I got to see the world premier of a movie over the weekend. The world premier was in… Callie, Arapaho. Namely because it was filmed around these parts. It was a really low-budget film, though they did a really good job of making the money count.

We have a two-drop theater here in Callie. Most of the time, we don’t get first-run movies. When a big one – particularly, fortunately, one that stars a Marvel superhero – comes out, we’ll get that one. But otherwise, it’s dollar-theater timing at real theater prices. Of course, not many real movie theaters have reclining seats. This one does. It’s pretty rare there are more than a dozen people in the theater for any given movie. I’m a little worried that they will go out of business, but they seem to be getting by.

Today, in stark contrast to usual, they had a packed house. The movie was a half-hour late getting started as they tried to fit everyone in. Fortunately, the fire marshal wasn’t around. I ended up with what might have been the best seat in the house. It was almost certainly the only seat where nobody was sitting behind me and I could actually recline.

The movie itself was worth my time. It was free, though I wouldn’t have felt bad putting money down for it. It mostly took place on a ranch and the open range, but the “city” scenes were recognizable Callie locales. The story itself involved a ranch family and one of their ranch-hands. There were a number of predictable elements, such as the ranch hand’s love interest being the daughter of the ranching family. There were some interesting class elements in the movie, wherein you look at a set-up where one family has accumulated enough so that they can mostly rely on others to work on the ranch, while the hands do the heavy lifting and wait on that paycheck. The patriarch is handicapped, and the older son is works on the ranch (until he disappears, which is the plot). The younger son is sort of kept away from it. The idea was apparently to groom him to help run the ranch, but since he was never relied on, he was never groomed.

When the film ended, I felt the urge to clap, but nobody else clapped. They eventually did when the credits started rolling and some local names appeared. It was a little bit weird when the lights turned on and one of the main actors of the film (and the director) that I’d been watching on the screen was suddenly standing right there. It felt a little bit like when I was in a urinal next to a guy that I had previously seen on CMT.