Sixty years of great Esquire Theatre stories | John Moore

I’ve seen hundreds of films in my lifetime. But one moviegoing experience that will never leave me was gathering with friends at the Esquire Theatre in 1996 to see our friend John Carroll Lynch in his first major film role – as Norm “Son of a” Gunderson in “Fargo.”

There were about 10 of us in our group. We all knew John from having performed plays and musicals with him at a now long-gone downtown theater institution for young people called the Original Scene. (Or, in my case, both.) The O.S., as we called it, is where I held out the bowl of water that John, as Pontius Pilate, used to wash his hands of Jesus’ undeserved death as I sung-screamed the lyrics “Pilate, cru-see-fy him!” into his face in our rather intense teen production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

We squeed with delight when John’s name came up on the screen, annoying all around us who had hunkered down for a screening of the unfolding Coen Brothers’ classic. We howled when Norm made breakfast for his pregnant wife (Frances McDormand) and then ate off her plate – something John was legendarily known for doing himself at our local Village Inn.

No one in the theater could possibly understand why we thought that was laugh-out-loud funny. We couldn’t contain our excitement.

I’ve told that story dozens of times. That it happened at the Esquire Theatre is a fundamental part of that story. And just about anyone who has lived in Denver for any appreciable amount of time has one of their own.

Which is why this week’s inevitable news that the 100-year old cinema is closing for good hit the nostalgia community hard. I asked readers for their stories, and they streamed in like a film reel in perpetual motion.

They talked about signature midnight movies like the “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Hitchcock festivals. Date nights. They have happened anywhere, sure. But they happened at the Esquire.

For Maureen Rikhof, it was seeing “Bowling for Columbine,” about the nearby school massacre, in 2002.

“It was surreal at the conclusion when the theater, which was 90% full, rose to a standing ovation,” she said. “I couldn’t stand up. I was so emotionally wrecked by that film.”

For Lonnie Hanzon, it was winning the Woody Allen lookalike contest at a special screening of ‘Sleeper” in 1981.

“I met lifelong friends that night,” he said.

For Kelly Karuńámayii (and me), it was seeing the seminal Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense” for the first time in 1984.

“That was the iconic Esquire experience,” Karuńámayii said. “It was an entire dance party.”

For Jenna Moll Reyes, it was the many inexplicably weird nights with Tommy Wiseau screening his inexplicably bad film “The Room” – an experience she describes as life-changing. (It’ll be back at the Esquire at 10 p.m. March 29.)

For Lia Kozatch, it was watching the Fred Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” in 2018. Lia went alone, but said: “Everyone in the theater was collectively changed after we all started sharing travel tissues and tissue boxes with all of us crying."

For Mary Deshaies, it was her second job in high school working the Esquire ticket booth in 1964.

“We were showing ‘Zorba the Greek,’ and my mother came to pick me up one evening,” she said. “While she waited for me to finish my shift, she sat at the back of the theater to watch the film. When we were driving home she just said, ‘What an earthy movie!’ Spoken like a true Catholic mom.”

Sisters Sara and Kate Horle grew up less than a block from the Esquire on Downing Street.

“I saw my very first movie with my mother at the Esquire,” Sara said. “It was 1977, I was 6 years old, and the movie was ‘The Goodbye Girl.’”

For Jo Gerlick, it was seeing the fantasy/war film “Princess Mononoke,” which was Japan’s highest-grossing film when it was released in the U.S. in 1999.

For Dawn Gaynor, now living in Virginia, it was seeing a sold-out screening of Kenneth Branagh's 1996 “Hamlet,” which meant watching a movie for the first time in the super-wide 70mm format – from the front row.

“When you have to keep turning your head from left to right to ‘read’ the screen, you know it's going to be epic,” she said.

But my favorite memory came from Jeannie Patton, who saw “West Side Story” at the Esquire in 1961, and “it blew my pre-teen mind,” she said.

“It was the first of 21 times that I've watched the movie or seen the play live. I was alone and rode on the bus from our south Denver neighborhood.”

At one point, she even wrote a letter to Russ Tamblyn, the actor who played Riff, leader of the Jets gang, asking him to be her date for a school dance.

“He never replied,” she said. Sigh.

But not every memory went back decades. For David Nehls, it happened just the night before.

“I was there seeing Glitter and Doom,” he said.

The Esquire closes for good in July.