H.G. Webb is something of a James Stewart type, silver-haired and blue-eyed with a sharp suit jacket and a contagious laugh. He has a lean frame, the result of being a runner for roughly four decades — he doesn’t run anymore, he’s clear to point out, but rather jogs every day. Webb is a Belcourt board member, financial adviser and dedicated patron, and he loves the institution and the staff with palpable glee. He calls the arthouse theater’s employees his “Belcourt family.” A Vanderbilt grad and Vietnam War veteran, Webb worked for a time in the finance division at General Electric before coming up with a plan — an idea for a vertically integrated manufactured housing company. He was successful enough to pay off a $150,000 loan nine months early, making good on his pledge of sweat equity as collateral. In his words,“18-hour days, seven days a week, and 24 hours a day if that’s what’s required.” By the time he was 37, Webb had sold his company for what he politely refers to as a “substantial amount of money,” and from there he found further success as a Chartered Financial Analyst and turnaround specialist.
Humble and hesitant to take credit for his own success, Webb points out that if it weren’t for the banker who gave him the business loan, or his family, or his co-workers at GE or — most of all — his wife Nina, “It never would have happened. Never.” When it comes to the theater, he praises Tom Wills, a founder of the Belcourt YES! nonprofit group, who purchased the building in 2003 and sold it to Belcourt YES! In 2007 for “hundreds of thousands of dollars less than he could’ve.” He praises Belcourt executive director Stephanie Silverman, whom he describes as a “dynamo,” for overseeing the theater’s massive renovations last year.
Were you drawn to the Belcourt because of a love of movies, or because of a love of community, or both? In the beginning it was strictly selfish. It was love of the great films that were being shown here. I became aware of these films — Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa, just these great, great films — and the only place that you could see them was at the Belcourt. You couldn’t even see them in Atlanta or St. Louis, but if you lived in L.A. or New York you could, and then here we are, this gem, this Belcourt. It’s where we can see these great films, and that’s why I was interested in it.
It seems like last year’s expansion and renovation have really afforded the Belcourt the ability to reach out to young people and people with special needs a lot more. With the rebirth of the building, do you feel like there has been a rebirth of the Belcourt as an institution as well? I’m beyond proud of what we do in that, because we’re touching the lives of these kids, and we’re making their future better, and we’re a positive influence on these kids. … The [education and engagement] screenings, plus the seminars that are conducted with that, the Q&A sessions that this has allowed us to do, and now with the screening room that we have, the third theater if you will, even though it seats less than 40 people. What an advantage for us to be able to expand our programming.
And the new Manzler-Webb Screening Room has your name on it. How do you feel about that? I’m honored by that. When Stephanie called and told me about it, Nina and I were humbled and proud. It wasn’t necessary, it wasn’t needed. We don’t do what we do for the Belcourt to see our name on the wall or on the screening room, but of course we’re very, very humbled and very proud of that.
In terms of both service and breadth of programming and everything else, you really don’t get an experience like the one at the Belcourt anywhere else. I know every one of [the employees], their names and all, and it’s because they’re important to me. It’s not fake, it’s not phony, and I let them know how much they’re appreciated. There’s a poem, “One Small Rose,” and the last verse of it is this: “Send me all your flowers now, whether white or pink or red / I’d rather have one blossom now, than a truckload when I’m dead.” That’s the way I feel. If you like someone, let them know. … I hear people my age, and they say, “Well, if I could live my life over, H.G. … Well, if I could do this over again.” Well, you can’t. “Of all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been’ ” [a quote from the poem “Maud Muller” by John Greenleaf Whittier]. This is it, Jack! This one time is it, so you get the most out of every day, every second of every minute, because there aren’t any guarantees.
