It has been eight years since the Moxie Cinema, Springfield’s nonprofit movie theater, took up residence.
This organization shows independent, foreign, and local films that rarely make it to the multiplexes in the area. Its commitment to providing films of social importance and high artistic quality has led it to gain prominence in the community.
Over the years, the Moxie has undergone many changes: switching from an independently owned art-house theater to a nonprofit structure, moving from a one screen location to a renovated two screen location, and converting from 35-millimeter film to digital.
This month, the establishment relocated to Campbell Avenue and McDaniel Street downtown.
The Scoop: SpringVegas recently met up with Mike Stevens, its executive director, to review the Moxie’s time spent in Springfield and see what the theater is up to next.
How does the Moxie differ from commercial movie theaters in content, atmosphere, and structure?
As a non-for-profit, we’re a 501(c)3. That means we have a board of directors and we can collect donations. … We are not profit-driven, we are mission-driven. Our mission is to enrich the cultural life of Springfield through film. The movies that we show are considered art-house fare. In a bigger market, some of these might play at multiplexes and sometimes, especially around Oscar season, we see duplicates like “Dallas Buyers Club” and “Philomena” that are playing at our theater and elsewhere. …
When I looked at the numbers, I think 85 percent to 90 percent of our movies don’t play anywhere else in town. … The movies we show are consistently, and not coincidentally, critically acclaimed. …
From what people have said, there is a sense of community when you come to see a movie here. We have a lot of regulars so you see a lot of familiar faces. You also see people excited about the movies. We show some pretty intense stuff sometimes. You aren’t coming to see a movie about Indonesian genocide for entertainment, so you are surrounded by people who also think this is important and are spending money to see things like this. We are a small fish, so we can be a little funkier, too. We don’t wear vests. We serve beer and wine. It is things like this that make us different from your typical movie theater.
Why do you think it is important to make independent and foreign films available to the Springfield community?
Well, I think there are a lot of reasons. If you are talking about a chamber-of-commerce kind of reason, you have a lot of big businesses trying to lure talent to Springfield, and the cultural element helps. It says something about Springfield when an employer can take a potential employee out to dinner downtown at Flame and then walk to a place showing a French language film. …
Personally, I like that we are in the middle of the country and we show movies that take you everywhere else. The movies let you be a part of a national conversation. A lot of the movies we show end up being discussed on a national agenda. …
“Waiting for Superman,” a documentary about ways to overhaul the education system, didn’t play in town until we played it, but you had been hearing about it incessantly in the media because it was a really controversial take on what we might do to change things. I was excited to be able to play it. It kind of helped people go to the source. …
There are a lot of other things, but these are the things I always feel good to be a part of.
Walk me through the screening process a movie takes to get to the Moxie.
We have a film buyer, a booker, named Paul Sturtz who books films for the Ragtag Cinema in Columbia and is the founder and booker for the True False Film Festival. He is just someone who is totally immersed in film, especially documentaries. He goes to a lot festivals and has a lot of connections, so he gets to see things early… When we are considering films, we see how they do in bigger markets, but some films we know will do well. If Wes Anderson or the Coen brothers makes a film, we want to be a part of that. There are some film distributors whose style we know we like. Sony Pictures Classics is consistently fantastic, especially their international titles. So you book a lot of stuff on faith, but we are so small and flexible that we can adjust to how things are doing… The job is pretty easy once the movie is booked. Now that it is digital, UPS or FedEX delivers a hard drive and then we put it into the projector. It’s just like adding a jumbo file to the computer except it is encrypted. Then, we get a separate key that unlocks it for a specific amount of time.
What is the biggest challenge you have faced while working at the Moxie?
I think the digital conversion from a 35mm was very daunting, but the board had a lot of faith that we could raise the money so it made it less scary. … When we first started looking into it two years ago, it was $180,000 to convert. Like all technology, the price gradually fell and then we were able to raise enough to afford the switch. …
We started off with an online campaign through the Community Foundation of the Ozarks called Cause Momentum. It was kind of a crowdsource similar to Kickstarter. That was very effective. We also did a lot of other of fundraising, but really it came down to saying, “This is a crisis, and the Moxie will not be around if Springfield does not step up.” They did, which was pretty amazing. We got some big donations, but there were a ton of smaller donations. We also got a grant or two from the Missouri Arts Council.
Why did the Moxie recently change locations?
Our lease was up at the old location. We had a five-year lease. When we were doing our due diligence and looking around, we saw this space and started talking to the developer. …
When you factor in that it is on Campbell and attached to a parking garage with 400 spaces, we figured it was a good deal. A lot of people had trouble finding us, and parking was an issue at our old location. We felt like this was just a more visible and easily-accessible place. We were also able to improve the seating. That has been the thing that most people have been very excited about. Since we were moving to a new location, we could start from scratch and make risers and install everything while we were still playing at the old theater. We had most of the equipment brought over in four days, so it was pretty quick transition.
Do you have any upcoming plans for the Moxie?
I want to settle into this new spot, but we also have plans for next fall to do a kind of small documentary festival, just a weekend-long thing. I am going to True/False up in Columbia at the end of the month with an eye towards films that I don’t think will play here otherwise. We are also in the middle of writing another grant for the Missouri Arts Council for our education program. …
We are thinking about doing something other than just screenings. Maybe we will do something with workshops teaching kids visual literacy, character development, and the basics of a camera. …
It’s pretty invaluable to understand how images are used to create meaning. It is a more ambitious goal, but it is something I think would be fun to do. It is still just an idea. It will probably be a year out before we really start thinking about it.
