Brent Brandt brings big names to the Fargo Theatre

By Tylar Frame

tylarframephoto@gmail.com

Photo by Tylar Frame, Brent Brandt outside the Fargo Theatre, March 19, 2025

Over the past few years, Brent Brandt, a local teacher and lover of cinema, has welcomed a number of well-known actors to the stage of the Fargo Theatre. Most recently he served as emcee for the screening of The Breakfast Club with actress Molly Ringwald to close out the 25th annual Fargo Film Festival.

On Friday, March 28, Brandt will bring a familiar face to the theater for his screening of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film “The Outsiders.” C. Thomas Howell, who plays Ponyboy, will join Brandt and the audience for a Q&A after the movie.

Howell was cast as Ponyboy at just 15 years old. It was his breakthrough role, opening the door to a lifelong career as a successful actor. His credits include films like “Red Dawn” and “The Amazing Spider-Man,” as well as television shows such as “Criminal Minds” and “The Walking Dead.”

Bringing such well-known actors to Fargo is not always an easy feat.

“The first person you talk to doesn’t really wanna give you the time of day sometimes,” Brandt said. “You have to get through a few hoops before you can actually talk to [the actor].”

After many years of planning these events, Brandt has gotten pretty good at convincing actors that North Dakota is worth a stop. He usually tells them “about the great theater we have here in Fargo, the great people we have here…maybe they wanna cross off the Dakotas on their bucket list. That’s always a selling point that I have for them. Then it’s just trying to find a time in their schedule where they can make it work because most of them are still working actors.”

Brandt’s love for hosting film-related events began when he was living in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

“I was just a teacher who loved my theater and wanted to get movies playing again. Movies hadn’t played at the [Capitol Theatre] in Aberdeen since the ‘80s.”

Brandt and a couple of his friends decided to take matters into their own hands and started the South Dakota Film Festival. They wanted to bring the joy of cinema back to the nearly 100-year-old Capitol Theatre.

“We raised some money and got some filmmakers to attend, and every year it became more and more successful. We even brought Kevin Costner to town once.”

Brandt later moved to Fargo and brought his passion for hosting film-related events with him.

Nowadays, he spends a lot of time at the Fargo Theatre. In addition to his own events, he hosts the theater’s Classic Film Series, where he engages the audience with trivia and fun facts before each movie showing. Brandt was even the co-chair of the 2025 Fargo Film Festival.

“The Fargo Theatre is my favorite place in the world,” he said. “It’s everything. It’s the screen, it’s the pipe organ, it’s the classic marquee, it’s that it’s Downtown, and that it’s a staple of Fargo. It’s the only independent theater we have. [It] can run those movies that maybe aren’t going to be seen at the chain theaters. The popcorn is my favorite treat in town.”

If he had to pick just one thing that he enjoys the most about hosting events, it would be “getting new people excited about movies. There’ll be people there for my event that have never walked in the Fargo Theatre before and I love that. They’ll see the pipe organ for the first time, they’ll see the theater for the first time, they might watch ‘The Outsiders’ for the first time.

“We’re so used to watching movies at home, and you can watch ‘The Outsiders’ at home and it’s great, but watching ‘The Outsiders’ with a crowd is a different experience and that’s the way movies were meant to be seen.”

Doors open for the event at 6:00pm. The movie begins at 7:00pm with Q&A to follow. Tickets range in price from $8 to $43 and can be purchased via the Fargo Theatre’s website.