“It’s been an incredible voyage, it really has,” Friedman continued, clearly grateful for and humbled by what he and the community have accomplished around the simple act of projecting movies into a darkened room filled with friends and neighbors. And when I decided that I was going to open theater, it was like, ‘We’re going to introduce movies.’”
PORTHOLE FOR SALE MOVIE
That’s where I first saw that movie introduction. “They were the proprietors when I used to go there, and one of them would always greet you at the door, and the other one always introduced the movie.
“I want to give credit to the two gentlemen who used to own the Harvard Exit, Jim Osteen, and Art Bernstein,” Friedman told KIRO Newsradio on Sunday.
In the 1970s, he had always loved the feel of the Harvard Exit on Capitol Hill in Seattle, and so Friedman wanted to open something similar in Port Townsend – intimate, comfortably furnished, with foreign and indie films, real butter on the popcorn, and what can only be described as a “high touch” approach to presenting movies that was the opposite of what multiplexes had made standard by the 1980s. Fast-forward about 25 years, and a Sammamish High grad named Rocky Friedman moved to Port Townsend in the 80s after going to film school in California.