At least a couple dozen. That’s how many emails and messages longtime Capitol Hill film nonprofit Three Dollar Bill Cinema received in the last couple of months, according to executive director Ben McCarthy.

The reason? This year, the organization behind Seattle’s annual gay film festival and summer cinema in Cal Anderson Park will only screen one movie — the British feel-good comedy Kinky Boots — during their yearly outdoor cinema in the park this Friday. Since the annual campy summer event’s start in 2008, the mini-film festival has always included three or more movie screenings spread out over a couple of days.

People are disappointed “it is only happening once this year and that it is something they look forward to,” McCarthy said.

He said the reason for scaling back the program was simple. This year, they didn’t get the Seattle Parks and Recreation grant that has “essentially funded the program” for years. 

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The rejection came as a surprise, McCarthy said, leaving the nonprofit scrambling for funds to organize the event. “We weren’t able to find a way to replace that funding quickly enough.”

Given that the nonprofit dedicated to films “by, for, and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people and their families” has had, as McCarthy put it, a longterm partnership with the city, and that Seattle Parks and Recreation “strongly encouraged” them to apply, the nonprofit didn’t prepare for a rejection.

The city said it reached out with informational materials about applying for the 2019 season but did not confirm they strongly encouraged Three Dollar Bill Cinema to apply. A Seattle Parks and Recreation spokesperson said that Three Dollar Bill Cinema did not receive a “Recreation for All” grant because businesses and nonprofits must have a budget under $150,000 in revenue to qualify, a guideline the department said was “given to all potential grantees before applications were submitted.”

But, McCarthy said, the nonprofit has been over that threshold for years, “and we’ve still gotten it.”

Three Dollar Bill Outdoor Cinema Presents KINKY BOOTS

McCarthy understands that officials needs to apply their criteria, but said he was surprised that the the city reached out about the application and rejected them without much warning or clarification. “There was no warning. It was too late to find that kind of funding.”

The cutback in the tradition of seeing outdoor movies on the Hill also wasn’t helped by an unusually quiet summer schedule for screenings by other organizations in other locations like Volunteer Park that sometimes fill in the schedule. Freeway Park and Homer Harris Park did however host a few outdoor showings this summer.

Three Dollar Bill Cinema also produces the annual Seattle Queer Film Festival and the Translations transgender film fest. In 2014, the organization joined a handful of nonprofits in office space in new 12th Ave Arts building developed with housing and theater space by Capitol Hill Housing. Last year, Three Dollar Bill Cinema executive director Jason Plourde departed the nonprofit and later moved to the Gay City resource center and library complex on E Pike. The organization said it hoped that savings from the move would put it on more solid financial ground.

Scaling back this year’s Outdoor Cinema meant that the one movie Three Dollar Bill Cinema would pick had to count for three. So, McCarthy said, they settled on the independent 2005 film Kinky Boots, about a drag queen who saves a struggling shoe factory (which inspired a Broadway musical of the same name).

“In the past, Outdoor Cinema has been largely queer-adjacent films. Movies that have added to the queer community and culture in some way but aren’t specifically LGBTQ2+. We wanted to make sure that, since we were only able to do one this year, that it was a film that was truly queer and that, while entertaining, can evoke conversation.”

“Kinky Boots touches on gender, sexuality, and dismantling toxic masculinity. These topics are just as relevant and important today as they were in 2005 when the film was released.”

Outdoor Cinema happens this Friday, August 30th. The screening will start at sunset (around 8:15 pm) at the Southeast corner of Cal Anderson Park. Concessions will be open and music will begin at 7:00 pm. More info on threedollarbillcinema.org/outdoorcinema