Tragedy & comedy at the movie house

“We should stay,” I told Mrs. Ericson and our friend Martha after the lights came up in the theater. “How often do we get to hear from the director of a movie we’ve just seen?”

A person at Olympia’s Capitol Theater was busy moving two matching armchairs and a small coffee table onto center stage. The three of us sat in the balcony, our tears either wiped or still drying on our faces.

We had just finished watching “East of the Mountains,” a movie filled with Washington connections. The movie was shot in Eastern Washington, it was directed by Western Washington resident S.J. Chiro and it stars a...