Published in the Quad-City Times on Dec. 13, 2023

I grew up in southern Nevada, and I still remember the view from my first bedroom: the Las Vegas strip roughly 20 miles away, with a beacon of light shooting straight from the center.

In reality, the searchlight came from the top of the pyramidic Luxor Hotel & Casino. But in my movie-tainted imagination, I firmly believed that the sky beacon came from the statue in the infamous 20th Century Fox intro video. 

I was convinced that the monument-sized logo was real. And not only that, it was close enough that I could see it. I believed in a piece of Hollywood outside my window, and that beacon was the proof. 

At The Last Picture House on Saturday night, four searchlights positioned on 2nd Street traced the Davenport sky. It turns out Hollywood is here, now. 

I’ve been an entertainment journalist for a few years and a movie fan for even longer. And I’ve never been to an event like The Last Picture House’s grand opening. 

Well over a hundred people were packed into The Last Picture House’s cocktail lounge by 6 p.m., a full 90 minutes before the scheduled movie premiere of A24’s “The Iron Claw.”

And while there aren’t a ton of spots in the Quad-Cities that can withstand and entertain that kind of traffic, the Picture House did.

To start, they’ve got an incredible cocktail menu. My personal favorite drinks are the Men In Black Manhattan (whiskey, Averna, orange and aromatic bitters) and the Curtain Call (gin, prosecco, orange liquor, raspberry jam and lemon). 

They’ve also got the usual movie theater fare: hot dogs, pretzels, boxed candy, and — relative to chain theater conglomerates — reasonably priced popcorn. The popcorn happened to be my only gripe on Saturday: grab napkins if you indulge at The Last Picture House. The popcorn was far too buttery for both tastebuds and stainable clothing. 

The space itself at The Last Picture House feels bigger than its walls. Like its marquee is visible from Tatooine. Like its sleek staircase extends endlessly upward to the Dreamworks fisherman.

As I climbed to the second floor loft, there was an urge to press against the staircase railing. I half-expected a “Truman Show” door to reveal itself and open up onto Sunset Blvd. 

Since construction started in April, it’s been repeatedly asserted by ownership that this is more than just a movie theater — it’s a place of togetherness, a celebration of cinema. By the end of Saturday night, I believed it. 

Before the advance screening of “The Iron Claw” started, small talk scattered across the theater. Co-owners and filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods took the theater floor to thank those that made the building possible. 

By the end of the movie, when tears were being wiped from half the theater’s cheekbones, questions like “Are you okay?” and “Did you like it, too?” felt louder than the 30-plus Dolby Atmos speakers.

In that moment, it was more than a theater. 

Even though it’s not a Beck and Woods cut, it felt fitting for “The Iron Claw” to be the movie shown at The Last Picture House’s grand opening. After all, the film follows the Von Erich wrestling family chasing glory in the National Wrestling Alliance, a promotion founded in Waterloo in 1948.

Local wrestlers Marek Brave and Seth Rollins got their start in the NWA Midwest. Rollins even recorded a video introduction before the movie started Saturday night. 

And as for “The Iron Claw,” an A24-produced film from director Sean Durkin, the movie itself was as emotionally endearing as the venue. 

From the outset of the film, Kevin Von Erich (Zac Efron) makes it clear that he’s aware of the so-called “Von Erich curse.”

He has known of the superstition since his youth, when he lost his older brother, Jack Jr., in a freak accident at six years old. Though Kevin shakes it off in conversations, it’s clear that he knows, in some unsettling way, what’s coming.

This feeling of impending doom translates to the audience, too. Especially with a bit of background knowledge about the Von Erichs — famously, all of Kevin’s siblings died young (with third-eldest Kerry the last to pass at age 33), and most of them died by suicide.

The Von Erich family was stricken with such catastrophe that youngest sibling Chris, who died by suicide at 21, was left from the script entirely, a choice I understand but is still tough to stomach. 

It’s because of this obviously oncoming grief that in some ways, “The Iron Claw” can feel like standing on a highway with concrete shoes, watching a semi-truck speed toward you.

But director Sean Durkin manages to make the film’s moments of joy transcend the Von Erich tragedies. That’s what sets “The Iron Claw” apart from any other piece of media about this iconic wrestling family. 

The moments of brotherly bonding — like black sheep brother Mike’s first rock gig — are a front to the film’s underlying themes of emotionally restrictive masculinity. And, of course, the ’80s-aesthetic costumes and set designs are pristine. The wrestling choreography is impressive. 

Jeremy Allen White, Efron and Harris Dickinson are all brilliant in their roles as Von Erich siblings, but Maura Tierney has the movie’s best performance, as the solemn and haunted family matriarch. 

“The Iron Claw” manages to avoid feeling exploitative, like many films based on true loss. It does so because it has something to say. It’s about more than just an infamous curse — it’s about reaching so high with your ambition that you lose your balance.

There’s a scene in the final act that’s most emblematic, where the Von Erichs’ domineering father, Fritz, asks his wife what’s for dinner.

“I didn’t make anything,” she answers. “I’m not hungry.”

As the movie closed and the audience applauded, I looked back on memories of my childhood home. There, what was better than being close to a beacon of light from an imaginary Hollywood was being actually close to my own three brothers. 

As I left my seat, my commemorative Last Picture House ticket felt as firm as the Pokèmon cards my brothers Brandon and Logan once collected. When I greeted peers in the lobby, I remembered my eldest brother Tyler teaching me at age four to say, “Not much, you?” when someone asks, “What’s up?”

Outside the theater, a group of teenage boys asked me to take a picture of them with the searchlights on 2nd St. They’d been driving all night to find the signal.

It turns out all lights lead to The Last Picture House, a slice of Hollywood we in the Quad-Cities can reach.

Anyone experiencing a mental health crisis can call or text the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.