Rock The Rez Fundraiser | Saturday, May 16 | 5–8:30 p.m. @ Dahl Arts Center • Rapid City
Rock The Rez hosts five-day rock n’ roll camps for Indigenous girls, Two-Spirit, and LGBTQ+ youth. Campers spend the week learning instruments, forming bands, writing music, and performing together at the end of camp. The organization will host six camps this summer across South Dakota, Minnesota, and Colorado, including its first full week in Rapid City.
Saturday’s fundraiser is built around live music, community gathering, and direct support for those camps. The evening includes performances by The Wake Singers, David Huckfelt, and Laura Hugo, along with kids activities, crafts, snacks, and a silent auction. Funds raised from the auction and ticket sales go directly to Rock The Rez programming.
Their song “Chief Seattle’s Dream” was recently featured in the latest season of Dark Winds. Huckfelt is known for his work with Minneapolis indie-folk group The Pines and for collaborations with Indigenous artists and activists across the Midwest. Laura Hugo, originally from Teec Nos Pos in the Navajo Nation, writes songs shaped by grief, mental health, and personal experience.
The Wake Singers
Many people in Rapid City already know The Wake Singers. Reed Two Bulls, Douglas Two Bulls, Micheal Two Bulls, and Dan Carroll have built a strong following locally with music rooted in folk, rock, and Northern Plains songwriting traditions. Marty Two Bulls will also appear during the evening.
The event is intentionally family-friendly. Organizers want the atmosphere to feel closer to camp than a formal fundraiser, with space for kids to participate alongside the music and performances happening throughout the evening.
Friends of the Dahl get in free. Tickets for the public are $10, and kids under 12 are free.
Belly dance, live music, drawing sessions, and a hands-on art party take over Aby’s on Saturday night.
Downtown Rapid City is going to have belly dancers moving between breweries, the Farmers Market, and Main Street on Saturday afternoon before the whole thing lands inside Fifth Street Pub for an opening party that looks more like a community jam session than a standard gallery show.
Anastasia Smith Arts and Sisters Dance Tribe are participating in Shimmy Mob for the fourth year, joining dancers around the world performing the same choreography during the second week of May as part of an international flash mob now in its fifteenth year. The local crew plans to hit the Farmers Market around noon, Main Street Square around 3 p.m., and several downtown breweries throughout the day before gathering at Aby’s for Anastasia Smith’s opening party from 5–8 p.m. inside Fifth Street Pub.
The night is centered around Smith’s artwork, but the walls are only part of what’s happening. Guests will be able to jump into paper folding, watercolor, and drawing activities throughout the evening. Figure drawing artists and students will also be set up during the event, with visitors invited to sign up as live models and become part of the work themselves.
Sisters Dance Tribe will be performing throughout the night alongside live percussion from Amber Tjeerdsma. Local rock band Wicked Six is also scheduled to play a set, turning the opening into a full live music and dance party inside the pub. Smith says performances from both the Shimmy Mob team and Sisters Dance Tribe will continue throughout the evening.
There is also a very real chance the band may end up celebrating something bigger than the show itself. Wicked Six member Derick may miss the performance if his wife Christina goes into labor that day.
The event doubles as an open invitation into the larger community surrounding Anastasia Smith Arts and Sisters Dance Tribe, including beginner belly dance classes, private art lessons, and ongoing figure drawing sessions around Rapid City.
By Saturday night, there is a good chance somebody who only planned to stop in for a drink at Aby’s ends up sitting under a figure drawing lamp while a belly dance drummer jams with a rock band a few feet away.
Lynn Hill’s appearance at the Elks Theatre brings one of the most important figures in climbing history to a region with deep roots of its own.
On May 10, one of the biggest names the climbing world has ever produced is coming to Rapid City.
Elks Theatre will host an evening presentation with Lynn Hill at 6:30 p.m. on Mother’s Day weekend. The event is built around a live talk from Hill, whose climbing career changed the sport in the late 1980s and early 1990s and still carries weight with climbers around the world.
Even people outside climbing circles have probably seen images of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. The massive granite wall rises nearly 3,000 feet above the valley floor and contains one of the most famous climbing routes in the world: The Nose.
For years, climbers treated a full free climb of The Nose as unrealistic. Then in 1993, Hill became the first person to do it… Not the first woman. The first climber, EVER.
A year later, she returned and climbed it again in under 24 hours.
Her career stretches well beyond Yosemite. Hill dominated competition climbing through the late ’80s and early ’90s, winning international titles at a time when modern climbing gyms barely existed and most training happened outside on actual rock. She became known for climbing that relied less on brute strength and more on balance, efficiency, footwork, and composure under pressure.
The evening at the Elks is expected to focus on Hill’s climbing career, stories from Yosemite and the international climbing world, and the evolution of climbing culture over the last several decades. For longtime climbers, there is obvious nostalgia tied to that era. For newer audiences, especially younger climbers who came into the sport through gyms and competitions, it is a chance to hear directly from someone who helped shape modern climbing before most of that infrastructure existed.
And for people who have never touched a climbing rope, the event still works as a rare live appearance from someone whose accomplishments crossed over into broader sports history.
The timing also gives the night a slightly different atmosphere than a standard climbing lecture. Organizers are positioning the presentation as part of Mother’s Day weekend, widening the audience beyond core climbing circles and turning it into more of a shared night out than a niche industry event.
For newer climbers, it is a chance to hear from one of the people who shaped the sport. For older climbers, it is probably a name they have been hearing for decades. The Black Hills has always understood climbing a little differently than most places. Lynn Hill walking onto the Elks stage on May 10 is part of that story now too.
Lost Cabin Beer Co. is stretching its 10th anniversary across an entire week this May, transforming the brewery into a rotating mix of beer releases, live music, food trucks, side-show attractions, projection mapping, cleanup crews, glow paint, balloon burners, and late-night screen printing sessions in the barrel room.
The anniversary week runs May 11–17 at Lost Cabin Beer Co. in Rapid City.
The Big Top Opening
Monday, May 11
Anniversary week opens Monday with Double Barrel Chocolate Rye bottle releases and a special Brownie Stout release on draft and in cans. Green Chili Shack starts serving at 4 PM while the line forms for the first-day pint glass giveaway. Alex Massa brings live psychedelic circus music to the brewery beginning at 5:30 PM with Cirque De Tango.
4 PM – Green Chili Shack opens
5 PM – Pint glass giveaway for the first 50 people
Tuesday shifts into pinball and side-show territory with the release of “I Wanna Be A (pin)Balla.” Patas Azules starts serving at 3 PM before free pinball takes over from 4–6 PM, with prizes going to the top score on each machine.
Wednesday’s Fire & Flight theme centers around Flying Circus, a mimosa-inspired wheat beer collaboration with Black Hills Balloons. CD’S Wings opens at 3 PM while Sivan Hoch brings a funk set later in the evening. Black Hills Balloons will have a balloon basket and burner on site for photo opportunities alongside limited collaboration stickers and possible fire dancing on the patio.
3 PM — CD’S Wings
5:30 PM — Sivan Hoch live funk music
Black Hills Balloons photo ops throughout the evening
Thursday leans fully into the circus atmosphere. The night includes the release of Pickled Nordren, a collaboration with MoonCats, alongside Drops Of Juniper. Patas Azules opens at 3 PM before MoonCats takes the stage at 6 PM with a ventriloquist set from Danny during the break. The brewery plans to fill the space with UV lighting, glow paint, and a gallery wall featuring anniversary shirts from the last decade.
Late in the evening, live screen printing moves into the barrel room with $5 bring-your-own-shirt prints.
Friday’s Strongman Night centers around the release of Bourbon Barrel Aged Grizz. Live screen printing begins at 11 AM while YoYo Hibachi starts serving later in the afternoon. A beer cotton candy station runs under the tent from 4–6 PM as the brewery shifts toward heavier beers and amber-lit late-night energy.
Saturday starts with pancakes and a creek cleanup before shifting into the heaviest music night of the week. The daytime portion includes the Trout Not Trash cleanup effort, environmental midway activities, and food vendors under the tent. By nightfall, the atmosphere turns toward projection mapping and psychedelic visuals leading into a late performance from Year Of October.
The week closes Sunday with the release of RC Local, a Triple IPA collaboration with Independent Ale House. Ruth’s Kitchen starts serving at noon alongside free roller dogs under the Big Top while the brewery settles into a more laid-back final day. A community toast for Lost Cabin’s 10th anniversary takes place at 2 PM.
Mother’s Day is coming up in the Black Hills this weekend! We pulled together a list of events happening around the Hills we thought would be fun to do with your mom to show her how much she matters!
Mother’s Day gift ideas:
Fill her gas tank
Take her car to the wash and vacuum it out
Replace the windshield wipers in her car
Put fresh flowers on the kitchen table before she wakes up
Frame an old family photo that’s still sitting in your camera roll
Take her to a local art show, concert, or movie instead of a chain restaurant
Refill the bird feeder
Put together a playlist of songs for her
Drop off coffee and pastries in the morning
Spend the afternoon doing one of her hobbies with her
Buy her plants – not just cut flowers
Offer to babysit so she gets a quiet day to herself
Take her out somewhere local she’s talked about going to for years
Ask her questions about her life before she was a mom
Spend screen free time together
Put together a small “Black Hills day” with coffee, a drive, and a stop somewhere she likes
Tell her specifically what she did right raising you instead of just saying “thanks for everything”
For decades Cary Morin has played stages like the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the Paris Jazz Festival, and the Vancouver Olympics. His music can be heard in Dark Winds and Resident Alien. NPR named his live performance of “Jug In The Water” one of the best live sessions of 2020, and he’s shared stages with Bonnie Raitt, Los Lobos, Jackson Browne, and Arlo Guthrie, just to name a few.
Friday night at 707, he shares the bill with one of the region’s own heavy hitters. Jalan Crossland has spent years building a loyal following across Wyoming and the Dakotas with a style that earned him National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship runner-up honors, the Wyoming State Flatpick Championship, and national touring slots with Robert Earl Keen.
Put both of them in the same room, inside a venue that only holds a few hundred people, and suddenly this starts looking less like a normal Friday night show and more like one of those nights people talk about afterward because they still can’t believe it happened here.
Up First, Jalan Crossland
Photo Credit: Tess Anderson
The Ten Sleep, Wyoming native has been a fixture in the Black Hills for years, building the kind of following where people make plans the second his name shows up on a poster. His mix of guitar work, banjo playing, sharp writing, and dry Wyoming humor has carried him from tiny bars to major festival stages, but rooms like 707 still fit him best. Up close, every little thing he does lands harder.
There is also something fitting about Jalan opening this night in Rapid City. Around here, people know what he can do. They know the speed, the precision, the weird little left turns, and the way he can turn a room from laughing to dead silent in the middle of a song. He is the rare kind of regional musician whose reputation was built the hard way, one live show at a time.
Cary Morin is not new to Rapid City. Long before Ghost Dog, he was coming through town with The Atoll, the reggae-rock band that packed rooms here through the late 1990s and early 2000s, including nights at the Alex Johnson ballroom.
“Cary’s music comes from a place deep inside. I would describe his style as artful, soulful, and authentic. His fingerpicking style will warm even the coldest heart. If you get a chance to hear him, whether with a band or on his own, take the opportunity and enjoy the ride!” ~Anni Harjes
He returned over the years for Guitar Masters, performances tied to Crazy Horse, and other stops that kept his connection to this region alive even as his career kept growing far beyond it.
Morin has spent decades playing major festivals, national broadcasts, film and television placements, and stages shared with some of the most respected names in American music. What makes Ghost Dog interesting is that none of it feels like a legacy act settling into nostalgia. The band pushes forward instead, taking the guitar work and songwriting Morin built his reputation on and driving it through a full rhythm section. Their newest album, Pocket of Time, released in February and draws from stories rooted in everyday Indigenous life, including the Crow Reservation.
Ghost Dog is the five-piece band Morin leads with Celeste Di Iorio on harmony vocals and rhythm guitar, and the lineup around them is stacked with serious players. Bassist Ean Smith has worked with groups like Galactic, Robert Randolph, and Dumpstaphunk, while drummer Adam Loudermilk and percussionist Koda Gray lock into a groove that feels just as rooted in blues and Americana as it does funk, reggae, and the wider rhythm traditions Morin has been pulling from since The Atoll days.
These two acts on the same stage Friday night are worth getting off the couch for. World-class musicians do not usually land together on the same bill. This feels like one of those shows people will still be talking about months from now, either because they were there and caught something really incredible or because they are still kicking themselves for missing it.
Eminent Domain Black Hills Community Theatre | Studio Theater, Performing Arts Center of Rapid City Opens Friday, May 1 | 7 p.m. Continues May 2, 8, 9, 15, 16 at 7 p.m. | May 3, 10, 17 at 2 p.m. Written by Nebraska playwright Laura Leininger Campbell, directed by Truax with assistant director Lynne Mazzone.
Playwright Talkback with Laura Leininger Campbell: Friday, May 1 immediately following the opening night performance Playwriting Workshop with Laura Leininger Campbell: Saturday, May 2 | 10 a.m. to noon | 4th Floor Rehearsal Room | Ages 14 and up | RSVP to merlyn@bhct.org
Shannon Truax, making her mainstage directing debut at BHCT, came into Eminent Domain reading it as a fight between ordinary people and a pipeline company. A family farm threatened by eminent domain, a patriarch digging in, a corporation with the law on its side. It was a story she thought she knew, but by the time the cast got deep into rehearsal, she understood she had been wrong about what the play was actually about.
“I have come to understand that this is really the story about the negotiations and compromises that happen inside of relationships,” Truax says, “especially in the face of a fight you might not be able to win.”
Nebraska playwright Laura Leininger Campbell wrote a play that uses a pipeline dispute as the pressure that cracks a family open, not the subject of the story itself. Rob MacLeod is fighting to save his farm. His daughter Adair left years ago and has her own calculus about what the land is worth. His son Bart has stayed, and has his own accounting of what that loyalty has cost.
Truax says she wants the audience shifting allegiances throughout. There are no villains in this production, and the director has built the show around that ambiguity, asking actors to sit inside uncomfortable spaces, listen to each other, and resist resolution. The Studio Theater makes that work visible in a way a larger stage wouldn’t.
“The audience is only an arm’s length away, so there is no distance to hide behind. The audience can feel the shifts in energy, the silence, the tension. The actors can feel the audience’s reactions. This space demands honesty from the actors and it invites the audience to be part of the experience, not just an observer.”
For audiences in the Black Hills, the material carries particular weight. Land rights, infrastructure projects, the legacy of family farms, these are not abstractions here. Truax, who works in Public Works, brings that familiarity to the production. The MacLeod family’s fight maps onto conversations that happen in this region in ways that a coastal production of the same play might not reach.
A Playwright in the Room
Playwright Talkback with Laura Leininger Campbell: Friday, May 1 immediately following the opening night performance Playwriting Workshop with Laura Leininger Campbell: Saturday, May 2 | 10 a.m. to noon | 4th Floor Rehearsal Room | Ages 14 and up | RSVP to merlyn@bhct.org
Laura Leininger Campbell’s plays have been recognized by the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, one of the most competitive development programs in American theater, and have earned distinction from the Henley Rose Playwrights Competition, Seven Devils Play Foundry, and the Great Plains Theater Commons. She writes out of the Midwest, about the Midwest.
Following Friday’s opening night performance she joins the cast for a talkback. Saturday morning she leads a two-hour playwriting workshop in the 4th Floor Rehearsal Room, open to writers 14 and up, new and experienced alike. For anyone serious about writing for the stage, or curious about what that process looks like from the inside, this is a working playwright with serious credentials willing to talk about her craft. Bring a notebook. RSVP to merlyn@bhct.org.
BHCT closes its 58th season with Eminent Domain by Laura Leininger Campbell. The run extends through May 17, but opening weekend is when Campbell is in the building, and that is worth showing up for early.
The Yawpers and Wayfarer bring two nights Spearfish
Night One: The Yawpers. Monday, May 4. 5–7 p.m. Crow Peak Brewing Co., Spearfish. Star Wars Day. Costumes encouraged. Free will donations to Ridge Riders Trail Foundation.
Night Two: Wayfarer + Dylan Lewis. Tuesday, May 5. 6:30–8:30 p.m. Crow Peak Brewing Co., outdoor stage. All ages, free show. $5 Cañon Tajo Mexican Lager for Cinco de Mayo.
Night One:
The Yawpers
Monday, May 4 | 5–7 p.m. | Crow Peak Brewing Co., Spearfish Star Wars Day. Costumes encouraged. Free will donations benefit the Ridge Riders Trail Foundation.
The Yawpers are a Denver three-piece built around two acoustic guitars and a drum kit, and if that sounds like it should be quiet, it isn’t. Nate Cook, Jesse Parmet, and Alex Koshak have spent fifteen years playing punk-volume rock out of an Americana frame, pulling from blues, rockabilly, and outlaw country in ways that Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times have all tried to describe and mostly come back to variations of the same word: raw. Their four albums include a WWI France concept record produced by Tommy Stinson of The Replacements and a live-tracked record cut at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio in Chicago. They’ve toured with Lucero, Nashville Pussy, and the Reverend Horton Heat, and they’ve had songs land on Showtime. Monday they’re at Crow Peak, and the door is free will.
Tuesday, May 5 | 6:30–8:30 p.m. | Crow Peak Brewing Co., Spearfish All ages. Free show.
Wayfarer are also a Denver band, also with a KEXP session to their name, and almost nothing else about them resembles the Yawpers. The four-piece has spent over a decade building what they call “black metal of the American West,” drawing from blast beats and tremolo guitar on one end and Ennio Morricone and the gothic country of Sixteen Horsepower on the other. Their 2020 album A Romance of Violence told a chapter-by-chapter story of life in the Rocky Mountain West in the late 1800s. Their most recent, American Gothic, released in 2023 on Profound Lore and Century Media, was described in their own words as a funeral for the American dream, produced by Arthur Rizk, who has worked with Kreator and Eternal Champion. They have played Roadburn. They have toured Europe. Tuesday night they are on an outdoor stage in Spearfish, and it is free to walk in.
Two nights, two Denver bands with KEXP sessions and national press behind them, playing in Spearfish. Crow Peak is giving the Black Hills two nights of touring-level music this week, and both shows are worth rearranging a Monday and Tuesday so you can be there.
“What is Peace?” drops May 1. The release show is Saturday night in downtown Rapid City.
All four members of Black Hills Soul spent time chasing music somewhere else before settling in the Black Hills. James and William Sautter went to Los Angeles in the late 80s and played in a blues band out there for years. Todd Tetreault was in the Bay Area for decades and was inducted into the South Dakota Music Hall of Fame in 2015 before eventually returning to Rapid City. Doug Phillips arrived from the St. Louis area a little over a year ago, drawn here after a long career as a recording artist and touring musician. He has brought new energy to the songwriting and had a significant hand in shaping the new album.
Their 2021 debut, Where It All Begins, came out of years of individual songwriting across all four members, landing somewhere between Allman Brothers grooves, Steely Dan chord sensibility, and southern rock. The band spent the pandemic finishing it while navigating shoulder surgeries, quarantine delays, and limited gig opportunities before finally releasing it on their own terms.
What is Peace? is the follow-up, out May 1. The release show is Saturday, May 2 at Murphy’s Pub and Grill in downtown Rapid City, 9 p.m. The set draws from both albums alongside classic rock and blues covers, with new merch and giveaways on hand for the night.
James Sautter said in an interview a few years back that the second album was mostly written before the first one even came out. That it finally has a release date, and a room full of people to hear it, is the part they have been working toward.
Black Hills Soul Album Release Party. Murphy’s Pub and Grill, Rapid City. Saturday, May 2. 9 p.m.
In 2003, Marc Linn read a line in Entertainment Weekly that said no one could make a feature-length Star Wars fan film and actually keep an audience. He saw that as a challenge and immediately began to draft a screenplay. He had no idea that first draft was the beginning of a 23-year production.
The film is called Heart of the Rebellion. It premieres May 4 at 7 p.m. at the Elks Theatre in downtown Rapid City. Admission is free, but there is only one showing. After that, the film gets released episodically on YouTube over the course of about a year. The only way to see Heart of the Rebellion as a complete film is to be at the Elks on May 4. For a film made entirely in the Black Hills by Rapid City filmmakers, there was really only one place it could open.
Marc and his twin brother Michael, co-creator of the film, have been making films together since they got their first camera as kids. Their teenage films won awards on the festival circuit, including Best Narrative at the New York Trinity Film Festival. Both brothers went on to work as news reporters, videographers, and film critics at KOTA before founding Linn Productions.
Their films include the drama Imprint, the faith-based feature Until Forever, and the documentary Rocket Man, made with fellow filmaker and creative collaborator Toby Brusseau. Michael’s short comedy Market 175 screened at the Los Angeles Short Film Festival. Filmmaking has always been a family operation for the Linns. Their younger brother Nick Linn has appeared in many of their productions, and Heart of the Rebellion gives him his first lead role.
On the bigger shoot days he bussed nearly 60 extras out to the Badlands at 6 a.m. Some days it was just Marc with a camera and a boom mic tucked under his arm, calling up an actor or two and heading out to grab a shot or two. Jon Thompson, who plays Thad in the film, was in that mix for the better part of two to three years, and he’ll tell you the worst day on set was still better than the best day at his regular job. He was young, he wanted to act, and every shoot felt like practice. When Marc needed a set built, someone built it. Somebody always knew somebody who could solve the next impossible problem. Nearly 300 people have contributed something to this production over the years.
Some of the locations where they filmed early on are inaccessible now, gated off or privately owned. The technology to render certain effects didn’t exist when they started. They had to wait for the industry to catch up. Jon was 23 when they started shooting. His daughter was born that same year and she is 23 today. He says he’s looking forward to seeing how many familiar faces turn up at the Elks on May 4, people he hasn’t seen in years, some he hasn’t thought about in just as long.
Marc expects that nearly everyone he sees at the Elks on May 4 will have had a hand in this film somewhere along the way. Jon will be in attendance, curious about how much he’ll actually remember once he’s sitting in the dark. He takes his kids to the Elks every chance he gets. It’s his favorite place to give his money to in Rapid City. “As long as Rapid City has the Elks Theatre,” he said, “we will be a gem of the Midwest.”
Heart of the Rebellion_0004_Layer 6
Heart of the Rebellion_0006_Layer 4
Heart of the Rebellion_0007_Layer 3
Heart of the Rebellion_0009_Layer 1
Heart of the Rebellion_0000_Layer 10
Heart of the Rebellion_0001_Layer 9
Heart of the Rebellion_0002_Layer 8
Heart of the Rebellion_0003_Layer 7
“Everything that was significant in my life happened while I was filming this film,” Marc said. The hard years are in there. So is the humor. The film they wanted to make in 2003 wasn’t possible in 2003. The effects weren’t there. The experience wasn’t there. It took all of it to get here.
Marc has loved Star Wars since he was small enough that his dad built him a paper mache storm trooper suit for Halloween. On long road trips as a kid he would stare out the back window and pretend the highway lights were TIE Fighters. What fascinated him wasn’t just the world George Lucas built, but how Lucas told a story inside it. The way Return of the Jedi cuts between three battles simultaneously, everyone failing at once, all hope apparently lost, and then somehow it turns.
The anti-Luke is the story he wanted to tell. Where Luke Skywalker grew up sheltered on a farm with little real reason to turn toward darkness, Marc wanted to explorethe narritive of a boy who carried that darkness in him from the beginning, raised by good people but never quite free of what he was born into. When the Empire discovers him, he can no longer stay hidden. Marc wrote the original screenplay, then sat down with Michael and actor Keith Davenport, who plays the lead Jedi, to flesh the story out. Writing inside someone else’s universe comes with rules you can’t break. The arc is already written, and any story set inside that world has to respect where it’s all heading. Marc knew that going in and wrote the ending accordingly, his characters couldn’t simply rise up and win, and he never wanted them to.
Having the Black Hills at his doorstep was one of the biggest inspirations behind the film, and it shows. The variety alone makes it easy to forget you’re in South Dakota. The Badlands stretch out like a desolate moon. The granite ridgelines around Black Elk Peak look like somewhere a Jedi might train. Roughlock Falls could belong to any world in the galaxy, and Marc had the eye to shoot it that way. He grew up here, moved away after high school, and missed the Hills immediately. Getting back was always the goal. Looking at what they captured on screen, it’s hard to imagine this film being made anywhere else.
Michael has composed original music for Linn Productions films for years, and Heart of the Rebellion was always going to need its own sound. The brothers spent entire stretches of production focused on nothing but the score, working toward something that felt like Star Wars without borrowing from it. They wanted the music to be as original as the story.
af2af92a-57c7-4bc7-9602-e9dbe130bf30
55bfdc21-036f-4a4d-97fb-03efb2be0071
b484a896-b0ec-4d1d-afb2-f2a18fa413af
c731af45-ea9d-4b29-8238-70f2cf13c2bd
c3e1dcdd-705c-4e39-93cd-0b5dfba407d4
c148894b-a343-46ef-9857-8eb700e0e86c
3ac6b0e7-cbfc-486b-9f9e-5593d612e6eb
95f70b2e-dea2-4c1a-8c82-288e510ae93e
d42bd12c-8d40-492f-b5fb-ed23960571e4
61db9bfb-b6ab-4eb7-a69c-f830895d2f01
2b5bc3aa-2fe1-4013-aae9-b87c2c57fc99
As for why now, after all these years, Marc said he simply felt it was time. He had been telling people next summer for two decades. He recalled Michael putting it plainly: they owed it to their younger selves. Those two guys in their twenties who thought they could pull this off started something, and it was time to finish it.
Two weeks before the premiere, Marc was still at it, still editing, still finessing, still not quite satisfied. He wasn’t doing it alone. In the final stretch, Marc and Michael have been joined by Tristan Barnard, a fellow filmmaker and longtime collaborator, all of them pulling all nighters to get the edit done.
There were a hundred reasons to walk away and the brothers never took any of them. Marc has said it simply: none of it happens without the people who showed up. Family, friends, cast, crew, and a community that kept saying yes to one man’s crazy idea for twenty-three years.
Some of the locations they filmed at are gone now, gated off or privately owned. The people who made it are older, scattered, some no longer here. The technology they needed didn’t exist when they started, and yet on May the Fourth, at the Elks Theatre in downtown Rapid City, the film Marc Linn saw in his head in 2003 is finally going to be on the screen.
