Navied Mahdavian
Appearances
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
I moved to the middle of nowhere America, and not just anywhere, cowboy country. We had visited the state of Idaho the summer before on a whim. And immediately, we had fallen in love with its mountains, its landscape, its real estate prices,
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And so we bought six acres in one of its most remote areas, sight unseen, and we made the decision to move from San Francisco, epicenter of American liberalism, to Mackie, Idaho, population 500 cowboys. But we could own a tiny house, we could maybe start a family, and most importantly, we could both pursue our dreams of becoming artists.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
Before moving, I had been a fifth-grade teacher, but what I really wanted to do was to be a New Yorker cartoonist. And I know what you're thinking. If you want to become a New Yorker cartoonist, move as far away from New York as possible. Makes sense. But what I've learned about being a cartoonist is you have to see the world kind of askew.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
You have to, in order to poke fun at things, to make connections other people can't see. And Mackie, Idaho was perfect for this because everything felt slightly askew, particularly for a city boy like me who knew nothing about farming or ranching. For example, it took me two years to realize that all chaps are in fact assless.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
So for the first year, we mostly kept to ourselves, which was easy to do, because technically we were like 20 minutes outside of town, past the farmers for Trump flags and the Make America Great Again welcome sign.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And of course there was the occasional stare that went on too long, which may or may not have been because of the complexion of my skin, and the occasional pointed question like, you're not a Muslim, are you? which was definitely because of the complexion of my skin.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
But when we actually made it into town, people were usually really welcoming and they were kind, and we got some of that small-town charm that we had moved there for in the first place. On one of these trips into town, we were buying groceries, stocking up for a couple of weeks, Emily stopped outside of the movie theater in town, and she lingered a little longer than usual.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
The theater had been closed on and off for like 10 years, and it has this beautiful art deco marquee that's like a homing device, particularly for somebody like Emily, who is a filmmaker. So on this particular day, she drops her groceries, and she has her hands and her face plastered against the glass, and I could almost hear the gears whirring.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And as my arms are getting increasingly tired, I'm getting increasingly nervous, because if you could imagine a graph where the x-axis is the length of time that Emily spends quietly thinking, and the y-axis is how much trouble we're going to be in, this would have been off the charts. And so as soon as I saw her smile in the reflection, I knew that was that.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
We were going to reopen the movie theater. On the drive home, she explained that this is what we can do for the town. We don't know anything about farming or ranching, but what we do know is movies and art. And now I'm excited at the thought, because if this was going to be our home, we needed some way to give back to the community, to become known entities, real members.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
Instead of being that terrorist, which is something somebody had called me, I could instead be that movie theater terrorist. And so we started up an arts council, which allowed us to rent the theater for cheap. We found and refurbished the original 1940s popcorn machine.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And I rallied the community to help us clean up the movie theater, our community, which is something I hadn't been able to say before. And I remember saying it over and over and over again. And as I'd say it, I'd focus on the way it sounds, our community. Emily said, stop doing that. And so we reopened the theater.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
The morning of opening night, I was sitting in, I was having a cup of coffee in the local coffee slash bait slash tackle slash beer shop. And as I'm sipping my coffee, I'm imagining the thunderous applause that we're obviously going to receive after the movie that night. You know, standing ovation, cowboy hats being thrown high into the air. When my neighbor at the counter, he asks me a question.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
He's an older cowboy and his breath was hot with coffee and his handlebar mustache was glistening with sticky bun. And he leans in and he asks, you're not trying to bring that Boise, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, artsy fartsy social justice warrior crap here, are you? And I'm actually ready for this question, because Emily and I, we know our audience.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And I respond confidently, no, we're actually showing an indie Western. And he asks, John Wayne? And I said, no, Robert Pattinson, the Twilight guy. And so blank stare, he says, you should show John Wayne. John Wayne. That night, it's opening night, I'm too nervous to sit in the theater with everyone, and so I stood outside of the auditorium. And the theater was packed that night.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
Some people came on dates, some people came alone, everybody had popcorn. And as I stood, I thought about how some people even took selfies of themselves with the tickets underneath the glow of the marquee, which was now on illuminating Main Street. And so the movie's starting, and I lean into the curtains, because even if I can't watch it, I at least want to listen to it and enjoy it.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And I hear the words from the movie, "'There's a gangbang social tonight.'" And so I'm grasping the curtains, and I should say at this point, it's an important part of the story, that I actually didn't have a chance to watch the movie before showing it.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
So by the time Robert Pattinson was masturbating a quarter of the way through the film, I was laying horizontally on the ground, the carpeting pressed against my cheek, and I could actually hear audible groans coming from the theater at this point, but that just may have been the sound of Robert Pattinson achieving completion.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
So after the movie, needless to say, I raced into the lobby and I tried as much as I could not to make eye contact with anyone as they shuffled out of the theater, their eyes wide, their cowboy hats pressed tightly against their chest. And I really believed if I just don't move, if I stand perfectly still, maybe nobody will be able to see me.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
Kind of like that scene with the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Not a super auspicious start. A question we got a lot after that was, are you going to show new movies? These were new movies, just indie movies that nobody had heard of. We couldn't show big-budget films because we couldn't afford to, but that's not why we had opened the theater in the first place. That's not what we wanted to do.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
We really believed if we show good movies, we can earn the community's trust, our community's trust, even if we were showing subtitled documentaries about whale hunting in the Faroe Islands. If you build it, they will come, became our mantra. But no one came. Night after night, I'd flip the switch on in the theater and it would reveal maybe one, maybe two people in the auditorium.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And so, we relented. We showed John Wayne. And everybody came, they really loved John Wayne, and I remember getting swept up in the excitement, and I decided that this time I'll sit in the theater with everyone.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
We showed the movie The Quiet Man, which if you haven't seen, it's a classic story, boy moves back to Ireland, boy meets girl, boy meets girl's brother, boy fights girl's brother, and in the end everyone is happy and friends for life. It's a movie I've seen many times, and I've enjoyed it every time I've seen it.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
But watching it that night, in that town, in that theater, the screen framed by the silhouettes of cowboy hats, watching John Wayne physically drag and shove Maureen O'Hara the five miles back from the train station, it felt different. And I'm a fan of John Ford, and I actually love John Wayne, and it is just a movie.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
But it has this idealized past that masks misogyny, deeply conservative values, and it felt just like the town itself. And they came, and they laughed, and they saw themselves reflected back. But I didn't. Even after showing John Wayne in Star Wars and other fan favorites, things didn't really improve for the theater.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And a lot of my conversations with Emily at the time turned to the question of, should we even be doing something that nobody wants? And it didn't help that the theater was impossible in the winter to keep warm. And I joke that we can maybe buy our one customer one big coat.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And so most nights I spent by myself in the theater drawing cartoons bundled up in my big coat, the sound from the movie playing to an empty auditorium. And on one of these lonely nights, this older cowboy walks in, someone we had affectionately nicknamed Racist Dave.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
Racist Dave walks in and he asks for his nightly popcorn, and as I'm buttering his popcorn, he sits down and he told me a little bit about the history of the place that I didn't know. For example, underneath the movie theater had once been a gambling hall, and across the street above the bar had been a brothel until like the 1960s. Again, cowboy country.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And as I hand Racist Dave back his popcorn, he says almost to himself, "'Lots of history in this place.'" And that word stayed with me, history. It was easy to feel nostalgic in the theater, right? The art deco marquee outside, it evoked simpler times. And I wondered, maybe that's what brought Emily and me there in the first place, this sense of nostalgia, this desire for something simpler.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And it also occurred to me that maybe racist Dave and I had more in common than I had previously thought, apart from the casual racism. But I now know that nothing is ever that simple. In 2019, our daughter Eliko was born, and Emily and I made the tough decision to leave our small town and move back to the big city.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
As much as we had tried to become members of the community, sometimes something just isn't a fit, like a vegetarian joining a local hunting club, which I also have a funny story about. On our last trips into town, Emily continued to linger outside of the theater, but the theater felt different. It felt smaller now.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And for a while, the community actually, they kept the marquee on, but the smell of popcorn was gone. After we closed the theater for good, we learned that back in the old days, when film was still shown on print, reels were smuggled in from this wealthy town over the mountain, and that allowed our town to watch movies without licensing them, so for free.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
In its entire history, the theater had never been viable, which was fitting and also kind of romantic. And looking back, I think that maybe that's what it takes to be an artist, to be a dreamer and a risk taker and a little naive. But you have to try something to see if it works. And if it doesn't, well, you get out of Dodge and you try again. Thank you.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
My wife Emily and I, we were on our land for the first time, and we were trying to figure out where our tiny house would soon go, which was more difficult than we had anticipated because looking around, there weren't any reference points. It's just land for miles, sagebrush and dust for as far as we could see. It was the first time I'd ever been able to say, my land.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London
And I remember that day, saying it over and over and over and over again. And as I'd say it, I focused on the way it sounded. I exaggerated the motion of my lips and my mouth. My land. Emily said, stop doing that. It's 2016, and Trump has just been elected. And so I did what any reasonable Middle Eastern American could do at the time.