who arrive slightly before a showing starts, watching what appears to them to be a specific piece of theater programming. They are, in the strict sense, correct — I am the projectionist, and I have decided to include this specific film in the pre-feature programming.”
She has told me: “But I have come to understand that the specific act, for me, has been — over twenty-two years — the specific ongoing private act of paying attention to something specific in a public space. I have been, in the specific silence of the ninety seconds before every one of four thousand seven hundred features, quietly present with a specific memory that is, in the strict sense, my own.”
She has told me: “I have come to understand that the specific fact of the audience being present — the specific fact of forty-seven thousand people over twenty-two years having watched the film without knowing what it is — has not diminished the private nature of the act. It has, in some quiet way I did not initially expect, made the private nature of the act specifically sustainable.”
She has told me: “If I had, at any point in the twenty-two years, been watching the film alone in the projection booth — with the theater dark and empty — I do not think I would have been able to continue watching it. I do not think I would have been able to sit with the specific memory in the specific way I have been able to sit with it. The specific fact of doing it in public — the specific fact of doing it before an audience that does not know what they are watching — has, in some quiet way, allowed me to continue doing it.”
She has told me: “The audience has been, over twenty-two years, the specific reason I have been able to sit with the specific film. They have not, in the strict sense, been an audience for me. They have been an audience for the film. But their specific presence, in the theater, during the specific ninety seconds, has been what has made it possible for me to continue watching the film.”
She has told me: “I have come to understand, over twenty-two years, that this is a specific and unusual thing. I have come to understand that most people do not, in the specific way of the modern moment, have a public space in which they can quietly sit with a specific private memory for ninety seconds a day, twelve days a week, for twenty-two years. I have come to understand that I do.”
She has told me: “This is, at fifty-seven, the specific thing I would like to keep doing for the specific remainder of my time working at this theater.”
What she plans to do
I asked Estelle, in our final conversation, what she plans to do going forward.
She has told me she plans to continue showing the film.
She has told me she has, in the past year, occasionally thought about what will happen when she eventually retires. She has told me she has, in her own account, “considered whether the specific arrangement should continue after I am no longer the projectionist at this theater.”
She has told me she has, so far, decided that it should not.
She has told me: “The specific arrangement is, in the specific sense I have come to understand, mine. It is not the theater’s. It is not Ruth’s. It is not the staff’s. It is not the audience’s. The specific fact that all of them have, over twenty-two years, quietly allowed the specific arrangement to continue is, in some way, a specific act of care they have collectively extended to me. But the arrangement itself belongs to me.”
She has told me: “When I retire, I plan to end the specific practice. I plan, on my last day at the theater, to run the film for the specific final time. I plan to run it before the theater’s specific last feature of my last day. I plan to then, in the projection booth, take the specific short film out of the projector and put it in the specific small metal canister I have kept it in for twenty-two years. I plan to take the canister home. I plan to place it in a specific drawer in my house. I plan to never, in the specific remainder of my life, run the film again.”
She has told me: “I plan to tell no one — not Ruth, not the staff, not the specific audience of the specific last feature — that I have shown the film for the last time. The specific practice will end, in the specific way it began, without ceremony.”
She has told me: “I have decided, over twenty-two years, that this is the specific way the practice should end. It began quietly. It has been sustained quietly. It should end quietly.”
She has told me: “I do not know, at this stage, when I will retire. I am fifty-seven. I plan to work as long as I am able to. I expect, in the specific way of small-theater projectionists in the mid-twenty-first century, to work perhaps eight to ten more years.”
She has told me: “I plan to show the film, before every feature, for the specific remainder of that time.”
She has told me: “I would prefer not to be asked, at any point in the specific remainder of that time, why I am showing it.”
She has told me: “I have decided that the specific quality of not having to explain has been, over twenty-two years, one of the specific gifts of the arrangement. I would like the specific quality to continue.”
What this is
I have, in the weeks since I first heard about the specific short film, thought about the specific ways that certain small public spaces — the small independent theater, the small municipal water plant, the small-town library — can, over time, become the specific settings in which specific private acts of care can be quietly sustained by specific individuals in ways that would not, in any private setting, be sustainable. Estelle’s arrangement is, in the strict sense, private. The specific memory she is quietly attending to, in the specific ninety seconds before every feature, is her own. But the specific setting in which she is able to attend to that memory — the small dark theater, the specific audience she cannot see, the specific ongoing quiet permission of a series of theater owners and staff members who have, over twenty-two years, agreed without discussion not to interrupt her — is a specific setting that only a public space can provide.
I do not know exactly what to make of this. I think it is, in the specific way of the small quiet arrangements that certain individuals develop between themselves and the specific public settings they work within, extraordinary. I think it is, in the specific way of the arrangements this publication has, over forty-five previous stories, been quietly describing, entirely consistent with the pattern I have come to notice. (For a related earlier piece on the specific quiet arrangements that certain small public spaces develop, over time, without anyone deciding they should, see the Wattalife story about the small-town library in western Massachusetts that has, over nine years, become the unofficial repository for the small material sediment of its community’s ongoing life.)
Estelle told me, at the end of our final conversation, that she had, the previous evening, run the film before the theater’s 7:30 p.m. showing.
She has told me the specific audience that evening was approximately sixty people. She has told me the specific feature was a small independent documentary about a specific American artist that she has told me she had, in her own private capacity, been looking forward to seeing.
She has told me the ninety seconds of the short film had, in the specific way they always run, run in silence. She has told me the specific audience had, in the specific way they always do, watched in silence. She has told me the specific small girl on the specific unnamed beach had, in the specific way she always does, built the specific small structure and then, at the end, smiled briefly at the specific camera.
She has told me she had, in the projection booth, watched along with the audience.
She has told me she does not, and will not, tell me what the small structure the small girl built was a model of.
She has told me she is grateful, in a way she cannot fully articulate, that I have not, in three phone conversations, pressed her to.
She has told me she is grateful, in a way she cannot fully articulate, that the specific audience of forty-seven thousand people over twenty-two years has not, in the specific silence of the ninety seconds, ever pressed her to either.
She has told me: “The specific silence of the audience has been, over twenty-two years, one of the specific gifts of my life.”
—
Margot Hale is the editor of Wattalife. She has, since reporting this story, been considering whether there are specific public settings in her own life in which she has, without meaning to, been quietly attending to specific private things. She has identified two of them. She has decided, in the specific way of a person who has just spoken with Estelle, not to describe them here. She has decided that the specific act of attending to them is enough. She has decided that she does not, in the specific way Estelle has taught her over three phone conversations, need to explain them to anyone.