A Whole Lot of Moxie: Moxie Cinema

The couple are Dan and Nicole Chilton, the theater is the Moxie Cinema, and the energy is indisputable. “We work seven days a week,” Dan says. “Over the course of a week, we spend 70 to 80 hours at the theater.”

“Dan and I do a nice job of dividing the tasks,” says Nicole Chilton. “I primarily do the administrative side, and we both help with bookings. Dan handles the technical side, like Web site maintenance and projection.”

The Moxie, 408 W. Walnut St., shows films rarely seen in conventional theaters.

“We fall under a lot of categories: an art cinema, an independent cinema, and a microcinema,” says Dan Chilton. “The films we’re showing not only garner critical acclaim, they’re winning awards. They engage the audience and make people think, and they can fall anywhere from documentaries to foreign films to regular films.”

The Moxie venture began as a major gamble for the Chiltons, who are both in their mid-20s. After earning degrees at University of Missouri in Columbia – Dan in English and Nicole in journalism – they went to work for Elsevier, the St. Louis publisher of the world-renown medical text, “Gray’s Anatomy.”

“I was a Web applications engineer and Nicole worked in marketing,” Dan recalls. “We cashed in our 401(k)s, ... everything we had, and took out a couple of loans on top of that to start the theater.”

The Moxie opened in September 2005.

Helping the Chiltons obtain films is booking agent Paul Sturtz, an owner of the Ragtag Cinemacafé in Columbia, which inspired the couple during their MU days.

“Nicole and I pick the films,” Dan says, “and once we’ve narrowed them down, we’ll contact Paul and he’ll contact distributors to negotiate terms.”

Chilton underscores the crucial importance of film selection.

“We’re doing our own market analysis on what plays best in Springfield,” he said. “(We) pick the films by keeping up to date on independent Web sites and magazines. We know what’s available, and we’re also very conscious of the critical response to films.”

After a little more than a year of operation, the formula is working.

“In all of 2006, we sold 28,000 tickets,” says Dan Chilton. “Average tickets per show is in the high 30s – we’re ahead of our original projections.”

Standard admission is $8, student and senior tickets are $6.50. Matinees before 5 p.m. are $5, and tickets for special series start at $4, according to www.moxiecinema.com, where visitors also can find the theater’s playbill, calendar, film synopses, blog, photo features and other information.

The Moxie’s most successful showings to date have been “An Inconvenient Truth,” the award-winning global warming documentary narrated by Al Gore, and “Jesus Camp,” a documentary about an evangelical summer camp for youngsters in North Dakota.

Film reviewer Jim Wunderle, whose reviews appear on www.sbj.net, is a frequent visitor to the Moxie, where new seats taken from the balcony at Springfield’s Landers Theatre.

“I’ve been to at least half of their films, and I’ve never seen one I didn’t like. They’re filling the need for the smaller, independent films by visionary filmmakers who have a real story to tell,” he says. “I also love the atmosphere of the place. Dan or Nicole will come out and talk about what’s coming up next, and the crowds that go to the Moxie really like movies and are there to watch the film, so there isn’t a lot of talking. It just fits a perfect niche.”

Adding to the theater’s revenues are concessions that include several specialty beers and wines, candy, popcorn, soft drinks and baked goods from Tea Bar & Bites.

“We don’t have liquid butter for the popcorn, but we have 13 different seasonings that you can put on top,” Nicole says.

Asked if the 2008 opening of the College Station downtown development’s 14-screen Hollywood Theater causes him any concern, Dan Chilton said, “Of course it does. No one wants a big competitor moving a stone’s throw north of their building, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

“I think it’s a wonderful development for downtown. And getting people to realize that they can come downtown to see movies will be beneficial to both us and College Station, and will bring in filmgoers to the Landers and the Gillioz, also.”

As for the enterprising couple’s plans in 2007, Dan says, “I’d like to have attendance be up at least 15 percent over 2006.”

The Meaning of Moxie

The faux-antique metal sign on the Moxie Cinema wall with Ted Williams touting Moxie Soda isn’t a clever tie-in, but a clue to the very existence of the word “moxie.” Introduced in New England in 1876 as a patent medicine purported to cure “loss of manhood, paralysis, and softening of the brain,” the Moxie “nostrum” was reformulated as a soft-drink in 1884. With an aggressive ad campaign that stressed its alleged stimulation of health and energy, it became America’s leading soft drink until the 1920s, in the meantime giving birth to the word “moxie” as denoting energy, pep, courage, determination and know-how – all qualities necessary, it seems, to run a successful art-house theater.

Source: www.moxieworld.com

Moxie Cinema

Founded: 2005

Owners: Dan and Nicole Chilton

Address: 408 W. Walnut St.

Phone: Movie Line: (417) 429-0800; Office: (417) 429-0801

Fax: (866) 588-8048

Web site: www.moxiecinema.com

E-mail: dan@moxiecinema.com

Services/Products: Exhibiting independent, foreign and locally made films

Employees: 6