PRINTThe movie barn
Get Knee Deep with the Reel Gone Round-Up
Courtesy of True/False, Knee Deep
Reel Gone Round-Up is held in an old livestock auction barn behind the former Bull Pen Café. Along with a showing of a rural America-themed film, this year’s event will have live music, decorations, costumed hosts and an art auction.
February 28, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
The Reel Gone Round-Up is either the black sheep or the golden egg of the True/False Film Festival. It’s a peculiar setup in which attendants take a bus from downtown Columbia to an old livestock auction barn on 2310 E. Business Loop, eat breakfast and watch a film in a space that once held cattle. Live music, decorations and hosts dressed up as farmers also help differentiate this event from anything else found at a traditional film festival.
It began as a bet between True/False co-founder David Wilson and his uncle. His uncle had purchased a barn located behind the now-closed Bull Pen Café and challenged David to find a use for the space. “It had this very steeply sort of tiered stadium seating, these beautiful old wood seats and there was still a fair amount of cow dung in the place,” Wilson says about his initial reaction. Sparked by the challenge, Wilson and fellow True/False founder Paul Sturtz began piecing together a rural-themed event for the festival. In 2005, the space was dubbed the Bull Pen Cinema, and True/False started its first and only themed screening.
What: Reel Gone Round-Up
When: Sun. 9 a.m.
Where: Meet at 26 N. Ninth St.
Cost: Included with Silver Circle or Lux pass; $12 for individual ticket
Call: 442-8783
The cost is included for Silver Circle and Lux pass holders for the Reel Gone Round-Up. For those who forgot (or were too lazy), tickets can be purchased starting noon Thursday at the T/F box office. Also, those who can’t make the event on Sunday can catch Knee Deep on Saturday night at Little Ragtag.
The majority of the film venues and events for True/False are held downtown within walking distance of one another. The Reel Gone Round-Up helps people in Columbia get in touch with the area’s farming roots and gives out-of-town guests a first-hand experience of rural culture (sans livestock aromas).
“The Reel Gone Round-Up feels like a secret adventure that you go on with about 100 secret friends you didn’t know you had,” says this year’s event venue coordinator Mary “Struby” Struble. About 120 moviegoers will meet outside the now-closed music store Kevin’s World at 9 a.m. on Sunday and pile into decorated buses that take them to the Bull Pen Cinema. When they arrive, they are treated to a breakfast buffet provided by Café Berlin, Uprise Bakery and Lakota Coffee Company. This year’s event will also have an art auction and music by folk-country bands the Pine Hill Haints and the Can Kickers.
Knee Deep is this year’s film: it tells the story of a Maine farm boy who attempted to kill his mother when she tried to sell the farm. “The film has a tongue-in-cheek side to it as well,” says director Michael Chandler, who is excited about the event and the venue. “It’s a perfect setting for the film. I’m delighted that it’s being shown there.” Wilson explains that the movie is really fun but also deals with real issues people face in rural America. Chandler says these issues include the disappearance of open space and what happens when people are denied what they are promised.
Columbia resident Susan Roberts has been to the Reel Gone Round-Up every year except one and enjoys the atmosphere. She compares the bus ride to a high school field trip.
Inside the barn, decorations enhance the mood, and heaters provide relief from the cold weather. When Roberts was a little girl, she went to livestock auctions with her father, and she remarks that it’s fun to sit on the old wooden chairs where farmers once sat to bid on cattle. “It’s like a communal event in the true sense of the word,” says Roberts. “It’s an experience — more than just seeing a movie and listening to the director talk. It doesn’t mean that it’s better than other events, it’s just different.”
Wilson says Reel Gone Round-Up is an idea he and Sturtz have been happy with and one that they would like to continue for as long as possible. “Certainly, the roots of Boone County are as a farming community,” says Wilson. “So it’s a way of reminding ourselves and keeping in touch with that part of our heritage.”
