UFO more popular after move to Garden Theatre

Sean Crean, manager of the Garden Theatre, said attendance has been high, with an average of around 80 students each night. He added that Friday nights tend to be busier than Thursdays and Saturdays, noting that last Friday’s showing of “Shutter Island” filled the theater to its 200-person capacity.

The UFO previously screened movies at the Frist Theatre, but declining attendance motivated the USG to change the program’s structure, USG social chair John Wetenhall ’11 said. Wetenhall is also a sports writer for The Daily Princetonian.

Former USG president Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10 echoed Wetenhall’s claim, noting that the UFO program at Frist “consistently achieved only mild levels of success, especially in light of its considerable burden on our budget.”

Last summer, Wetenhall, Diemand-Yauman and the UFO executive board worked with the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students to create the current arrangement with the Garden Theatre.

Wetenhall said the program is funded by the USG and a grant from the University’s Alcohol Initiative.

“The program has changed in a lot of ways since we moved it from Frist, and I think all of them are pretty much for the better,” Wetenhall said. The new arrangement is cheaper, offers students free admission and allows them to have food in the theater, Wetenhall explained.

“At Frist, you couldn’t have food or drinks, because it was in the Frist Theatre and that’s not allowed,” he said. “Now at the Garden, it’s like any movie theater, so you can have food, drinks, and in fact, we’ve been able to give away free popcorn and free soda.”

Wetenhall said the change has given the UFO more flexibility in movie choice and access to first-run features.

“Let’s say a movie came out today, and then in two months, it’d be available for us to show at UFO [while the program was at Frist],” Wetenhall said. “Now, we still do that ... [but] we can also, once in a while, show one of the Garden’s [first-run] movies ... And then the third option is, if we want to show an old movie, like an old DVD like ‘The Godfather,’ we can do that as well.”

Crean explained that an agreement between the UFO, the University and the Garden Theatre determines how many first-run movies UFO can sponsor. “[The UFO gets] six first-run movies a semester, and the rest are second-run movies that are available,” he said, adding that the UFO generally tells the Garden Theatre what movies it would like to screen two to three weeks in advance.

Wetenhall and students who attended last Friday night’s showing said the program appears to be successful and popular.

“All the feedback I’ve received has been tremendously supportive,” Wetenhall said. “We’ve really had a lot of positive feedback.”

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“I’m thrilled with the popularity of the program with students,” Diemand-Yauman said, adding that he hopes future USG administrations will continue efforts to offer such social activities to the student body.

Alden Fan ’11, who went to see a movie at the Garden Theatre last Friday, said attendance “depends on the movie.”

“If it’s a good movie, there’s a lot of people that come out,” he said.

Bilesh Ladva ’11, who goes to the theater with friends every Friday, said the free movie screenings are an opportunity to relax.

“I’m interested in watching the movie, and I need a distraction from studying on a Friday night,” he said.