Wow!   Friday Night Frights was fun.  We showed THE SHINING (1980).   As the movie started, the skies darkened.   We were ready to implement our emergency procedures.   The tornado sirens started to blare.   We checked very closely and the storm was well north of us.   We continued.   A few minutes later, there went the sirens again.   Again, the storm was well away from us.    We did have a period of about 2 minutes of very heavy rain, but our marquee bulbs needed cleaning, so it was a good thing.   After about 30 minutes blue skies. 

 

We were ready.   We've been through this before.    The show went on!

 

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Our Tuesday Night Film Series continues our Hang On! theme.   This week we are doing BACKDRAFT (1991).  Tuesday May 20, 2025.  The movie starts at 7pm. 

 

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This week marks the end of the 2024-2025 school year.   We are proud of all the 2025 Graduates who have performed and volunteered at the Strand.   Good luck!

 

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On June 6 we have a film premiere.   EXTRACTION USA will show at 7pm.   Filmmaker Mike Yonts has quite the story:

 

From Shelbyville Back to Shelbyville

By Mike Yonts

"In 1977, I sat in a theater with my mouth hanging open, watching an enormous spaceship cruise onto the screen, pursued by an even bigger one. “What am I even looking at?” I thought. Like everybody else that summer, I was wowed by Star Wars, in this case at The Cinema theater in downtown Shelbyville.

I’d like to tell you that I knew at that moment that I wanted to make films. But at 17, I had no idea filmmaking was even something that ordinary humans could do. In those pre-internet days, I had barely ever taken a picture with the family Instamatic. I was curious about movies, loved staying up watching old ones on the weekend, but that was it. I had, however, become intrigued by live drama. Tiny Southwestern High School, where I went, had a surprisingly ambitious theater program, mostly because of the energy expended by one teacher. I loved being in the comedies and musicals on the stage at one end of the gym, and I loved building the sets and doing all the other preparation. I wanted to know as much as possible about how all of it was done.

When I got to Indiana University, a guy who lived down the hall from me in the dorm introduced me to a bigger world. With a very different childhood from mine, Dave arrived at IU already having worked in radio. He had a job at the university’s TV station, and soon was working as a news photographer at a commercial station in Bloomington. Whenever I had a chance, I’d ride around in the news car with Dave and the reporter, carrying equipment for them and trying my
best not to get in the way. By my senior year I was working at the station, and over the next couple of decades I moved from local TV to work on sophisticated commercials all around the country, occasionally with famous people. Commercials are produced very much like short
feature films, and I gradually became familiar with just about every job on a feature film set.

 

I wanted to create my own film, and in the first decade of this century, digital cameras started to be seen as a viable, and much cheaper, alternative to shooting a movie on celluloid. In the course of my day-to-day business, I began to acquire most of the gear I would need to make an original motion picture. All I needed was a story. I spent years laboring over various scripts. I started to feel that the story I had in mind could incorporate some compelling action and maybe slip in a few bigger themes at the same time. I wanted to touch on income inequality, with a single mom as the main character. Maybe she’s stuck in a dead-end service job, like a bartender. But maybe there’s a dash of sensationalism—she tries to pull off a heist of some kind! I’m not a natural-born writer, but over months and months, and a lot of stalling, I got most of a script together.

 

I’ll tell you some more about the film and its production in a couple of future articles in this newsletter. In the meantime, make your plans now to attend the screening of my film, Extraction, USA, at that very same Shelbyville theater that wowed me all those years ago, now called The Strand. The show is Friday, June 6. I can’t wait!"

 

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Our lobby now has pictures from our art collection.  The Strand has kept the old Shelby Arts Council collection safe and on display for the past 18 years.   We have local artwork displayed dating as far back as 1887!

 
 

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Thank you for the support.   We will see you at the Strand!