Juneau is a big island of misfit toys, and I'm a misfit toy.
I manage and co-own the glorious Gold Town Theater here in Juneau.
A typical day is, I spend a lot of time on the computer....(jokingly) porn.
Looking for new movies, and coming up with some new thing that we want to do.
Some new event.
We like to think we try a little bit harder than regular movie theaters.
Um, now's the time when I tell you to please turn your cellphones off,
or on vibrate. I have a zero tolerance policy for cell phone use in the theater.
And I can't wait to kick someone out.
We have an intimate connection (winks), with our clientele.
And then we also do live events here, we do live shows.
We've been doing silent movies, classic silent films with live accompanied music.
And primarily it's been local musicians playing along.
It's been hugely popular. I love it. That's for me, the greatest thing we do.
And the fact that I can get 70 or 80 people to watch a silent movie is . . .
That's going to be on my headstone. I'm not going to be in there,
but that's going to be on the headstone.
I love big cities, but I don't want to live in a big city.
I want to live in a community, where I know people, and where I'm contributing something.
And this is a good town to do it in.
This is a good town to kind of do whatever you want.
How do I fit in it? I like to think I that I help keep it a little bit funky and weird.
While also kind of in an underground way, adding to a more worldly, little town.
(Singing) Keep on the sunny side of life.
What is important to me is to keep us viable, and connected,
to what's happening in the rest of the world.
And right now I do it with movies and with film.
I had a lady in New York a couple weeks ago, who said to me,
She said, "You're from Alaska? Do you guys have, like, societies there?"
And I said, I don't know what you mean.
"You know, like societies, like people, where you're together?"
I had no idea what she was talking about.
(Singing in choir)
I grew up near Detroit, and I never, ever felt at home there.
I wanted to be as far away from Detroit as I could, without needing a passport.
And there was an ad in my school paper, it said "Make $4,000 a week, fly to Alaska."
And I was like, yes!
And so, I got on a plane, and 18 hours after leaving the Detroit airport,
I was standing on a slime line, with a spoon duct taped to a piece of pipe,
with this river of meat in front of me.
And this like 300-pound person at the top of the line, with no teeth,
screaming at us, "Get your damn sweet meat out or I'm gonna kill you!"
It was my first thought. We landed on this plane, and I thought,
this is a joke, right? This is a movie set, and the town is right around the corner.
Because, I just landed on the set of Popeye.
And no matter what I did, nobody ever said, "God you're weird."
Which is all I've ever heard my whole life. "God you're really weird."
I was like, I don't understand why I'm weird.
I'm walking along with green plaid pants and a yo-yo, what's weird about that?
And I'm in this tiny of town of 300 people, and nobody cared.
They're like, "Go clean a fish. I don't care."
And I thought, this is awesome!
So, I'm here, I don't plan on going anywhere.
This is what I want to be doing in a place I want to be doing it.
And you know those times when you can look back
and you see a part of your life as being the golden years?
Like, "Oh God, it was such a great time, these people were there."
I see that right now.
I don't think it's very often when you can recognize that, but I totally do.
Like, this is an extraordinary time for me.
And I'm just gonna ride this wave until I drown.