I think I can say that from our first real meeting, an afternoon at the beer garden (me gobbling down one beer after the other and babbling endlessly about my American grandfather and why The Godfather Part 2 was the greatest movie ever), we were immediately good friends and became more so with every next one. We were soon a happy couple, and to this day I have never been separated from Ursula for more than one day (with the exception of one week early on, when she was on an excursion in Italy, but even I visited her there).
At the exact same time of meeting Ursula many other things were going on in my life. My part in both the film club's cinema and Lyssa humana were undiminished when work was concerned, but I was becoming more and more estranged with the people involved, especially with the film club. I was playing in a second, slightly more conventional band, Flaxman Family/Hammersmith, and for years was preparing the production of a self-written and produced opera which was all done with a whole new group of friends and which was very large in scope. It turned out to become a rather abstract piece of musical theater, but was enormously successful.
And together with some members of Lyssa humana and another friend we were preparing to found a cinema of our own. There was an old cinema (actually the oldest in town being founded in 1918) that had over the years degenerated from trash movies to skin flics and ended as a porn theater and had been closed for 2 years already. After a lot of negotiations we were able to take it over as a group of 4 friends. I'll always remember when I broke the news to Ursula: we kept the project top secret, but I got the permission from my friends to tell Ursula. On an extreme cold winter day (it had minus 20°C) I invited her out to a cafe and spilt the news. Then I took her over the Old Stone Bridge and showed her the place which looked pretty ruined and needed a lot of renovation, which we managed within 3 months opening in March 1991.
The new cinema, Stali, dominated my activities for the next 10 years. I spent more time there than in my own apartment which I more or less only used for sleep. The first year we were prepared for hardship, and I had to do a day job, since we didn't pay out any of us from the cinema's minimal profit. I did all the programming which included negotiations with the distributors and conceiving the monthly program all with the lay-out and print of a several-page leaflet and I did more or less all screenings, at times 7 days a week.
I also still continued my previous activies and even tried to finish my diploma at the university, but it was just too much. By and by I withdrew from nearly everything else till it was only the Stali I worked for, although we also did concerts, exhibitions and other events there as well. Over the 10 years of the cinema I was the only person actually always present together with Ursula who didn't work on a daily basis at first.
It would now be very complicated (and would include many melodramas and stories), but not everything went well. By the end of the first year all friends (except me) feared the financial risk, became hostile to each other or just didn't want to work that much anymore, anyhow they all wanted out. It's complicated since they sold their parts to a third party, a movie distributor, who more or less took over, but with me as leftover...The advantage was that I got an agreement that no matter what, I would get paid, so from then on I had a real income and didn't need a day job anymore. It was nevertheless still at least 50 hours a week of work. The new partner sold his part to another local cinema owner after a few years, but I stayed in. When that partner withdrew in 1998 I finally became sole owner of the cinema (with Ursula's full participation), something I never really had aimed for, but that's how it turned out.
I could tell so many stories about my cinema which included a lot of fights and grief, an extremely straining and hostile competition with other local cinemas (and my friends, the film club!) besides the everyday problems. Ursula stayed with me through all the thick and thin of it and I admire her all so much more and am thankful, because without real love nobody would have voluntarily gone through all this and the final harrowing end of it in 2001.
One part I should mention, though: in the mid 90s some friends and I opened a film store called The Angry Red Planet selling movie books, posters, soundtracks etc, but also a lot of independent music, it was halfways a music store, of course. This went parallel with my work at the cinema, but unfortunately it went apart, not for financial reasons per se, but again personal problems. One lesson I can give you all: never do business with friends!
Since many ask: we did not close the cinema because we didn't make it, much to the contrary, I planned to keep this business as my life's achievement. What happened was: we did not own the building, we paid rent. The owner sold it and the accompanying house to a dubious business agglomeration which stayed anonymous throughout the whole transaction. They first pushed in a company as a front who bought the complex then resold it back to themselves after they had cleared the area. I spent 1.5 years at court to rescue the cinema. The contract was there stating my right to keep and prolong it, but since there had been so many changes in the ownership of the cinema the judges more or less capitulated (even said so), the legal situation was too complicated. So in doubt what do they do? They rather give it to an anonymous obviously not quite legal multi-million business than defending the rights of a simple self-employed cinema owner. In the end I lost, the cinema was torn down and a building with chicken shack apartments was built instead.
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