It is Saturday night at the Indian Lake Theater in the small town of Indian Lake, New York. The coming attractions have only been playing for five minutes when the sound slows down and the screen suddenly turns black. I am the projectionist so I rush upstairs and find a tangled pile of film unraveling out of the projector onto the floor.

Folks in Indian Lake, New York, saved their local movie theater as a community commons.

I run back downstairs to face the puzzled crowd. “Hi everyone. As you know, I’m new at this,” I say. “I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I’m going to do my best to fix the problem and get the movie running again in no time.” To my nervous surprise, the crowd cheers.

The Indian Lake Theater, in this small town of 2,000 in the Adirondack mountains, closed for two years. So moviegoers are grateful to have this important cultural common space back, and they’re willing to give it a chance.

When the town lost its beloved theater in 2006, it not only lost the option for residents to see the latest Hollywood hit on a Saturday night, but also lost one of the most important community gathering spots. The theater is literally located in the center of Indian Lake, just across from the post office and a short walk from the majority of the town’s businesses and restaurants. Over the years it has been the principal venue for Hollywood as well as classic and independent films. In addition, community theater shows and concerts by professional and school musicians—in fact, group gatherings of all kinds— have regularly packed the house.

About 30 minutes go by and I am still struggling to fix the film. Despite the long wait, the crowd is having a great time. They visit the concessions stand and catch up with neighbors and friends. I offer to give the audience their money back. A few people leave but refuse the return of their money. They figure the Indian Lake Theater needs it more than they do.

Finally, after 15 more minutes I fix the film. The audience erupts with roaring cheers.

When the Indian Lake Theater was closed, the town’s culture suffered along with the local economy. The theater provided a hub that allowed both local citizens and outside visitors to connect easily with other activities and services in town. Many local merchants businesspeople reported that the closing of the theater had adversely affected their businesses – from the ice cream shops, to hotel and cabin rental businesses, local restaurants and antique stores.
Once a small town loses its theater, when the seats are pulled out and the projector sold, a sense of community spirit is lost along with the movies.

But a group of local citizens in the Indian Lake area came together in fall of 2007 to devise a plan for purchasing and reopening the theater as a non-profit community stage and screen. A community board of directors, whose mission is strengthening the sense of community as well as watching the bottom line, now manages the theater. Ben Strader, managing director of the Blue Mountain Center, is the president. The Theater now has a paid director and local young people make good wages selling tickets and popcorn. A corps of volunteers handle other tasks that makes it possible for the Indian Lake Theater to host other events such as school music and theater productions, public meetings and even a Magic Lantern performance to celebrate the town’s sesquicentennial. All this, and Indiana Jones, too, along with independent movies. The theater is now more of a town commons than ever.

Harriet Barlow, Senior Fellow of On The Commons and founding director of the nearby Blue Mountain Center, who helped organize efforts to save the theater, notes “The Theater provides a sort of living room for the community, a rare opportunity for cooperation and collaboration. Most of all, it makes people happy!”

When the theater reopened last spring word spread across the Adirondacks and many folks sent donations to support it. Now, with this vision of a community center in place, the theater hopes to provide economic stimulus to the town, while breathing new life into the cultural scene of Indian Lake and the surrounding region.

The Indian Lake Theater, Blue Mountain Center and On The Commons are exploring the possibilities of creating a national network of community theaters. For more information, contact Harriet Barlow at hbarlow@onthecommons.org.

But in a surprising instance of man-bites-dog, the people of Montana have fought the privatization of the phrase “the last best place” – and won. With help from Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer and Senator Max Baucus, the U.S. Senate is expected to pass legislation this year that would prohibit the Commerce Department from granting a trademark for that particular phrase. This means that the people of Montana, the State of Montana and small businesses throughout the state will be able to refer to their state as “the last best place.”

Photo by Stuck in Customs, via Flickr, licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.

The controversy had its beginnings in 1988 when a professor of writing at the University of Montana, William Kittridge, and Annick Smith, published an anthology of Montana writers called “The Last Best Place.” The phrase had such an immediate resonance with people in the state that everyone from real estate brokers to motels to the state tourist office began using the phrase to describe Montana. It became a way of expressing one’s identification with and affection for this vast state of enormous natural beauty and its one million inhabitants.

Enter Las Vegas businessman David E. Lipson. One of his businesses, according to one reporter, tried to obtain a trademark on the phrase. He wanted to use it to market a variety of his businesses, including The Last Best Beef. The trademark application was so broad, says a Washington trademark lawyer cited by the New York Times (August 17, 2008) that it would have given Lipson a “de facto monopoly” on use of the term. In 2004, Montana Senator Conrad Burns tried to slip an amendment into a budget bill to prevent the registration of the phrase as a trademark. But Lipson challenged the bill in court. He won at the district court level and then lost on appeal.

Now, to put the matter to rest and prevent any future challenges, Senator Baucus has introduced a stronger, more ironclad version of the legislation that has now passed in the relevant Senate and House Committees, and is expected to become law.

Perhaps there is a lesson in all this. Why shouldn’t other popular expressions be granted some sort of immunity from corporate privatization? Why should Nike, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola or Kodak be able to march in and legally “steal” for itself a phrase or image that morally belongs to the people, or some distinct collective, who gave it social currency (and thus cash value) in the first place?

Among the world’s burning issues, the deficiencies of trademark law in protecting socially created value may not be at the top of the list. On the other hand, protecting the symbols of identity and community pride is no small matter, either. Just as the citizens of Montana.