buzz
Easy, breezy fun Nineteen years strong at the Boulder Outdoor Cinema by Michael J. Casey
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Office Space hits the Boulder Outdoor Cinema’s inflatable screen on Aug. 2.
28 July 10, 2014
’m trying not to use the word ‘magical’,” Liz Marsh warned me as we sat down to discuss the upcoming season of the Boulder Outdoor Cinema (BOC), which opens on Saturday, July 12. Marsh, along with her cohort, Jeanine Fritz, are the owners of BOC, but “owner” isn’t quite the right title. Marsh’s email signature lists her as “BossPants.” Why? “‘Owner’ sounds like it’s a real business,” she says. And anyone who has worked in any regards in the movie business will agree that it is anything but “real.” Located in the parking lot behind the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), BOC celebrated its initial season in 1995 and has been running strong since. Three years ago, Marsh and Fritz purchased the festival from Dave Riepe and Jon Hegeman and oversaw the continuation and
growth of BOC. Marsh has been working at BOC for 10 years, Fritz longer, and it was Fritz who brought Marsh into the fold. “I was a film student at CU Boulder,” Marsh recalls. “Jeanine was working there already and she was in my class and she asked, ‘Does anyone want to come work for the outdoor cinema?’ It seemed like a really fun summer job to get paid to watch movies and talk about movies, so I jumped at it.” Marsh isn’t the only one who jumped at the opportunity. “[BOC] is driven solely by the passionate people behind it,” Marsh told Boulder Weekly. “If we didn’t have those same seven staff members, there’s no way we could do it.” In addition to the core seven, Marsh relies on a whole team of concessionaires, bouncers and friends who donate their time and effort for little to no compensation. “They would make a lot more delivering pizza,” she says, referring to them as, “Our outdoor cinema angels that pop out of the woodwork every year and do an amazing amount of work for us.” Now in its 19th season, BOC kicks off with 2013’s animated musical Frozen, which is one of the see CINEMA Page 29
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