Your date says it’s time for a movie night. You say you’re due for some live music. Film on the Rocks has the answer: both. In one evening, at one venue, you and your date can catch a hot film, see a local band, and participate in any number of whacky audience activities guaranteed to bond you two better than the dessert you split.

June 20 opens the Film on the Rocks season with an opportunity to work out your differences with your cohorts in entertainment: a pillow fight. Slim Cessna’s Auto Club will serenade, and the focus will be a technique review of Fight Club.

Any zombie gear laid to rest since last Halloween can be resurrected for the June 30 screening of Shaun of the Dead. Even the band, the Boulder Acoustic Society, plans to come in costume and resuscitate your summer dancing groove.

These two examples only skim the pool of entertainment at Film on the Rocks, which commences with music and comedic commentary from the emcee, and concludes with a movie. Cult-classic infused and picnic-basket populated, this year’s marriage of visible and audible arts comes through the collaboration of the City and County of Denver, the Denver Film Society, and Swallow Hill Music Association, an organization devoted to local and folk music.



Films range from cult classics like The Breakfast Club and Blade Runner (the director’s cut) to recent, popular, and over-quoted hits like Zoolander and The 40-Year Old Virgin.

Swallow Hill got in on planning the music as part of their re-styling. “We really want to expand our image to the public, not just as a place for old people … but as a place for progressive music,” says Michael Schenkelberg, Director of the Swallow Hill Music School. Musical acts are predominantly local, and range in style from Opie Gone Bad’s funky rock to the twangy tunes of Ukulele Loki and the Gadabout Orchestra. All these wild acts may seem to have as much in common as Nutella and Limburger cheese. Nevertheless, says Jennifer Schiavone, Communications Director for ¬¬Denver’s Division of Theatres and Arenas, Film on the Rocks meshes music and movies to suit the same taste. So if you like the movie, and you’ve never heard of the band, you can trust the organizers’ psychic ability to tap into your music preferences and set you up with a mate only Match.com could beat.

Themes and audience activities pair with the absolute bliss of spending an evening on the sandstone of Red Rocks, making for a full-body experience that promises to satisfy your every aesthetic aching.

“The audience has really embraced this event, and that’s what we’re interested in providing—the venue, with people who are happy and hanging out on a summer night,” Schiavone says. Last year, 41,600 people attended Film on the Rocks. This year’s figure promises to match or exceed that one.

With so many people to please and so many acts to coordinate, event organizers will struggle to keep their wires from crossing. “Combining the film and bands requires a team effort … it’s just like anything where you have to put together the pieces of a puzzle,” explains Schiavone. “But it’s never been a challenge we felt was insurmountable or not worth the effort.”

Steve Eisenstein, Manager of Events for Red Rocks, suggests that the challenge is hardly even a match for setting up your TiVo. “It’s just like having two bands for a show,” he says, “but there’s a film screen involved. After the second band finishes, they strike [the set], then the film screen goes up—and this all happens in fifteen minutes as the emcee talks to the crowd and does giveaways.”

Equipment designed to aid in this process—such as rolling risers that allow drum sets to be wheeled off stage in one piece—permits the crew to work quickly and efficiently. Not that the audience would have much to complain about, with Comedy Works favorite Chuck Roy hosting the series.

“It works so well, we do eight shows a season … and the crew is actually smaller [than with other shows],” Eisenstein says.

He also mentioned the benefit to local bands like the Boulder Acoustic Society of getting to take on the monster stage of Red Rocks. Aaron Keim, who plays bass, ukulele, and sings for the Society, says he thinks playing at Red Rocks will be “pretty unbelievable.” He adds that playing Red Rocks is not something he’s been banking all his chips on, though getting a gig there has hardly gone to his head. “It’s not like it’s a Saturday night and we’re the Rolling Stones or anything … but I’m sure it’ll be fun,” says Keim.

The Society will be printing zombie stickers made for the event to match their own zombie-wear. And as to that match-made-in-heaven pairing organizers promise, Keim says that “anybody who is smart enough to like satires of zombie movies would be smart enough to like our crazy bizarre music.”

The summer schedule will wrap up with an attempt to break a Guinness World Record. Schenkelberg organized the current record of roughly 1,300 registered guitar players all learning to strum the same chord at the same time with the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. With Swallow Hill, he hopes to “take it to the next level” with 3000 to 4000. Or, perhaps, 9000—Red Rock’s full capacity.

If you’re itching for another laugh at Ben Stiller’s “O” face in Zoolander, pack your guitar, laugh your britches off at the live walkoff (the fashion/strip show modeled in the movie), and participate in breaking a world record. Because hey, not everyone can gain fame making the world’s largest ball of rubber bands.

Film on the Rocks, says Eisenstein, presents a practical marriage of music and movies. The music begins before it’s dark enough outside to screen the film, the venue sets a magnificent stage for building community, and the whole ensemble provides an event to which, he says, words can’t do justice.

Gates open at 6 p.m. Opening band at 6:30 p.m. Headliner at 7:30 p.m. Movie at dusk (appx. 9:00 p.m.). Tickets are $10.00 in advance, $12.00 at the box office, and are available at King Soopers, by phone at 1-866-464-2626, or online at www.redrocksonline.com. More information at www.denverfilm.org.

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