This pig is the main attraction at a small-town movie theater

NEWTON, Ia. — There are three things Dawn Bleeker wants you to know about Joy, the pig who passes her days in a movie theater:

First, Joy does not like change. On a recent afternoon, she roamed around her room quite unhappy with how the desk had been pushed against the wall, the fan was taken out and the general clutter, which she delights in making, was picked up.

Second, Joy is sort of a ham. Always ready for her close-up, Joy’s red-painted toenails tapped, and her dress — resplendent with taffeta and emblazoned with cartoon popcorn buckets (her favorite food) — swished and crunched in her angry roaming.

Third, Joy is not your average hog. An American Mini Pig, Joy is a local celebrity, performing tricks and entertaining patrons as the mascot of Newton's Capitol II Theatre. Her popularity, paired with strong community support, helped the small cinema, owned by the Bleekers, bounce out of bankruptcy and into the black, the family said.

“Joy is what separates us from other theaters,” Bleeker said, sitting in Joy’s room. “She is our identity. Sure, there’s a big, new movie theater with recliners in Altoona, but we have something special. We have Joy.”

The Capitol is one of a handful of small-town Iowa theaters that have celebrated rebirths recently, often spurred by dedicated community members. In Knoxville, a movie theater built in 1926 was restored and reopened in December through the will of two 20-somethings and hundreds of volunteers. Other historic cinemas in Mount Pleasant, Webster City, Burlington and Washington have also been reinstated in the past five years.

Nationally, it’s hard to determine how many small-town theaters have been refurbished, said Richard Fosbrink, executive director of the Theatre Historical Society of America. But he has heard of a lot more restoration projects recently, he said, suggesting that communities all over the country are banding together to salvage their local theaters.

“People are realizing that theaters are important community gathering places,” he said. “And, for many, the nostalgia factor is kicking in. The local theater was where something special, something magical, happened in their lives, and they want to see it saved.”

Joy is the first pig Fosbrink has ever known to abide at a movie theater, but he knows of a few cinemas that have house cats or dogs. In some ways, Fosbrink said, the eccentricity of having a pig at the Capitol hearkens back to the early 1900s, “when theaters would run weird contests like pie-eating or greased pig wrestling just to get people in the door.”

“A theater is a business, first and foremost,” he said, “so I always tell people: Do whatever you can to set yourself apart.”

Enter: Joy.

Today, 4-year-old Joy is a fixture as important to the theater’s daily operations as projectors and a popcorn machine, Bleeker said. But this swine’s journey to cinema mascot was as full of emotional ups and downs as the best romantic comedies — and the Bleekers had to endure eight "emotional" months of setbacks before they got their Hollywood ending.

Securing the swine

Bleeker has been obsessed with pigs since childhood. She started collecting any porker paraphernalia she could get her hands on at age 8, but really went hog-wild when the trend of owning potbellied pigs peaked in the 1980s, she said.

“I think it’s their little snouts that I like, and their tails. They’re just so darn cute,” Bleeker said.

When the family decided to look into adopting a piglet in 2011, they discovered that pigs were banned as pets under a Newton city code that said “all swine are dangerous,” she said.

The Bleekers crafted a plan to add the phrase “with the exception of miniature pigs” to the code and went to work gathering information, getting neighbors’ signatures and “changing minds” about mini pigs. They approached the City Council and were denied.

Bleeker’s husband and three daughters took the denial as a setback, but she saw it as her dream of owning a pet pig slipping away. Newton is a small town, and hurtful scuttlebutt traveled quickly, she said.

“There were allegations being made around town that I was bringing a mean, aggressive pig into my home that would jeopardize my children, which was obviously wrong,” she said. “But people who didn’t know me or know anything about pigs were the ones saying that, and that was just hard for me to handle.”

Bleeker looked over at Joy, who had flopped onto her side for a quick rest in the center of her room. The pig’s dress scrunched as she pushed aside her toy piano, which she can play with her snout.

“I mean, this is not livestock. This is domesticated,” Bleeker said. “This is not a food source. This is a baby that lives inside.”

Eventually, the Bleekers returned to the City Council, and the vote swung their way: 6-1 in favor of pigs as pets.

The next day, Joy flew from Texas to her new home in Iowa.

Reviving a 'dead town'

A few months after Joy joined the Bleekers, the local movie theater where Dawn Bleeker worked part time went bankrupt. With the theater closed, the downtown seemed like a “dead town,” said Madison Bleeker, 17.

“It used to be that all the kids would have their moms drop them off at the theater, but when it closed, there was nothing to do,” she said. “We needed something to do.”

Dawn Bleeker just couldn’t imagine her town’s future without a theater, she said, so with the entire family’s buy-in, the Bleekers decided to purchase the historic movie house.

The family took two weeks to repaint and repair the building before reopening under their ownership. There were a lot of early mornings and late nights, Dawn Bleeker said. And after fighting for so long to get Joy, it seemed cruel to leave her in the family’s often-empty house.

“No one really knew what we were in for when we decided to do this,” she said. “We were spending 17 hours a day at Capitol, so we turned the office into a living space and spent all of our family time here.

“Since Joy is a part of our family,” she added, “it seemed only natural to bring her along.”

So they did.

As Bleeker spent hours learning the finer points of theater ownership, Joy was there. As more than 60 volunteers helped paint, clean and prep for the theater’s grand reopening, Joy was there. As electricians and plumbers donated their time to make sure the theater was shipshape for the festivities, Joy was there.

Ever the social butterfly, Joy became so beloved in town that a local radio personality suggested she be the public face of the theater.

He even proposed a tagline: “Capital II Theater: Where every movie brings out Joy.”

Showing off the sow

Joy used to wear a little magenta usher’s uniform, complete with a pillbox hat, to greet patrons when the Capitol first opened in fall 2012. Although she was almost always leashed, Joy walked all around the theater’s lobby and screening rooms, seeking out popcorn kernels wherever and whenever she could.

The theater’s business picked up quickly after it opened, and Bleeker attributes part of that to Joy.

“People just loved her,” Bleeker said. “She was a draw for us. She still is.”

“Seniors, kids, everyone knows Joy,” said Newton resident Kari Kennedy, 32. “And there are people who come down to see a movie just so they can see Joy, and people who come to this theater instead of another just to see Joy.”

But a pig in a movie theater wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. The Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals (DIA) received an anonymous complaint a few months after the Capitol opened that “a pig was running loose in a theater,” said Dave Werning, a spokesman for the department.

The responding inspector told Bleeker to keep Joy at home until she could obtain a variance — a kind of special dispensation — from the department.

The Bleekers quickly applied and the DIA agreed, but with some stipulations: Joy is allowed only in her viewing room and outside the marquee while the theater is open to the public.

“This is, to my knowledge, the first (variance) we’ve issued for a pig in a movie theater,” Werning said.

The Hollywood ending

Even though Joy’s movements have been restricted, her hometown fame hasn’t dimmed. Patron Julie Richtsmeier, 47, called Joy “the town’s mascot.”

“People come in, and they are just excited to see her,” Bleeker said. “To see their expressions and catch them talking to her, it just brings a smile to my face. I like to think she brightens up people’s lives, if only for a few minutes.”

Back in Joy's room, Madison Bleeker shook Joy awake to change her out of her popcorn dress and into a Batman cape in preparation for the opening of the “Batman v Superman” movie.

Three-year-old Bryce Ohmstead’s eyes widened into flashbulblike orbs when he saw Joy in her room. “Batpig!” the little boy said, his face pressed against the glass.

Joy waddled up to her door, her red-painted toenails tapping, and rubbed her new outfit on the glass.

All decked out for the evening’s premiere, she was definitely ready for her close-up.