 Hello, and welcome to another episode of Into the Issues. I'm your host, Steve Pappas, the editor of the Times Argus and the Rutland Herald. And my guest today has been a regular here at Orca Media. Rick Winston, Rick, thank you for joining me. Well, thank you for the invitation, Steve. So you and I have known each other mostly over email for several years because you do a regular puzzle for the Times Argus and Rutland Herald's weekend edition. That's right. That's been happening now into its 13th year, twice a month, yeah. It has been 13 years. And I'm still running into people have no idea that it's there, even who read the Argus regularly, so I don't know. Well, we appreciate it because the puzzles may be the one thing that all of our readers tend to do. Puzzles in the comics are the things they hear about the most. But we're going to come back to talking about puzzling. I want to take a little trip down memory lane with you because you were a part of a kind of pivotal moment in Montpelier's history, if you will, as far as kind of the beginning of a foundation of commerce in the city that has endured till today. You founded and ran the Savoy Theater for many years, but at the same time that you were doing that, we had Butch Speeler starting up, Bear Pond starting up, Onion River Sports starting up. I'm sure I'm leaving somebody out, but there was a horn of the moon, right? And there was kind of a group of you. It was that commerce was always lively in Montpelier. In fact, I miss some of the stories that aren't there anymore, like Greys, for instance. But this was the generation of people who either graduated from Goddard and stuck around or the people who gravitated up here because they knew people who went to Goddard and I'm falling to that category. I was already out of college by the time I moved up here. And it was kind of the counterculture of putting down roots in Montpelier, not just a back to the land. When I moved up here, kind of the cultural center of music and lectures and art and everything was very much centered in Plainfield around Goddard. And one thing I saw in the 70s was gradually moving into Montpelier. And you take a look back after many years and you say, oh, yeah, I guess I was a part of that. Because the precursor to the Savoy was the Lightning Ridge Film Society, which was every Friday night at that pavilion auditorium. So I did that for eight years before the opportunity came to start the Savoy in the winter of 8081. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about how that came about. You are known around the area as a film historian. You've had a show here on Orca Media that was about films. Where does that come from? Where is your passion for celluloid to come from? Well, a lot of it is an accident of birth, growing up in the suburbs of New York City, where there were several independent channels on TV who all filled up their time showing all movies. So I got into old movies at a very young age. There was a wonderful show that was New York and environs, called Million Dollar Movie. And Martin Sorsese credits it with getting him into movies. John Turturro says, that's why I became an actor. They would take one movie and show it every night of the week at 7 o'clock. And then two matinees on the weekend. So Sorsese said, if you were into this show, you became a film critic without even knowing what being a film critic meant. Because you liked something. He was like, oh, it's 8 o'clock. That scene I really like is coming around. Anyway, also my father was one of these people who remembered every movie he ever saw and the circumstances under which he saw it. He could recount plots. And then I went up going to school first at Columbia University in New York and then transferred to University of California in Berkeley, two of the best places imaginable to see old movies. So by the time I arrived in Vermont and saw that there was no where to sit, I got really spoiled seeing a movie any night of the week if I wanted to and that led to starting a film society. Yeah. And how hard was that to do at the time? Well, it actually wasn't hard at all. And I got the idea and said, hmm, I wonder what would be involved in showing movies. And I think I walked in cold to the newly formed Vermont Council on the Arts. I think they had been around since maybe 68, 69. This would have been 72. And had the good fortune to meet Ellen McCulloch Lovell, who is still around. Yeah. And she said, well, let's see. There's this wonderful pavilion auditorium that's got 200 seats. But you need a state sponsor to do that. Well, we can be the sponsor. And then I knew the one-man film department of Goddard at the time was Walter Unger. And he said, well, here are my film catalogs. And this is how I order films. And this is what you have to do. And it just all fell into place. And then I had to figure out where to borrow projectors and the regional library in Berlin, which doesn't exist anymore. And they forget where the other one was from. But it all came together. And to hit right out of the gate? To hit right out of the gate. It was clearly something that people were waiting for. Yeah. And it's always been independent. You've always kind of had a passion for independent film. Yes. At the film society, the film society was a hit out of the gate. The Savoy, the first week was a novelty, but that bore off pretty quickly. It was a struggle right out of the gate, I should say. But at the film society, I programmed a mix of some indie films. And this was before the real indie movement started. So a lot of Hollywood classics and then more recent Hollywood films that were like 10 years old, foreign films that we're just getting into, you could get a 16 millimeter print. So it was some old, some new. And that was the intention of the programming at the Savoy to begin with, that it was going to be the same kind of eclectic mix. It became very clear within five or six months that people wanted to see the new movies. And so it quickly became a mix of new, foreign, and new American. And then it was, we just happened to coincide with the emergence of people like Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles. And there was a tremendous appetite for those films. You also came into it at a time where videotapes were starting to compete to a certain degree. That was 19, we can sort of date. 1985 is when the first video store opened in Montpelier. And that was a real challenge because, well, gee, you can put on your own Alfred Hitchcock Festival at home. What do you need to go to a theater for? Right. A few years after that, 1988, it was, our friends down in Northampton who ran Pleasant Street Theater, and they had started their own video store at next door, Pleasant Street Video. And the owner of the Pleasant Street Theater said, trust me on this one. You will not be in competition with yourself if you open your own video store. People will want to take out videos five nights of the week. But on Saturday night, they want to see the new movie. And so that's when we opened Downstairs Video in 1989. Yep, well, you walked right into the subway on that one. And that became a very pivotal piece of, again, Montpelier culture was that they could go to the blockbusters around the corner. They could come to your theater to see the new, independent, new foreign. And you had an amazing collection of videos downstairs. Yeah, we were very proud of that collection. My wife, Andrea, threw out, and I put together that collection. And it's still a lot of the heart of that collection is still at the Montpelier Senior Center. If you're a member of the Senior Center or of the Savoy, you have rental privileges there. Yeah, and at some point, you did step away from it. Yeah, well, you know, I guess this is what it means to have lived long enough to see historical epics start and end. We saw the beginning of the VHS. You know, if we had opened our video store a year earlier, we would have had to get half VHS and half beta tapes. By the time it was time to open, nobody was getting it. Beta was gone. Beta was gone. Then five years later, the first DVD. And then we watched the whole cycle of then streaming. And uh-oh, nobody is renting videos anymore. So now there are hardly any video stores left anywhere. Yeah. Is there one movie that has had a tremendous influence on you personally? Or let me frame it differently. What was the first movie that had a tremendous influence on you? Well, it's funny you should say that, because sitting in this room, remembering the show I did with Bill Marranci, our very first show was we each picked two movies that were very crucial in our becoming film buffs ourselves. Bill picked Forbidden Planet and The African Queen, which was the first movie his parents took him to. And for me, it was Citizen Kane, which I saw every night on that show Million Dollar movie, and Rear Window, which was my first Hitchcock movie. And my parents, in their blessed ignorance, took me to see it when I was seven years old. And I did not have nightmares, as many kids might have. But I think that really started me on my journey as a film buff. Those are four great movies. Your two are among my favorites. I mean, you can't have a journalist not say that he doesn't like Citizen Kane. Yes, that's right. And Rear Window does make you wonder what was in those two case, what was in the two case all that time. But so getting back to, again, Montpelier at that time and that Montpelier really wanted that kind of culture, it's never, it's really been blessed since, because it hasn't left. I mean, you and a lot of folks who brought these things to Montpelier, the things that became the pillars of the community are still here. The Savoy is still here. You know, it's always a question whether the institution can outlive the founder. And, you know, during the 90s and into the aughts, periodically I would get together with Fred Wilbur, who owned Bookspealer, Mike Katzenberg, who owned Bear Pond. And we would commiserate about how technology was changing each of our endeavors and how long we could hold out. And now all three places are thriving with new blood and hopefully far into the future. Yeah, I mean, Bear Pond is, people come a long way to be a part of that as well. So of course, Bear Pond at that point was across the street where Down Home is now. That was its original location. And so looking ahead to where we're looking to the present, and while we can say that there have been these institutions that have been here, how do you feel that Montpelier has changed since you started your business here all those years ago? Or has it? Oh, it definitely has changed. And it's hard to separate out what you would rather not have, because it's all part of the... Right. There were people who came up in the 70s and stayed. And then because of those institutions, people started thinking about Montpelier as a place to move to and raise families. And now it's often I will go to the movies and will not recognize very many people there. Whenever I hear about a new restaurant opening, I say, oh, another restaurant. Do we really need another restaurant? So we were talking before the show about it used to be the Stockyard and the Lobster Pod, and that was about it. Right. I arrived here just as the Miss Montpelier diner is getting torn down. Anyway, so I hope Montpelier does not become too trendy. I think it already has. And we used to hear from some of our younger employees that it was really hard to find an affordable place to live, to rent especially. I think that also is still true. Yeah, so that's something I would hope can change. Yeah. So one more quick question about that. Do you think that because of the way that Montpelier is between having the state employees and over the years becoming kind of a destination community but having that base of a strong base of community here, do you think that the businesses that were started at that time, your contemporaries, all did well because it was Montpelier? Do you think that that model would have worked in other places as well? That's a good question. There was definitely a certain DNA, a certain mix, as you said. State employees had a lot to do with it. The number of Goddard grads who stuck around had a lot to do with it. The backs of the landers and Montpelier's growth as a kind of a white-collar community. Because I can't imagine it working in Barrie, for example. Yes, well, there's a whole other show for you. Right, exactly. Right. You know, I think it was, I'm not sure that this was original to Mary Hooper, but she said that great places don't happen by accident. Yeah. And there is, I see it when I bring, just the other day, had people visiting from out of town and walking down. This is a really interesting town. This is like, look, look at the architecture and all the storefronts are full. And you go to some places in Maine or upstate New York that may have the same population base as Montpelier. And they are really struggling in a way that Montpelier is not. For sure. Let's talk a little bit about, I want to switch gears almost entirely, although some of your puzzles have to do with films occasionally. How did you, first of all, become interested in puzzles? And secondly, how do you come up with these and kind of walk us through that process? Because these are not simple puzzles. Well, I enjoy doing these, I always enjoy doing crossword puzzles. But these crostic puzzles, which are different, there's a quote that you have to figure out what the quote is. You answer a number of clues and the answers are keyed. So you put the letters in the, you know. And it turns out the Greek word for head is crostic. So the head of every answer from A down to Z, if it goes that far, will spell out the name of the author and the name of the source. So unlike a crossword puzzle, there are different ways to solve it. You can solve it by figuring out the author in the source. You can get, you can do some guesswork and keep going back and forth from the grid to the clues. A lot easier to show, maybe I'll bring in a graphic for them to put up while we're talking. Anyway, there was a guy who used to do it in the New York Times named Thomas Middleton. I used to subscribe to the Progressive Magazine and they had a couple who were doing it. And they are now the couple that had been doing it in the New York Times for the last 20 years. Henry Rathvin and Emily Cox, they are the masters. And I got to thinking, how does anybody do that? It's the same impulse you hear about kids taking apart a radio and seeing if they can put it back together. So I was never electronically inclined, so that never appealed to me. But OK, so it's got to be a quote of approximately 170, 180 letters in the quote. It's got to be pithy. It's got to stand by itself. And because it has to include the name of the author and the name of the source, it's got to include those letters that are in the author's name. So then you go looking for a quote. Yeah. And I had a wonderful editor at the Times Argus who's moved on since. We were his hair. And we met and she said, how about if just to make it more accessible, these are on Vermont Themes or by Vermont authors. I said, OK, I'll give that a try. And that kind of coincided with the explosion of authors around living in central Vermont and Burlington. So I have not run out. And there's always a new Vermont book. I just saw two at Bear Pond that they're having speakers. So they were just a lot of fun to put together. It's great brain exercise. And it's as much of a puzzle to construct it as it is to solve it. That seems obvious. Yeah. But what always amuses me is I walk down the street. And one person will say, that was really too hard last Sunday. I had to look up. And then 10 minutes later, run into it. That was really so easy. Can't you make them a little harder? That's great, actually. Yeah. So it has a lot to do with the solvers. If there are baseball clues in there or movie clues or jazz standards or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And they are hard. I don't think I've ever finished one. No. But part of that is my own impatience. So I mean, I do like crossword puzzles. But they definitely require me to think a little bit more. Yeah. I have just a quick funny story. I used a quote from a book, A Friend of Mine, who had written, I won't identify him. Really, one of the most brilliant people that I know. And I said, I made this puzzle. I'll give it to you. I can't do those things. I'll give it to my editor. He can do it for me. That's a good editor right there. Yeah. So anyway, I guess I'm going to keep doing it as long as there's room in there and a welcome mat. It's there. And in your own right, you've written your own book that came out recently, Ritz-Gear on the Green Mountains. And what was your interest in? What spurred that particular? Well, if you trace it back far enough, my interest in the McCarthy era or the Red Scare era, and how you want to term it, it goes back to my parents who had their own difficulties during this era. They were both New York City school teachers. My father lost his job because of his politics. And my mother almost lost hers. It was kind of an accident of timing that she got to keep hers and keep teaching until retirement. So it was something I was always aware that affected my family a lot. And I moved to Vermont, not knowing very much about Vermont politics. The stereotype is, oh, they're really, they're all Republicans up there. Well, you find out very quickly there are all kinds of shades of the Republican Party in Vermont. And there certainly were in 1970. And it was the end of the Philhoff era. And then Dean Davis and NAC 250, that was the first year I moved here. So I kept it in the back of my mind, gee, I wonder what happened here during that time. And then I was fortunate enough to meet two people who shared my interest. One was the late Richard Hathaway, who taught for many years at Goddard and Vermont College. And Michael Sherman, who was the executive director of the Vermont Historical Society. So the three of us put on a conference about Vermont and the McCarthy era at the end of 1988. And it just kind of marinated since then. And I said, maybe after the theater is not doing the theater, I'll go back to that and do some more digging and see what's there. And one thing led to another. And there was the book. Yeah. And it's great for folks who haven't read it. You should pick up a copy at Bearpond Books. They have it. It really is great. And obviously, I look at it from one of you have not just history, but journalism plays a key role in the book. Yes. The Rutland Herald in particular. Yes. And a lot of the most striking, courageous figures in the book, Robert Mitchell, who editor and publisher of the Rutland Herald for many years, and John Drysdale at the White River Valley Herald, Bernardo Shea up in Swanton. So that was a real great discovery for me to see how many wonderful independent and independent minded newspapers there were in Vermont at this time. Yeah. Well, just how many newspapers. We only have a few minutes left when you see what's going on in the world today. I want to hide. Yeah. In knowing what you know about what can happen and what had happened here, it has to be terrifying. Yeah. Well, I said in the afterward of my book that I first became aware of Vermont as an idea when I was in high school, and I read Sinclair Lewis's book, It Can't Happen Here, which was written in 1935. It took place in Vermont. And it's about a fascist takeover of the US government. And I think those lessons are clear. Somebody, I saw, said, democracy is not something that is handed to you. You have to actively fight for it constantly. So I think that's what we're up against these days. It certainly feels that way. Yeah. Well, we only have a minute left. What's next for you? You've got puzzles. You've got another book. You've got another. You know, by this time, I have enough puzzles for a collection strictly on crostics that have to do with Vermont history. So we'll see. Maybe. That seems like an excellent idea. But for now, I'm teaching film history at the Montpellier Senior Activity Center. That's going to be me busy doing lectures around the state on various film topics. You did a nice one on journalism films at the Aldrich. At the Aldrich Art. So which I know I appreciated. Well, Rick Winston, thank you very much for joining us and having this discussion. It's a trip down memory lane, I guess, as it were. All right. Thank you so much, Steve. Thank you. And thank you for tuning into another edition of Into the Issues. Until next time, thanks for watching. 15 seconds left, right on the money.