Transcript

Welcome to MN90: Minnesota History in 90 Seconds. Westgate Theatre was just trying to survive. The small 500-seat movie theater in Edina’s Morningside neighborhood had only the single screen in 1972, when theater chains were building multiplexes with more seats, more screens and more films. Other small theaters had gone the art house, foreign film route to compete. The Westgate went a step further that summer when it decided to screen the same film every day and just that film, Harold and Maude, which had come out the previous year and was a huge flop. The story was about Harold, a 19-year-old obsessed with death—and with Maude, his 79-year-old free-spirited love interest. If the ages of the two characters had been reversed, critics might have cut it some slack, but as it was, they found the film creepy and depressing. Harold and Maude would play at Westgate Theatre for two years straight, raking in nearly a half million dollars and helping to launch Harold and Maude as a cult classic. But in the end, it didn’t save the Westgate, which shuttered in 1977. MN90 is produced by AMPERS, diverse radio for Minnesota's communities, made possible by funding from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Online at MN90.org.