Name: PureFlix
Age: 14
Occupation: Christian movie studio
Last Seen: Scottsdale, AZ
Bee-otched For: still forcefeeding their shit
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In a speech about film preservation, the late, great Hugh Hefner once proclaimed that on Sunday, he would go to church in the morning. But in the afternoon, he would go to his house of worship, which was the local movie theater.
Since the first Nickelodeon opened over a century and 20 years ago, the world has been enthralled with movies and the theaters that show them. Some theaters were huge, 1,000-seat shrines with two or three balconies. Others were tiny 300-seaters that usually played movies six months after the big town cinemas played them.
Growing up in rural northern Michigan, I never walked into a movie theater until I was seven. That was when me and several hundred elementary school kids hobbled into the Elk Rapids Cinema in Elk Rapids, Michigan for a Christmas screening of the E.T. ripoff "Mac and Me". For me, it was the first time I've ever seen a big screen movie that didn't involve the family Betamax or VHS. Oddly enough, a few weeks later, I visited my first multiplex in Phoenix, AZ. My late grandmother and I saw "The Land Before Time" while my parents saw "Rain Man".
That theater, an AMC 10-screener has since went out of business. Elk Rapids Cinema, thankfully is still showing first run favorites after 79 years in business.
Throughout my childhood, Elk Rapids Cinema was one of my favorite hangouts. When my parents split in 1993, I was blessed to live just blocks away from the theater. I spent many Friday nights at the Cinema.
Since 1972, the Cinema has been owned by Joe Yuchasz, who has been a beloved figure in the town of 1600 souls for decades. In the 1960s, the now-79-year-old owned a popular music store, the Ye Olde Music Shoppe. He also was a high school English teacher in Bellaire. When he bought the Cinema 47 years ago, it was falling into disrepair. Its roof leaked and when it rained, there were spots in the Cinema where one sure wouldn't sit. Over the years, Joe slapped on a new roof, remodeled the Cinema from top to bottom and even installed a new digital projector and sound system. All this from not asking people to donate one dime, either, while other small town theaters were forced to ask for donations when movie studios were switching over from 35mm film to digital hard drives.
Joe was also a former town mayor. Many credit him for keeping Elk Rapids a haven for locally-owned business. Very few businesses in Elk Rapids - namely Flint-based Gilroy's Hardware - are owned by out-of-towners. ER is loaded with restaurants - the only franchised fast food joint is a Mobil station Subway - t-shirt shops and condos. Even the town supermarket is family owned and there's surprisingly not a Family Dollar or Dollar General near ER.
One thing about the Elk Rapids Cinema is that Joe likes to wait a while for any movie to play at his theater. He personally told me that most studios want too much money and force smaller theaters like his to pay more profits from tickets and concessions for first-week runs. So, the new Avengers movie - which made $350 million this weekend - will have to wait, even though I'll save you some money by saying that Iron Man dies at the end. He even told me that the majority of his customers as-is are over 50. Joe even admits that he likes to show mostly critically-acclaimed movies. He even claims that Rotten Tomatoes is his home page on his internet browser.
So why he decided to show a flaming pile of crap starting this Friday is beyond me.
Yep! For one week starting Friday, the Elk Rapids Cinema will be showing "Unplanned", the recent anti-abortion movie based on a book written by a Planned Parenthood whistle blower, Abby Johnson. The film has been panned by critics for being untruthful about Planned Parenthood. The movie was made by the Christian movie studio PureFlix, the same company behind the "God's Not Dead" series.
"Unplanned" received some attention when it was revealed that $1 million of its budget came from ultraconservative pillow tycoon Mike Lindell. The movie's subject matter was so controversial that it was shot in secret and most television outlets wouldn't even air their commercials. Even several artists, including Cyndi Lauper were asked to use their songs for the movie and they all declined. Despite leaving theaters only after two weeks, it made $18 million on a $6 million budget. Not a giant blockbuster, but profitable nonetheless.
Sadly, this isn't the first time the Elk Rapids Cinema has shown an anti-abortion film. In 2012, they showed "October Baby", a film produced by the American Family Association about a young woman trying to find her birth mother who tried to abort her when she was pregnant.
Now, IIRC, Mr. Yuchasz is Catholic and it's a known fact that religious movies do well at his cinema. That's fine and all, but the truth is that Planned Parenthood is an organization that does a hell of a lot more good than bad. They provide free contraceptives and screenings for women. Only a small fraction of their business is abortion-related. Now that Drumpf is running the presidency, Roe V. Wade is getting more and more endangered. Hell, look at Ohio; their asshole governor - who looks like Ralphie from "A Christmas Story" - passed a tough bill that bars a woman from having an abortion if a heartbeat is detected. Even TEXAS wanted to pass a bill that would give women the DEATH PENALTY if their child is aborted.
You see, there's a HUGE reason I'm pro-choice. Look at dogs; when they're left at the animal shelter after a week, they're put to death. However, there's a lot of children who end up in foster care who never knew their parents and once they're 18, they're thrown onto the street. Growing up in the Elk Rapids area and out in the country, I remembered my father - who was a bus driver - picking up children who grew up in shithole trailers at the end up a long, bumpy dirt road. And because they were poor, they wore old, rotting clothes and reeked of urine. I once knew kids who never knew their fathers and never had true guidance in life. Hell, I once went to school with an adopted kid who never matured and ended up breaking the law. He ended up dying in jail when he was handed the wrong medication for schizophrenia.
I can go on, but the truth is that it's too expensive to raise a child. If a woman is raped and gets pregnant, the right thinks it's her fault. The right thinks that she needs to carry on with her pregnancy and spend nine months carrying her rapist's baby. What if the baby's born, thrown into an orphanage and grows up without parents? Don't even get me started on the logic that many pro-lifers are also pro-gun, so the kids are gonna die anyway in another mass school shooting.
Look, I love Joe Yuchasz and I've known him since I was little. I know he can't please everybody with one screen but considering that the nearest movie theater's all the way in downtown Traverse City, he should have thought this through a little better. But what the hell am I saying? I'm now in Grand Rapids and haven't seen a movie at Elk Rapids Cinema since the third Transformers flick. But if he's showing a good movie when I'm up north, I'll go there. If Michael Moore can still support the Bill Marsh auto dealership after they withdrew their support for the United Way for supporting Planned Parenthood, then I'll still support Joe.
But if I still lived in Elk Rapids, it would be one week I would NOT be going there with a 50-foot pole, or *ahem* coat hanger.
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