Literally everyone said the same thing about why Numbers is important to them - ‘It’s accepted me more than any where else has in Houston.” “There’s incredible historical and musical legacy stuff that gets fleshed out, but at the heart of it really is this beacon of acceptance. “I never wanted to just make a music documentary,” Pontello says. To complete the film, they applied for grants, and launched a GoFundMe in 2015 to help finish the film. Pontello also got access to the venue’s archives, which included promotional videos created by Burtenshaw, and interviewed more than 200 people for the film. After interviewing Wren, the floodgates opened, and Pontello quickly learned about the venue’s four-decade importance as a gathering place for Houston LGBTQ+ community.įor the film, Pontello pored over the Gulf Coast Archive and Museum of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History, and spent hours reading issues of This Week in Texas magazine, the city’s now-defunct gay alt-weekly. Godwin also hired Wes Wallace, who has DJ’d the Friday night dance party Classic Numbers nearly every week since 1991.īut for Pontello, Numbers isn’t just a place for music. It was thanks to them that Numbers gained a reputation as a concert venue, often hosting up-and-coming and underground bands before they were known on a national basis. The name is, apparently, a reference to the fact that the club was a good place to score a potential mate’s phone number in the days before cell phones and the internet.īruce Godwin, who owned a local record store and regularly DJed at the club, and Robert Burtenshaw, a British video artist, bought the business in 1987. Wren, who died in 2014, originally operated the club as a dinner theatre of sorts, later transforming it into the gay dance club everyone now knows as Numbers. Pontello started their research for the film by finding the nightclub’s original owner, Beverley Wren, who founded the venue in the mid 1970s as The Million Dollar City Dump. They started to think of a way to share the unique - and uniquely Houston - story of Numbers, and the idea for a documentary was born. But even with the renowned nightlife in both of those cities, Pontello could never find a place like Numbers. And that’s how the love affair started.”Īfter high school, Pontello left Houston, living in places like Los Angeles and New Orleans, where they worked in TV and film and the wardrobe industry. “Kind of like HSPVA, I was in an accepting environment where I could dance all night and express myself and not be fucked with. Pontello quickly discovered Classic Numbers, the long-running Friday night dance party that still plays New Wave, goth, industrial, and other deep musical cuts from the 1980s.įor Pontello, who is gender non-conforming and uses they/them pronouns, the experience was transformative. Friends took them to Numbers for the first time in 2003, for a Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert. Originally from Pearland and now working as a clothing designer, Pontello attended the High School for Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA) when it was still located in the Montrose. Throughout the years, the club has developed a reputation as a haven for misfits of all ages - queer people, weirdos, art kids, punks, goths, and any other kind of outsider - thanks to its accepting ethos and 18-and-up age limit.Īccording to Pontello, they wer one of those misfit kids. Numbers, which first opened in 1978 as a gay disco, is one of the oldest continually operating alternative clubs in the United States. Over the past nine years, filmmaker Marcus Pontello dug deep into the club’s story, exploring the role it played in Houston’s gay rights movement in the 1980s, the AIDS crisis of the 1990s, and its sometimes shaky - but long-enduring - legacy as one of the city’s most important cultural icons. Almost a decade in the making, a new documentary that tells the story of one of Houston’s most iconic nightclubs is set to make its debut this month.Ĭalled Friday I’m In Love, the film focuses on the decades-long history of legendary Montrose nightclub Numbers, and will make its world premiere at the club on Saturday, July 31.
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