Rebuilding History: A Conversation with Shane Farmer of the Russell Theater

Twisted Pulp Magazine’s own Mark Slade recently sat down with Shane Farmer, the director of the historical Russell theater, here in Lebanon, VA, a  community movie theater that recently reopened two years ago. Shane is showing me photos of when the theater was first constructed and opened over eighty years ago.

How did you become the director of Recreation and Parks and the Russell theater?

I applied, when the town did the recreation center, they were looking for a recreation director.  My degree from college is in leisure service and recreation. And then I had all that planning, you know, planning at the planning district,  from 23 years, yeah, so I applied to work for the town. 

 I’m the first ever recreation director for the town as well. So and, but they wanted me to continue to write grants for the town. 

I’ve written over, probably since I’ve been with the town, counting the million dollars we got for the downtown revitalization, we’ve probably gotten close to $3 million in grant dollars. 

Wow, that’s a lot of money.

Yeah. And some of it’s gone to this, some of it’s gone to some other stuff, the Pavilion right beside us. We built that to give us a little bit more space here, and sort of to do some things outside and like, we’re going to do some dinners in the shows right there on the pavilion and come in and have a film or a show or whatever. We can turn it into a spirit garden one weekend or something before a show, stuff like that. Yeah, so, and I’ve written grants for that, and we’ve gotten over $65,000 in grants just for the pavilion. So, you know, I’m always writing grants for the town and for all our projects, really, and so I continue to stay on and do that work as well. I’m still writing grants here. Like I just received a $5,000 grant for advertisement. I just applied for another one. Advertising is really hard, it’s really expensive.

I may have an extra copy that I can share with you, from all indications, it seems like the years between 1939 to 1940 range from when the facility was built and opened up. And some of the history behind it is, I mean, it was just, it was one of the first ever movie theaters that had air conditioning in it. 

Oh, wow.

 And one of the ads, I’ve got it here somewhere– in this book, but one of the ads even shows that I was going to show you that, and it’s, this. It’s the first movie that’s shown here. And it says, you know, in the Russell theater with the air conditioner.

I can only imagine how huge those machines were.

It was opened and reopened several times, reopened in 1991 afterwards.

But it looks like, to me, and the stuff that we’ve got, that the first ever movie shown here was Hawaiian Buckaroo.

I’ll have to look that film up.

Which was a Western, and it was, I think they even had a double feature and had a Betty Boop  cartoon with it and stuff like that. So, but yeah, here’s that little ad. It says air conditioned, stay cool at the new Russell theater, and it says big double feature, and that was in 1939.

Oh, wow, yeah.

So it was one of the first of its kind to have, you know, to have air conditioning and stuff like that.

Where was the original area they showed films?

So this used to be the actual film room that you’re sitting in here that’s turned into the office. So, it’s a regional brick on the back wall. I asked them, let’s keep that, because it looks really nice. All that’s original. The marquee was almost identical to what’s out there, just a little bit shorter, but it had the 3-D Russell theater on it. And so when we built the marquee, we wanted it to have the 3-D Russell on it as well,the sign from other openings was just a flat glass.

 We wanted to go back to more of a historical look and what it originally looked like. And that’s what we did for that. But I mean, it’s just, it’s amazing. You know, looks like, here’s something that the Richmond Times Dispatch  did a story on the  construction of the theater. It looks like 1938 so we’re looking at the 1938-39, 1940 range, before it was open. 

That’s pretty interesting. You know, that’s a  long way  for somebody to travel.  Especially back then, right? You know, that’s way before they even had the Interstate, right?

It’s probably just two lane roads or one lane road for most of it.  We’ve read out to find old photos of the theater, too 

Yeah, this is all the shows that we’ve done since we re-opened. This is the stuff that the talent has signed. 

We’re excited because we feel like we kept the historic look of the old building, and that’s what we wanted. 

The movies are not projector anymore. They’re digital.

We’ve got state of the art equipment. We still show movies. It’s expensive to show them. Don’t get me wrong. We got our sound, their lighting, we got video capabilities, too. I mean, that stuff’s all state of the art and top notch. 

Oh, okay, so that was one of my questions….

So expensive to show  projected films anymore, to buy that equipment. So, and it usually, to be honest, it’s hard to keep up. Yeah, so we went with a really expensive high definition video, and it’s just, it really  looks phenomenal.

How do you get the film? So you contact distributors, or  they contact you? 

There’s, there’s three or four different little agencies that have the copyrights to all of them. We have to pay for those copyrights.  The copyrights are not cheap. People don’t realize, you know, even here, I can’t even afford new run Movies. 

I get secondhand or, you know, older movies, or a lot of times I try to get what’s just coming to streaming and show those. 

But to get a movie, one agency which has the most copyrights is called Swank, and they’re out of Chicago, and their fee for me to show a movie one day is $360. Now, I can show that as many times as I want to, okay, but it’s still $360 and, you know, we’re a small theater, small community— I don’t make that money back most of the time.

There are, I have found,  some other agencies that do the copyrights and like, I have to go through, like, I’m doing Star Wars in May, . I’m doing Episode One and two,  and I wanted to do three, but I can’t do three because it’s the anniversary of Episode Three, and they’re releasing it  back into big theaters. So the big theaters block small theaters.

That’s not right.

Yeah, it’s really not. 

 And I know they pay a lot to reintroduce that and, and, you know, today, even those bigger theaters and first run movies. A lot of times you go, and there’s not a lot of people.

 So, the movie theater industry is really….I don’t know how it’s staying alive, be honest. 

It’s  really hard for us, and we’re paying $360 and they’re showing multiple movies first run in multiple theaters.

 I really don’t know how they’re how they’re staying above water.

The  entertainment business has gone down the tubes a whole lot in the past 20 years, because they just don’t try very hard. 

Yeah, and I was talking to my wife about that the other day, I was like, you know, the movies and stuff just not what they used to be.

Well, even the titles are just awful. It’s like, one word titles, and you’re supposed to go, I want to see that. I don’t understand the marketing strategy behind that.

Yeah. I mean, there’s literally when you see, yeah, there’s not a lot of films that you want to go see. No. I mean, I’m like, do I want to pay 20 bucks to go see it?

The filmmaker, Joe Dante, I don’t know if he still runs this,  but he  used to run a website Trailers from Hell, and which shows a lot of older trailers, and a lot of them, he actually cut and edited himself because he worked for Roger Corman; and how he put it, about modern trailers, they show everything.

 You know, you find that jewel of a scene, edit it, you find another one, put it together, and then maybe a voiceover and something to get people excited.

 I’ve noticed, at the  Russell theater, some of the older films do better.

 I showed Goonies last night.

That’s great!

Jaws last summer. I would love to show Jaws again, but they’re gonna block it again because it’s the  50th anniversary.

How about, have you ever thought of the knockoff Jaws movie. Piranha would be a good one.

We may very well do that, especially since summertime is around the corner. Last year was our first year of what  I called  “Blockbuster movies at summertime.” 

We  just picked movies and showed them. We advertise away ahead of time and stuff. But I try to pick stuff I feel like people want to see. And it looks like some of the older ones are what people really like to come and see. 

I will try to do some series. Some of the teenage kids said, do some series. We’ll come see them.

They didn’t come. 

I try to do things for them, but when they don’t show up, it costs me money.

I did, what’s the vampire series? Twilight series. Yeah, I did the Twilight series, I think, seven films, and I got a lot of films, and it cost me $1,500 to show that, and we had five people all week.

 We did Hunger Games, same way, and we had about 19 people the whole week. 

I did  show Back to the Future trilogy.

That’s a good one. 

I did that, and we had a really good weekend with that, yeah, because it’s a three day series. So

Do you do better with, like, sort of PG 13, that’s…..

I have been showing some R rated films. 

But not a lot.

Yeah, I saw where you, you advertise, Unforgiven.

 We had a Gene Hackman  weekend when he died.

Hoosiers and Unforgiven.

We did a  Coen  Brothers weekend. 

I would have loved to come to that. 

I know a lot of people love that idea, and a lot of people came, I did three different movies on three different days.

Which Cohen brothers films did you show? Because you got, like, 20 films to choose from.

Yeah, it was hard to pick. And that’s what I said on the social media post. It’s hard to pick through. But, you know, I picked   The Big Lebowski for Friday night, and then Saturday we showed O’Brother Where Art Thou.

Then we showed Raising Arizona. 

I thought raising would have a good turnout. It was on Sunday. Sundays are a little hard here sometimes. But Raising Arizona, I thought people would really like that. But, you know, I think that’s one of Nicolas Cage’s better movies.

 I just picked three random movies and the first two days did really well. Sunday, not so much.

Well, you got a lot of competition. Church, internet, streaming, sports…..

Oh, yeah, we do. And, you know, and you know, it’s, it’s hard to get folks to understand, you got to come and support us. Yeah, you know, I’m only charging five bucks for a movie. 

So we’re, we’re not making much money. This past weekend, we showed Wicked, which is very popular, and, you know it’s, it’s brand new to streaming and everything. We probably had 50 people all week. That’s pretty good for us. We count that as a pretty good weekend.  

 I’m just getting my feet wet, 

We opened up in 2023, September of 23.

Y’all started construction probably in like, 2019?

Yeah, 2019 finished up in 23 takes a while. Well, you had all those COVID years. Oh, that’s true. And you couldn’t get materials. You couldn’t get it, you just couldn’t finish stuff. So, but we were right in the middle of COVID when we were trying to rehab the building and refurbish the building. So, but you know, I try to listen to the community. I’ve even started a new group called Friends of the Russell, and it’s got about 10 or 12 folks that I basically hand picked that, you know, came to stuff here at the theater and supported the theater or sponsored something at the theater, and I wanted those folks involved. And we started that basically in January, and we just had our third meeting. Oh, so we’ve been meeting on that. 

As I said, I want your ideas, because I was like, I’m doing all this.

I’m also the director of Parks and Rec.

I saw that on the Russell theater website. 

I’m the director of this, so I’m doing a lot.  When I say I’m doing a lot, I’m doing a lot of it by myself, I need the help.

As far as the chat group,  and if  anyone has an opinion, or  a suggestion, I’m going to listen. 

If we can do it, we’re going to do it. 

I’ve really tried everything here.

We’re doing ballet next week. I’ve got a concert tonight, classic rock, and then Wednesday, I’ve got Bristol Ballet coming and doing their spring performance. They’re not doing the full show, but they’re doing about a 30 minutes, 45 minutes snippet of their Alice in Wonderland show. 

I’m  trying to bring all the arts in here. The only thing I haven’t gotten done yet is a stage performance. Oh, and I’ve got that coming in November. I’ve got the Barter Players coming to do two shows this November.

It’ll be a Christmas show in November. 

I just want to reach out and give the community what it’s  never had before. That’s what it’s all about. It’s a community theater.  I love doing this for my community.

It’s sometimes hard because you feel like you’re putting all this work into it, but nobody’s  coming, but I will say it’s starting to pick up now. This show is sold out, Bad Moon Rising/ Creedence Clearwater Revival cover band. 

The council that funds this, you know, this is owned by the town of Lebanon, right? 

Yes, not many theaters are owned by the town. 

It’s starting to be a little better because folks have got those grant dollars and everything in order to rehab their old downtown, dilapidated theaters, just like Saint Paul (Va.) did. 

If the council sees that the community and folks are going to come here (the Russell), then they can justify putting money in. So it’s budgeted every year. I’ve got a budget I go on, and I have to stretch that budget from, basically, it’s over in May and it starts over in June,  the closing of a fiscal year, and we’ll open up another one. 

You project the films—

It’s all digital.

I’m getting ready this summer. We’re doing what we’re calling Early Bird specials. That’s going to be during the daytime.

Oh, that’s great,

Because we’re not utilized in the daytime, but I’ve reached out to senior citizens and senior citizen groups. And we’re going to do like we’re calling early bird specials,  they’re either going to go eat a meal somewhere in town, like breakfast or brunch or lunch and then come here to see a classic film. 

That’s something I’m working on right now. 

And the group that’s, you know, the friends of the Russell helping me do that as well. And some of those ladies are senior citizens, and they want to be a part of that. And they’re the ones that’s sort of driving that a little bit they’re excited about it, like, like, I showed them, I just got that finished the other day, and I showed them that, and I’ve got the actual movie poster coming out that I have framed, and I’m gonna put it down in the lobby as you go down into the theater.

 They were like, is there a possibility that we could see Gone with the Wind? I said, Absolutely, yeah. I said, if you want to sit through that long of a film, I’ll show it to you. 

Can you tell me about the Storytelling festival that you and Jerry Sword are putting together?

On October the 11th, we have our second annual Tales from the front porch. It’s a Storytelling Festival. Oh, and it’s those stories and folklore, and so that’s interesting. Yeah, it was really good last year. We had real good turnouts.

We want to keep growing that.

We’re excited to do that again. And it’s really top notch storytelling. And, you know, I said here, it’s an all day event, and it’s really cheap. Last year we charged $15. I think we’re going up $20 this year. But We even include some local music in there too, folks that tell stories when they sing their songs and stuff.

The authors sell their books and stuff right there on the pavilion. That’s another thing  we’re gonna continue to do.

That’s pretty cool.

It’s really, really a neat event.

That’s something that’s not really done here  in the area, except for, you know, you hear about Jonesboro, Va. Jonesboro canceled theirs last year because of Hurricane Helene. 

 We got ours about two weeks after theirs, and we even had some folks from Jonesboro come over. So that was pretty neat. I think it’s something that can grow and get bigger. 

Oh yeah, definitely. 

It was just really neat to have folks on stage telling stories, telling ghost stories, telling with some we had a guy that writes books about the coal mines, which is right here in the area, and he talked about being in the it was actual stories that he lived and talked about being in the coal mines by himself, and stuff, weird stuff happened. And, you know, it’s just neat stuff.