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By Nate Faustyn.....

It may be safe to say that the over-arching theme of business in Detroit is the “Ups and Downs” of its nature. Nothing could be truer than the last week and a half of the Burton Theatre. It’s been a little while since I’ve updated you and in that time we have had National media attention(thanks to the wonderful and extraordinarily helpful people at OPEN CITY DETROIT) and we’ve had our first unruly patrons.

Let’s start on the positive end of things. In the past week we have been able to finalize our schedule, break even on the 2 previous films and our pro-bono and very talented web designer Jeremy Franchi has nearly completed our website. We at the Burton are very excited about the things that are happening, Press became a big help this week as the MetroTimes started running our advertisements and Crain’s Magazine profiled us. Perhaps our biggest win was the opportunity to spread our limited knowledge and network on a panel at Open City which was then transcribed and included in Time Magazine’s new Detroit Blog(check it out). We had a great time meeting new people and getting very helpful and creative advise to assist us is in saturating the market and dealing with a couple of political issues we have encountered. So overall pretty good, however the problem comes in not recognizing our audience and not doing enough to publicize a revival print as a fun way to hang out.

Scarface(which by all rights should have been huge) has tanked very sadly and a small few of those who have seen the film have taken some advantage of having a theatre run by young people in Cass Corridor. I’ll leave it at that but suffice it to say it was a bit discouraging.

As I finish this week’s blog I would like to encourage all to come out and experience a brand new 35mm print of Scarface on Wednesday for $5 and pay attention for our November schedule which includes four Michigan Premiers(Taxidermia, Crude, Bronson, Until The Light Takes Us)