MONROE - During the Depression, the staff at the Goetz Theatre used to crack wise with customers.
"People would call and ask, 'What time is the movie?'" remembers Nate Goetz, who worked at and co-owned his family's movie house for years. "Well," employees would respond, "what time can you be here?"
It's been 80 years since Chester Goetz and his brother Leon opened the Goetz Theatre on the southeast corner of the Square in 1931, and it's weathered economic fluctuations, technology trends and changing movie-going habits.
In recent weeks Duke Goetz, Chester's grandson, turned the page to the next chapter by switching out the theater's three 35mm film projectors for digital projectors. The machines cost more than twice what his grandfather paid to open the theater 80 years ago, he said, but the upgrade was necessary to keep up with movie studio standards.
"You go digital or die," Duke Goetz said. "Celluloid is done."
When the Goetz's sister theater, the Sky-Vu Drive-In at N1936 Wisconsin 69, starts screening again in late April or early May, its projection will also be in digital.
The old film projectors are actually not that old: Duke Goetz bought them new in 2005. Even then, studios were pushing for digital but still meeting some resistance from theater owners and film lovers. That same year, an advertisement from Variety for NEC-brand digital projectors proclaimed, "Film is a four letter word. Forget about film. Reel men go digital."
Goetz has moved the discarded projectors into the theater lobby and will be running film reel through them before screenings so patrons can check out how the fading technology works.
Visually, a 35mm projector is a lot more interesting with all its gears and levers than a digital projector, which looks essentially like a computer server. But the quality of a digital projected image is crisper and brighter, Duke Goetz said, and doesn't fade at the edges like film projection.
"The precision is unbelievable," he said.
In mid-December, the Goetz Theatre caught the eye of Madison-based film historian David Bordwell, who visited Monroe and wrote a thoughtful and in-depth history of the venue and its switch to digital projection on his widely read blog, davidbordwell.net/blog.
Film critic Roger Ebert linked to the story on his Facebook page, writing, "Good Doctor Bordwell travels to Monroe, Wis., to bear witness as perhaps the oldest single-family theater in America switches from celluloid to digital."
Box office revenues have slumped everywhere in the last couple of years, and the Goetz Theatre hasn't been spared. The Great Recession has played a part, but Duke Goetz also blames the quality of films and studios' eagerness to release movies on DVD. He doesn't have any plans to add alcohol or specialty foods to concessions, a common tactic some theaters have taken to boost ticket sales.
"I have enough trouble with cellphones," he said.
When a film is good, Duke Goetz added, people still come out to see it. This year "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn" and the latest "Cars" and "Transformers" movies attracted crowds. Teenagers, who have more entertainment options available to them than any previous generation, are still some of his best customers.
Nate Goetz, Duke Goetz's 86-year-old uncle, now lives in Florida and said he prefers Netflix and his iPad to going out to the movies, but he has fond memories from the time when he worked at - and later co-owned - the theater with Robert Goetz, Duke's father and the son of Chester Goetz. At just 6 or 7 years old, he was tasked with turning up the seats at night.
"Everybody wanted to see Roy Rogers," he remembers. On Saturday nights, crowds for Roy Rogers flicks got so big the Goetz sent spillover to the short-lived Chalet, a 500-seat theater nearby on the Square (and the Goetz's competition).
In those days, the theater employed local teenagers as uniformed ushers. Joe Ganshert, a retired dentist still living in Monroe, remembers ushering with Nate Goetz. On breaks, he said, the two would go next door to Felder's Meat Market, buy a pound of hamburger for 25 cents and walk a few blocks to his house to cook up burgers for a snack.
At 88, Genshert can recall when the Goetz had its grand opening, an event the Monroe Evening Times splashed in its pages with much excitement. The movie theater was a "step up in entertainment" for the town, Genshert said, and he's glad to see "the Goetz tradition" kept alive.
"It was a great event to go to the movies," said Dorothy Trumpy, a Class of 1934 graduate from Monroe High School. Her class graduation was held in the Goetz Theatre. She can remember looking up and seeing stars in the ceiling.
The theater "was considered one of the most beautiful in the area," recalls Virginia Goetz. She went to the movies every Sunday afternoon for years, but despite being married to Robert, one the Goetz's owners, she never worked in the day-to-day operation of the theater. Her mother-in-law, Chester's wife, did all the theater's bookkeeping.
"It's always been in the family," she said.
Her son Duke took over the theater from his father, who died in 2001. Besides adding digital projection this year, he's upgraded the sound system, replaced the carpet, refurbished the sign outside and done other cosmetic repairs around the theater. Running a movie house was not his original plan. He trained in architecture at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and got a Master's degree in Landscape Architecture from Harvard. Still, he said, the problem-solving process he learned in school has served him well at the theater.
Duke Goetz's son Lucas, a sophomore at Edgewood College, works in the box office and helps with theater repairs when he's home from school, but he hasn't shown any interest in joining the family business full-time - at least not now.
"People would call and ask, 'What time is the movie?'" remembers Nate Goetz, who worked at and co-owned his family's movie house for years. "Well," employees would respond, "what time can you be here?"
It's been 80 years since Chester Goetz and his brother Leon opened the Goetz Theatre on the southeast corner of the Square in 1931, and it's weathered economic fluctuations, technology trends and changing movie-going habits.
In recent weeks Duke Goetz, Chester's grandson, turned the page to the next chapter by switching out the theater's three 35mm film projectors for digital projectors. The machines cost more than twice what his grandfather paid to open the theater 80 years ago, he said, but the upgrade was necessary to keep up with movie studio standards.
"You go digital or die," Duke Goetz said. "Celluloid is done."
When the Goetz's sister theater, the Sky-Vu Drive-In at N1936 Wisconsin 69, starts screening again in late April or early May, its projection will also be in digital.
The old film projectors are actually not that old: Duke Goetz bought them new in 2005. Even then, studios were pushing for digital but still meeting some resistance from theater owners and film lovers. That same year, an advertisement from Variety for NEC-brand digital projectors proclaimed, "Film is a four letter word. Forget about film. Reel men go digital."
Goetz has moved the discarded projectors into the theater lobby and will be running film reel through them before screenings so patrons can check out how the fading technology works.
Visually, a 35mm projector is a lot more interesting with all its gears and levers than a digital projector, which looks essentially like a computer server. But the quality of a digital projected image is crisper and brighter, Duke Goetz said, and doesn't fade at the edges like film projection.
"The precision is unbelievable," he said.
In mid-December, the Goetz Theatre caught the eye of Madison-based film historian David Bordwell, who visited Monroe and wrote a thoughtful and in-depth history of the venue and its switch to digital projection on his widely read blog, davidbordwell.net/blog.
Film critic Roger Ebert linked to the story on his Facebook page, writing, "Good Doctor Bordwell travels to Monroe, Wis., to bear witness as perhaps the oldest single-family theater in America switches from celluloid to digital."
Box office revenues have slumped everywhere in the last couple of years, and the Goetz Theatre hasn't been spared. The Great Recession has played a part, but Duke Goetz also blames the quality of films and studios' eagerness to release movies on DVD. He doesn't have any plans to add alcohol or specialty foods to concessions, a common tactic some theaters have taken to boost ticket sales.
"I have enough trouble with cellphones," he said.
When a film is good, Duke Goetz added, people still come out to see it. This year "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn" and the latest "Cars" and "Transformers" movies attracted crowds. Teenagers, who have more entertainment options available to them than any previous generation, are still some of his best customers.
Nate Goetz, Duke Goetz's 86-year-old uncle, now lives in Florida and said he prefers Netflix and his iPad to going out to the movies, but he has fond memories from the time when he worked at - and later co-owned - the theater with Robert Goetz, Duke's father and the son of Chester Goetz. At just 6 or 7 years old, he was tasked with turning up the seats at night.
"Everybody wanted to see Roy Rogers," he remembers. On Saturday nights, crowds for Roy Rogers flicks got so big the Goetz sent spillover to the short-lived Chalet, a 500-seat theater nearby on the Square (and the Goetz's competition).
In those days, the theater employed local teenagers as uniformed ushers. Joe Ganshert, a retired dentist still living in Monroe, remembers ushering with Nate Goetz. On breaks, he said, the two would go next door to Felder's Meat Market, buy a pound of hamburger for 25 cents and walk a few blocks to his house to cook up burgers for a snack.
At 88, Genshert can recall when the Goetz had its grand opening, an event the Monroe Evening Times splashed in its pages with much excitement. The movie theater was a "step up in entertainment" for the town, Genshert said, and he's glad to see "the Goetz tradition" kept alive.
"It was a great event to go to the movies," said Dorothy Trumpy, a Class of 1934 graduate from Monroe High School. Her class graduation was held in the Goetz Theatre. She can remember looking up and seeing stars in the ceiling.
The theater "was considered one of the most beautiful in the area," recalls Virginia Goetz. She went to the movies every Sunday afternoon for years, but despite being married to Robert, one the Goetz's owners, she never worked in the day-to-day operation of the theater. Her mother-in-law, Chester's wife, did all the theater's bookkeeping.
"It's always been in the family," she said.
Her son Duke took over the theater from his father, who died in 2001. Besides adding digital projection this year, he's upgraded the sound system, replaced the carpet, refurbished the sign outside and done other cosmetic repairs around the theater. Running a movie house was not his original plan. He trained in architecture at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and got a Master's degree in Landscape Architecture from Harvard. Still, he said, the problem-solving process he learned in school has served him well at the theater.
Duke Goetz's son Lucas, a sophomore at Edgewood College, works in the box office and helps with theater repairs when he's home from school, but he hasn't shown any interest in joining the family business full-time - at least not now.