Q&A: Filmmaker Rustin Thompson on Cinema Deserts in Rural America

Filmmaker Rustin Thompson spent a road trip across ten Western states making “The Last Picture Shows,” a documentary on the collapse of small-town movie theaters, which have fallen from 22,000 nationwide in 1929 to fewer than 3,000 today, with drive-ins down from thousands to about 300. He interviewed owners and managers who are not in it for money but to keep a communal space alive against pressures like digital conversion, COVID, and studio booking rules.

Those rules, Thompson explains, often force small theaters into weeks-long “clean screen” runs of a single film regardless of actual demand, with studios threatening to withhold future blockbusters from theaters that cut runs short. The film, shot with a deliberately slow pace emphasizing stills and music, treats the surviving single-screen theaters as underdogs holding out against corporate studio control.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.