By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Although I saw Utah’s Trappist monks at their old Huntsville monastery all the time, I never expected them to make an appearance at the state’s best known alternative movie house. Now I know, however, that the monks were there too.
Originating as a private viewing room for local film distributors, the Blue Mouse Theatre—set in a small building just four blocks from Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City—opened its doors to the general public in the early 1970s. For about two decades thereafter, the Blue Mouse was the place to watch movies you probably could not see anywhere else.
The Blue Mouse was a unique cinematic venue. It had a storefront facade and nondescript marquee. The lobby housed a small art gallery. The underground theatre literally was subterranean—a basement screening room with only about a dozen rickety rows and approximately 100 threadbare seats.
It was lots of fun while it lasted, but VCRs and watch-at-home videos eventually killed it. In a March 1990 eulogy-of-sorts, The Salt Lake Tribune’s film writer (and later editor) Terry Orme called the movie house “an institution” among local “film aficionados.” He noted that the Blue Mouse had offered “a consistent selection of European, Asian and off-beat American films.”
He was right. I saw the 1922 silent but chilling German vampire film Nosferatu there. Friends and I also watched the cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show, where the costumed sideshow performers were as interesting and entertaining as the movie. Law school classmates joined me at the Blue Mouse to sing along with Stop Making Sense, the 1984 David Byrnes Talking Heads concert film.
I was there too when the Blue Mouse screened Thérèse, a 1986 French film about the mystical life of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux directed by Alain Cavalier. For years, I had assumed that Thérèse was the only religious-themed film the theatre had shown, but I was wrong. The Blue Mouse once also featured Utah’s own Trappist monks.
In 1983, University of Utah film student Steve Lawrence Peterson traveled to Northern Utah’s Ogden Valley with his friend LuDean Robson. LuDean’s mother grew up in Huntsville, her grandfather was a former mayor of the small town, and her extended family members still farmed and ranched in the lovely mountain valley.
During their road trip, LuDean took Steve to visit her family’s friends and neighbors—the Trappist monks at the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity. Steve admired their beautiful farm, bought some of their homemade bread and honey, and met some of the monks. The Catholic monastics fascinated the Latter-day Saint painter and filmmaker.
Steve decided to make his first college film project—a documentary—about the monks. He got permission to film at the abbey, recorded their Gregorian chant, interviewed one of the resident Trappist priests, and devoted the next three years to creating and editing a black and white movie with the simple title Monastery.
Steve showed his 12 minute film first to appreciative classmates and then to a larger approving audience at the University of Utah student film festival. Next, he screened it for a delighted audience of monks at the monastery. There, Steve got perhaps the best monastic review for which a moviemaker can hope. A monk told him the film resembled one made by the award-winning director John Ford, who was famous for Stagecoach (1939), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).
And finally, in the late 1980s, the Blue Mouse agreed to show it too. Steve loved the Blue Mouse, and rarely missed any of the theatre’s regular showings of Marx Brothers movies. He was thrilled to screen his Monastery documentary there too, along with several other shorts. Yet, when his film ended, the packed room initially was silent.
One might have worried that the crowd of cinema sophisticates would have no use for a film about simple men devoted to God. Instead, the silence was a moment of reverence and collective contemplation. The crowd then applauded loudly. One viewer said he actually forgot he was watching Catholic monks because the film depicted “something we could all identify with.” Steve appreciated the compliment. He felt the same way about the Trappists.
Some three decades later, both the Blue Mouse and the Huntsville Trappist monastery have gone dark now, beloved bygones of a different era. Steve Peterson, the independent artist and thoughtful filmmaker, is still here. In his own way he is trying to preserve the spirit of both institutions. He is working on an extended and updated Monastery documentary.
I don’t know just where or exactly when it will happen yet, but I can’t wait to see it.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, will be published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
