Movie house and community hub, the Majestic Theatre is in its sequel era.
It’s Saturday night at the Majestic Theatre. Suki Lou, a small, mini-schnauzer mutt and self-appointed door dog, stands in the center of the lobby of Crested Butte’s 26-year-old movie theater, silently greeting moviegoers as they arrive for the 6:30 p.m. showing of The Goonies.
From behind the long concession counter, Friends of the Majestic Executive Director Carrie Wallace smoothly shifts between mixing cocktails, scooping popcorn, and selling five-dollar tickets for the sole screening of a movie that I’m just old enough to consider a cult classic of my childhood, but too young to have seen in the theaters.
Collecting my popcorn and margarita, I pause inside the door of screening room three. People can be heard munching popcorn as trivia questions rotate across the screen. I navigate the sloping floors and find a seat near the back, leaving an empty seat between me and four teenage girls — their feet resting on the empty armrests of the seats in front of them as they giggle and mimic iconic lines from the movie.
The theater darkens, and the room fills with the scenes and sounds of a movie I’ve seen so many times that I know every line by heart. I’m mesmerized getting to see one of my all-time favorite movies on the big screen for the first time, and not just by details I’d never noticed before, but by a nostalgia for the movie-going experience of growing up in the ‘90s.
“Magical,” is how theater staff member Crystal Staggs sees the Majestic. “It’s magical for me to be sitting in a room full of people who I know or don’t know being wowed by that totally immersive experience of watching someone’s imagination come to life.”
But it’s also those moments after the movie is over, as people leave the tiny theater and linger in the outside plaza. “You get these little pods of people discussing the details. Another kind of micro community starts building among people who randomly connect at a movie and are discussing the details — it’s magic,” said Staggs.
Staggs has worked the Sunday night shift, and filled in when needed, since 2022, when Wallace asked her to join the staff shortly before the Majestic reopened its doors, following the pandemic. The Majestic staffers, affectionately known as the “Children of the Popcorn,” were given the name by beloved former Majestic manager Paden Kelley, and it lives on today.
The spirit of Kelley, who passed away from an accidental overdose after beating testicular cancer in 2019, inspired Wallace and her husband, Conrad Kaul, to fight to bring back the beloved local movie theater as a non-profit after it closed during the Covid pandemic.
“We couldn’t stop thinking of the things we wanted to do with the Majestic when we reopened,” Wallace said of the six months that the theater was closed due to Covid restrictions. Wallace and Kaul’s story began back in 2018 when they both worked part-time at the Majestic. “When Conrad was hired, we worked every Tuesday together the winter of 2018- 2019, and it was like an eight-hour date every week,” said Wallace.
The two married in 2023 and are now the Majestic’s only full-time staff. Running a small community movie theater is their dream job, and they hope to grow old doing what they love in the Majestic Plaza. When former Majestic Theatre owners Mark and Ali Drucker made the difficult decision in 2020 to close for good, Wallace, Kaul, and fellow Majestic employee Whitney Favor decided to try to save it. A month later, tapping into Wallace’s degree in nonprofit management from George Washington University, they formed a nonprofit called Friends of the Majestic and began fundraising to reopen the theater.
The response from the community was immediate, with over $20,000 raised in just days via GoFundMe. Over the next two years, they held silent auctions and roller derbies, sold hoodies at the Crested Butte Farmers’ Market, and garnered support across the community.
Their mission? To harness the power of movies to provide an escape or a learning experience for all members of the Gunnison Valley. By creating more opportunity for local events, the Majestic operates as an essential community resource.
Two years after the Majestic closed seemingly for good, they had raised nearly $350,000 and were able to negotiate a lease with the building’s Boulder-based owner. The couple, along with the newly established nonprofit, reopened the Majestic Theatre’s doors on September 23, 2022, with screenings of Everything Everywhere All at Once and Marcel the Shell with Shoes.
“My philosophy is people come to Crested Butte because they like what we’re doing here,” Wallace said.
“The Majestic should be the same way. We’re being Crested Butte funky weirdos, and they’re going to come to the Majestic because they like that. They don’t want to go to the Majestic because it’s like the AMC they have in Dallas.”
In fact, the Majestic is not just the only movie theater operating in the Gunnison Valley; it’s the only movie theater in about 100 miles. In a world where new movies are available to stream within weeks of release, Wallace and Kaul have created an environment that not only channels the nostalgia of the movie-going experience for Gen X, millennial cuspers like myself, but they’ve also made it a vital community hub.
In 2024, the Majestic hosted 97 free community events, attended by over 2,600 people, which included 47 birthday parties, 74 private events, and 60 additional events created and presented by the Majestic. Majestic-produced events include free or inexpensive film screenings, like The Goonies, and community favorites like the hyper-local Sweaty Kids Film Festival. Sweaty Kids invites anyone to submit short films, called edits, to be screened in a film festival- style event that “celebrates the athletic and artistic talent of Gunnison Valley.”
“A lot of our friends make seasonal edits of their adventures, so in 2019, Sweaty Kids was born when we decided to take a night to show all of them on the big screen at the Majestic. The night has evolved into a party for all ages, usually including a raffle, live music, games, all sorts of surprises, and plenty of PBR. We get edits from kids and adults alike, exhibiting all levels of expertise, and showcasing all of the fun outdoor exploits the Gunnison Valley has to offer,” Wallace said. “This event reminds me twice a year why I love our community so much, and why we want to keep it funky and silly!”
But movies are still the nonprofit’s bread and butter. While the movie world sometimes dictates the discounts and availability of certain movies, the Majestic has been able to keep new release ticket prices at $14. The cost to rent one of the three theaters is somewhere between $150 and $300, depending on the film and whether it’s a public or private screening. And classics like The Goonies are often free or just five dollars — not an easy feat with the building’s continual rent increases.
“Carrie’s biggest mission is creating a community gathering space that is really, truly there for everyone. Anyone can come here to enjoy it. We don’t want the cost of buying a movie ticket or a bag of popcorn to inhibit someone’s ability to come see a movie,” Staggs said.
The future of the Majestic is not yet secure. The building has been on the market since 2020 and could be purchased at any time and potentially repurposed into a non- theater space. There have been rumors of prospective buyers wanting to turn it into anything from an optometry clinic to a post office, brewery, or office spaces. The Majestic was purpose-built as a movie theater in 1994, with sloping floors, vaulted ceilings, and a tiny projector room at the top of the three screening rooms, making it difficult to imagine it as anything else.
Wallace is preparing for the follow-up to “Save the Majestic,” which will aim to raise funds to potentially purchase the building. She’s formed a committee to start working on raising the three million-plus dollars needed to buy the building and save a vital piece of our community — something she and the Friends of the Majestic Board of Directors hope to complete by the end of their next rental lease in the summer of 2028.
On the big screen, The Goonies is in its last scene, where Rosalita discovers the gems the Fratellis missed in Mikey’s marble bag. As she pours the precious stones into Mrs. Walsh’s palm, the group erupts in joyful cheer, knowing that they have the money to save their homes in the Goondocks from development.
Stay tuned for the Majestic sequel, when we’ll find out if the Friends of the Majestic and the Children of the Popcorn can raise over $300,000 to continue to offer an indispensable community theater experience that is uniquely Crested Butte.
For more information on the Majestic Theatre, including how to donate to the building fund, visit cbmajestic.org