Jon Hamm was HERE
Jon Hamm came and visited the Bryant Lake Bowl and Theater December 31, 2021.
Yup, This is the best picture we could get without bothering him. He's in the white long sleeve shirt.
Actor Jon Hamm (no relation to the beer) soaks up Minneapolis' dive-bar scene around NHL game. Jan 3, 2022
"Mad Men's" Don Draper was spotted all over town at Palmer's, Dusty's and Bryant-Lake Bowl during the frigid weekend.
Hamm stopped at the Bryant Lake Bowl and Theater in Lyn-Lake, where he chatted with Blues fans.
Winona Ryder at the Bryant Lake Bowl and Theater
The diner and bowling alley featured in the film are also not actually found in Winona. Those shoots took place in Mickey's Diner in St. Paul and Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis.
Diners Drive-Ins and Dives
Season 4, Episode 6
The Minneapolis bowling alley serving up bison hash and trout-and-beet salad. Sorry, not on the menu anymore.
Beautiful Girls
Braynt Lake Bowl and Theater featured in the movie Beautiful Girls.
A movie featuring Matt Dillon, Rosie O’Donnell, Martha Plimpton, Natalie Prtman, Michael Rapaport, Uma Thurman and a few others was filmed at the Bryant Lake Bowl. Thanks to Anne Healy for finding us and also having Square Space film here for the Winona Ryder commercial in 2019.
An all-star cast sparks this captivating comedy about a group of old friends whose 10-year high school reunion creates some hilariously unexpected surprises. Willie (Timothy Hutton), Tommy (Matt Dillon), and Paul may have lost a bit of their youth, but they're still ready to party with Uma Thurman, Rosie O'Donnell, Lauren Holly, and Mira Sorvino -- the beautiful girls who've turned their lives upside down!
Released in February 9, 1996
Look for us as Paul (Michael Rapaport) proposes to his girlfriend while she is working at Minneapolis's bowling alley / restaurant Bryant Lake Bowl... she tells him no.
Martha Plimpton in Beautiful Girls
A Tiny Concert That Led to Big Things
Gaelynn Lea is a classically trained violinist and singer-songwriter from Duluth. She is known for her experimental, ambient take on fiddle music steeped in Celtic tradition, which incorporates a looping pedal. She was born with brittle bone disease, a congenital disability that has led her to play the violin upright, like a cellist. Gaelynn won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016, a competition including more than 6,000 musicians across the country. She submitted an original song, “Someday We’ll Linger in the Sun,” a unanimous favorite among the contest’s six judges–Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys and The Arcs, Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe of Lucius, Son Little, NPR’s Robin Hilton and Bob Boilen.
She has collaborated with many notable Minnesota musicians over the years, including Alan Sparhawk (from the band Low), Charlie Parr, and Billy McLaughlin. Her friendship and partnership with Sparhawk led to the creation of the band The Murder of Crows in 2012 and the record Imperfecta. Working with Gaelynn, Alan helped shape her sound by using the JamMan Express loop pedal and encouraging her to envision a solo career for herself.
Since winning Tiny Desk, she has toured nationally and abroad. But, recently, she made her way back to Minnesota for the last leg of her 2018 “Winter Escape” tour.
GaelynnLea 20180222 06 web
A Very Die Hard Christmas
A Very Die Hard Christmas
A Very Die Hard Christmas
Thursday, December 12, 2013 by Patrick Strait in Arts & Leisure City Pages
Admit it: Most Christmas movies are bullshit.
They're all focused on "love" and "togetherness," but they lack some of the most important elements of any holiday classic, like explosions and bloodshed. That is, ALMOST all Christmas movies.
Die Hard has cemented itself as the most badass of all Christmas movies, and this December you can see John McClane kicking serious terrorist ass with extreme yuletide prejudice at Bryant-Lake Bowl for the second annual performance of A Very Die Hard Christmas.
This week, we sat down with Josh Carson, the man sporting the iconic tank top, to learn more about the show, his love of Bruce Willis, and the time Minneapolis CSI almost shut him down.
Tell me about the show. When did you develop it? How long have you been performing it?
A Very Die Hard Christmas is the story of Die Hard retold as a beloved Christmas special, complete with songs, puppets, and bloodshed. It's a raucous, giddy salute to the original movie, as well as virtually every Christmas special you can remember. Last year was our first year performing with only five nights. We ended up selling out four, and were booked to come back the next December the night we closed.
By the end of the movie, John McClane is shirtless and covered in blood, so I have to be as well. In order to achieve that, I run into the parking lot and essentially have a bucket of fake blood poured onto myself. I spin around to quickly dry the blood so I don't create too much of a mess. It works, but it always looks like a horrible massacre happened in the parking lot.
The morning after one of our shows, two cooks went to take a break in the back parking lot only to find it taped off with crime-scene tape and a cavalcade of police offers, including the Minneapolis CSI team. Evidently, some passing police officers assumed something horrible occurred in the blood-spattered back alley. When they found out about the show, they quietly left. But not before grabbing a postcard to see when it was.
What made you decide to create a production based on Die Hard?
For years, my answer to "What's your favorite Christmas movie?" has always been Die Hard. This would inevitably lead to an ongoing debate about whether or not Die Hard was a Christmas movie. Aside from being the defining action movie that would change all action movies, it also contains every Christmas movie trope you can name. A regular guy trying to get home for Christmas? Check. Slithery bad guy who wants to steal people's Christmas? Check. Christmas miracles? You lose count of how many of those happen.
To cement that point, we "recast" some characters of the original Die Hard with some classic Christmas characters. The Burl Ives snowman is now Al, John's only friend on the outside. Jimmy Stewart and Hermey the Dentist Elf are among the terrorist team. Bing Crosby is an unscrupulous reporter that'll get the story no matter what.
As the years went on, I would find people who also shared those thoughts [that Die Hard is a Christmas film], and would watch the movie every year. Why not get all those people in the same room to watch the show at the same time in a theater that serves beer? That's a party I want to attend. Both production companies, Mainly Me Productions (my company) and Dana's Boys specialize in pop-culture-related shows, as well as creating the types of shows that attract audiences that don't usually seek out theater. This is the kind of Christmas show we'd want to attend. Also, this was going to be my only chance to be John McClane for real... kind of. I had to jump all over that.
Give us a ballpark number of how many times have you watched Die Hard?
I don't know that there's a number high enough. It's one of those movies that should you stumble across it on TV, you stop and watch. And it was a long-standing holiday tradition in my house growing up.
If someone has never seen the movie, are they going to understand the show?
Absolutely. It's a very faithful adaptation of the story of Die Hard -- and a part of the reason why this movie is such a classic is there is a story to tell. Granted, this is a Muppet Movie presentation of the story with McClane serving as the Kermit/straight man of the show, but we take it seriously. There are inside jokes about the movie as well as the franchise, but there are countless other Christmas classics that get skewered as well. And I happen to know for a fact that this production has inspired first-timers to seek out Die Hard on their own after seeing the show.
Where do you rank Die Hard in terms of the all time best holiday stories?
It is the best holiday story. And here's the clincher that wins the argument every time: If a story about an individual violently fighting off a team of bad guys attempting a high-profile robbery isn't Christmas movie material, then what's Home Alone? Game. Set. Match.
3 People Played together.
Dan Wilson, Caroline Smith, and Jeremy Messersmith turn on the charm at the Bryant-Lake Bowl. by Andrea Swensson · January 19, 2015 MPR
When it comes to intimate performance spaces, it doesn’t get much more in-your-face than the tiny confines of the Bryant-Lake Bowl’s 82-person capacity theater. On Sunday night, seeing the established and revered singer-songwriters Dan Wilson, Caroline Smith, and Jeremy Messersmith pour their hearts out from just feet away felt not just rare but dangerously special, like a sudden movement or sneeze from someone in the audience might just derail the whole show.
And so the small, squeezed-in group of attendees had no choice but to hold their breaths (and try not to pass out from the sweltering heat) as the performers took turns playing short sets and then filed out on stage to sing round-robin, beginning with a showstopping cover of the Everly Brothers’ “Don’t Forget to Cry.” With only acoustic guitars to accompany them, Wilson, Smith, and Messersmith pared down their songs to their most basic elements, and the room had no choice but to travel along on the ups and downs of every story and melody.
All three songwriters specialize in affairs of the heart, and as each song dug the knife a little deeper into the depths of heartache it was hard not to feel like a raw nerve that had been exposed to the elements—especially during the night’s highlight, “Someone Like You,” with Wilson and Messersmith tackling the high notes and Smith digging down deep into Adele’s sorrowful sighs. But there were also thankfully many, many moments of levity, especially when Wilson, Smith, and Messersmith sat side by side and fed off of one another’s charm and wit.
It was clear that Messersmith and Wilson already felt more than comfortable bantering back and forth—the pair have a long history of collaboration, including their work together on Messersmith’s 2008 album The Silver City—but it was Smith who kept the energy high and kept everyone on their toes.
When host Steve Seel asked Jeremy Messersmith about his signature Mad Men-era hairstyle and Buddy Holly glasses and Messersmith expressed dismay over having people care about his appearance, it was Smith who interrupted him to interject, “Welcome to every day of being a woman, Jeremy.” And when Wilson and Messersmith danced around the backstories to their songs and tried to out-clever one another during the round-robin, it was Smith who cut to the chase with bold, brief, and poignant explanations. “This one is for my mother, who taught me to keep moving on, no matter how many assholes you marry,” she blurted out before “Child of Moving On,” leaving the audience smirking and stunned as she launched into the song.
By the time she got to her aching “Bloodstyle,” it was clear that Smith was leading the show. With a wide grin, she turned to the audience and asked, “Do you want to see these guys be my back-up singers?,” then took off her bracelet and ring and put them on Wilson and Messersmith so they’d have the proper bling for the job. And when the trio sauntered back out for an unplanned encore, Smith took charge and commanded that Wilson end the show with a no-brainer: his Semisonic hit, “Closing Time,” performed in perfect three-part harmony.
Photos of the event.
Civil Wars played.
Here is a link to The Civil Wars performing Michael Jackson song Billie Jean at Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis, MN on April 17, 2011.
The Civil Wars was an American musical duo composed of Joy Williams and John Paul White. Formed in 2008, The Civil Wars won four Grammy Awards prior to their 2014 breakup.
Soccer Mommy
Soccer Mommy
with Madeline Kenney
Bryant Lake Bowl, Minneapolis
March 31st, 2018
by Michael Madden
Twenty-year-old Nashville native Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, followed a couple years of loose bedroom recordings with her first official album earlier this month. Produced by Gabe Wax (Fleet Foxes, the War on Drugs), Clean is a natural progression from those earlier sketches, its 10 introspective, sinuous songs exploring young-adult vulnerability and the downsides of romantic infatuation. Played with Madeline Kenney.
Photos by Christopher Goyette
