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Carole Skinner owns Flicks Theatre, the 32-year-old alternative movie house in downtown Boise.
Skinner opened the Flicks in 1984 with her husband in the former Salt Lake City Hardware warehouse, renovating the open building to create a one-screen theater, a cafe, and a patio.
The Flicks lost money for seven years until the Robert Redford film "A River Runs Through It" came along in 1991 and raised the theater's profile. Now the Flicks has four screens and employs 16 people full and part-time, providing health insurance and a retirement plan to everyone who works more than 25 hours per week. Skinner has a general manager who does payroll, bills, taxes and hiring; Skinner does the film booking and marketing.
The Flicks is now surrounded by construction, with a hotel going up inches away, a large apartment building going in down the street, and the renovation of the Idaho History Museum behind it.
Skinner recently spoke to Idaho Business Review about the Flicks. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What made you think there was a market for an alternative movie theater in Boise?
There was no other alternative movie theater in Boise. Nobody was playing independent or foreign films at that time. All you could see was "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Which is a good movie, but it wasn't "My Dinner with Andre."
My husband had belonged to a club called "Films that don't come to Boise," and we played things like "The Grey Fox," "Diva," "Swept Away," and "My Dinner with Andre" on an old 16 mm projector.
When you weren't profitable, did you think about giving up?
We kept thinking it would catch on.
With the restaurant, we originally were open every day for lunch, but we quit doing lunch because one day we'd have 12 customers, and so the next day I'd tell three people on my staff they didn't have to come in, and then the next day...