Now Playing: Small Town Theater

Reported by Statewide correspondent, Mike Tobias.

Welcome to the modern day movie experience. The new Twin Creek Theatre Complex in Bellevue has sixteen stadium style theatres, thirty-five hundred seats, sixty-nine showings a week and digital sound. Megaplexes with megasound, megascreens, and megaprofits - it's the future.
Welcome to the past - Broken Bow's Tiffany Theatre. There's nothing mega about the Tiffany. One screen, four showings a week, one ticket booth, one concession stand.
The kind of place where regular customer Tom Hilkemeier stops by to say hi, chats with the owners and calls home to say he's staying for the movie.
He left his billfold at home. He'll drop by another with four dollars for the ticket.
[Tom Hilkemeier] "That's part of being a small town, you know. It's great to know that you can have that kind of trust between the owners of the theater."
Steve Chaney works for FritoLay. His wife Judie teaches 5th grade. They bought the Tiffany five years ago.
[Steve Chaney] "So the kids would have a place to work. We can pay them and then they can have college money. And I don't have to save that money to send them to college 'cause they already got it. That was one of the biggest reasons. Plus we can all be here together and have a nice, family business."
Each family member has a role.
[Cameron Chaney] "I'm pretty much the one that gets the pop."
[Heidi Chaney] "Concessions, popcorn, pop, candy. It's good to be here when dad goes up to start the movie."
[Judie Chaney] "I guess it's brought us closer together as… as a family for the family unit. It's taught the kids the business aspect."
People have been watching movies in this building almost as long as there have been movies. "Birth of a Nation" was the first. A huge audience watched the silent film classic in 1915.
[Judie Chaney] "Under the stage is a pit orchestra, plus a pit orchestra. When they did the silent movies they had music that was played for the old movies that were non-talkies as they called them."
Sit down inside the theatre and you'll see that not much has changed since "Birth of a Nation." Only the screen and seats are new. One lobby improvement has made life a little easier for the projectionist.
[Steve Chaney] "That wall you see there with the stairs going up, that wasn't there. You went into the booth upstairs to run the projectors, there was a ladder in the men's restroom that you climbed up. And when you got in the booth to start the film you were there the whole time."
The Chaney's aren't getting rich off the Tiffany. They pay a couple hundred dollars up front for each movie, and that's just for starters.
[Judie Chaney] "A lot of people think that we get to keep what we make on the ticket booth. We don't. And we have to pay a percentage of the gate to the movie industry. And if they think that that's not enough or we did more than what we paid out in our film rental, then they can come back and say, we need another ten percent. And we don't fight it, we pay it. You just pay it and go with it."
[Steve Chaney] "Now you know why concessions are so high. 'Cause the film company takes a lot of the money that comes in."
And sometimes not a lot of money comes in. This night's competition was a high school football game. You could count the movie crowd on your hands. One back row seat is almost always occupied.
[George Rhodes] "This is my chair."
[Judie Chaney] "We can depend upon George to be here most of the time. If he's not going to be here he lets us know. When he's not going to be here and we get postcards in the mail."
World traveling George Rhodes has been to a lot of movie theatres. The Tiffany is his favorite.
[George Rhodes] "I enjoy the movies here better than other places just for the facilties. And they're always clean here. You don't come in and find popcorn on the floor or anything."
[Judie Chaney] "We know people that come in here. We know what days they come in here. We know what things they like to have at the concession counter."
Visitors like George are a second family to the Chaneys. They say giving something back to this family, this community, is important. Some say there isn't a lot to do in this town of four thousand. The Tiffany helps fill that void.
[Rod Pracht] "Yeah, there's not a lot… the movie's about it."
[Beth Pracht] "It's nice to have something to do here instead of having to go somewhere else to go see a movie."
[Steve Chaney] "It's a good social place for 'em. And it's not real expensive so they can come in and watch a movie, sit and talk. You know, it's just a good social thing for them."
[Judie Chaney] "We look at it as a service back to the community. It's a place for the kids to go."
Small, one-screen theatres are dinosaurs in the modern world of megaplex theatres. Steve Chaney says they're a dying breed. In Broken Bow, at least, this symbol of a bygone era is far from extinct.