Two years of free flicks and fundraising
By Aubrey Ann Parker
Current Contributor
For more than two years now, The Betsie Current newspaper has been co-sponsoring a Monthly Movie Club at The Garden Theater, along with our friend Cory Bissell from Kilwins of Frankfort.
Additionally, a little over a year ago, we started a second monthly club, this one called Garden Classic Movies, based on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) channel on cable television from when we were growing up.
The basic idea is this: each month, we play a movie from the 1980s through the early 2010s for our Monthly Movie Club; we call those “throw-back” movies. We also play a movie from the 1930s to the 1970s; we call those “classic” movies.
It all started kind of by accident, when in the fall of 2023, I watched Practical Magic (1998, PG-13) without my best friend, Cory Bissell, though I had promised to make a movie date with him, but I just could not wait. Or did not want to, at least.
And understandably, Cory got a little upset.
So we were sitting around joking about how I was going to have to watch it again with him—“Oh darn,” in my most sarcastic voice, “having to watch it twice in one season!”—and Cory said something like, “So many people love this movie, we should just get The Garden Theater to show it.”
“Uh, yeah, we should,” I responded, very seriously.
So we reached out to Katie Jones, executive director of the theater, and she was on board with the idea as a free community event.
But we had no idea what we were in for. We had no idea—though perhaps we should have—that this movie resonated with so many other people as strongly as it did with us.
We had hoped that maybe 25 to 50 of our friends and family would come.
Instead, 125 people—about 90 percent of whom were dressed up as witches—showed up on a random Thursday night before Halloween 2023 for a witch-themed party and a 25-year-old movie, all because we had asked the movie theater director, half as a joke.
It is so great living in a small town, right? It is truly amazing.
So this got us thinking: What if we did something like this more often?
So, in January 2024, to kick off the new year, we showed Grumpy Old Men, which is from 1993, and we had about 75 people show up, even though it was a snowy night. Then in February, for Valentine’s Day, we showed Casablanca, which is from 1942, and we had our biggest crowd yet of 135 people. In March, we showed The Big Lebowski, which is from 1998, and we had 105 people show up.
Each time, there was a dress-up theme encouraged: “dress as your grumpiest older self” in January, “dress in your sweetest Valentine’s outfit” for February, and “dress in your best Lebowski fit” for March. (I have always said that there are just not enough “dress-up” parties in post-college adulthood, and the number of people who have participated has been extraordinary.)
After we had completed our first year of the Monthly Movie Club, we had enough people requesting what we considered to be “classic” movies that we added the Garden Classic Movie nights, too.
Over the past two years, we have had hundreds of community members show up—many in costumes—to enjoy a movie they have perhaps seen hundreds of times.
Not only that, but we have raised more than $7,000 for local organizations.
Yes, like I mentioned earlier, the movies are technically free to the public, because we want anyone and everyone to be able to attend; much like how our newspaper is technically free, but we take donations.
But we also really liked the idea of pairing each movie with a local group and raising funds, just for whomever wanted to/could donate.
The plan is to continue Monthly Movie Club for as long as people keep showing up.
And they are showing up.
Kate Jones of the theater tells us that, often, there are more people showing up for these once-a-month events than show up for the first-run new movies being shown at The Garden. Pretty amazing.
Ready for some nostalgia? Come join us.
Somehow, a throwback film that you have seen so many times before just hits differently on a big screen, while surrounded by others—all laughing when you laugh, all crying when you cry—with the smell of fresh popcorn hanging in the air.
There truly is something “magical” about seeing a favorite film among a community who love it just as much as you do. (Or who are sometimes experiencing it for the first time, as was the case for me and The Big Lebowski last year; I had friends afterward say that they enjoyed seeing it for the first time again through my eyes.)
Check out The Garden Theater’s website for the upcoming movie showings: Monthly Movie Club and Garden Classic Movies.
Read more about how the movie clubs came to be in our archives from 2025.
Featured Photo Caption: On Thursday, April 11, 2024, to mark the coming of baseball season–both locally and nationally–fans of America’s pastime descended upon The Garden Theater in Frankfort. They all had one thing in common–a love of good cinema and community. Plenty of treats were had by one and all. More than $316 were raised to assist the Frankfort-Elberta Youth Sports Boosters in their mission, with $300 going toward sponsoring a local girls softball team. And, of course, we all laughed and cried our way through the 1992 cult classic “A League of Their Own.” The Betsie Current’s Aubrey Ann Parker (left) and Kilwins Frankfort’s Cory Bissell (right) are organizers and co-sponsors of the Monthly Movie Club at The Garden Theater. Photo courtesy of The Betsie Current.
