Great Falls, Montana: Outdoor Movie Screen Transformed into Outdoor Attraction

Cathi Campanella and Stan Martin launched Main Attraction Big Screen in Havre, Montana after purchasing a 6-by-20-foot cloth screen, projector, DVD player, and computer for $10,000 -- towing it home through a January snowstorm. The partners, a beauty salon owner and an assistant police chief, kept their day jobs and ran the business part-time.

Their first bookings ranged from projecting the Super Bowl onto a casino wall at the Rocky Boy's Reservation, to showing Shrek the Third at a local school, to running Guitar Hero at a graduation party. Paying gigs followed: a Girl Scout slumber party, a parking-lot screening of Mad Max 2 for bar patrons. Starting rate: about $300 per hour, plus movie licensing ($150--$1,000 for new films). “We hope we can help people learn to enjoy outdoor movies again,” Campanella said. “We'd be willing to go anywhere in the state.”