By SANDRA CHARLES 
Los Alamos 

Thank you Rebecca Li for your letter to support keeping the Reel Deal as a theater.

When I read the county was considering converting it into a ‘tween center, I was appalled. That idea is so counter-intuitive when we look at the goals for how our future Los Alamos could evolve. If the theater is converted into something we do not really need, our town will just have to build another one in the near future!

If our teens and ‘tweens can’t bring themselves to share the existing center, then we could at least preserve the Reel Deal as a two- or three-screen theater, while using the remaining space as a ‘tween center’. 

I have viable information directly from locals involved with the filming of the new Oppenheimer movie that writer and director Christopher Nolan is creating an epic presentation that will be “the defining film about J. Robert Oppenheimer,” and that Nolan is “going for Best Picture and Best Actor awards.”

These goals are entirely possible, considering the experience and esteem Nolan brings to its production, as well as the many Oscar-winning stars he has casted. The film is scheduled for release in the summer of 2023, and here we would be…Los Alamos, where the Manhattan Project was the founding event, where Robert Oppenheimer spent the most formative part of his life other than his childhood, and where, in a town of 18,000 people, we do not even have a theater to show it!

This film could be a blockbuster, and will quickly put Los Alamos on the map of great destinations in the Southwest. There could be opening events sponsored by our Los Alamos Historical Society/Museum in collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce. We could invite the tourist world to watch the Oppenheimer movie in one of its most important locations, then to explore the town and find the spots where its most compelling scenes were filmed.

 I am not a business person, but surely there are movie-loving entrepreneurs out there with a sense of pride in our history and community, who would enjoy managing such a theater. SAVE THE REEL DEAL!