Yes, a film set has cropped up inside Concord’s beloved candlepin bowling alley. No, it’s not a mayonnaise commercial.
Anyone who has been inside Boutwells Bowling Center knows the something special it has going on. It’s not just the carpeted walls or the cozy booths but the people — from the leaguers to the families to the couples on nervous first dates who, every day, wear a little bit more of the finish off the wooden lanes.
Nashua’s Leda Lanes had it, too. Carson Lund knew that ineffable quality well.
Lund is an emerging filmmaker in Los Angeles with an elegiac and nostalgic lens. His breakout indy, 2024’s “Eephus,” lingered in the last game played by a Massachusetts sunset baseball league before its diamond would be bulldozed to make way for a middle school.
Lund is a Nashua North grad who went on to get a study filmmaking at Boston’s Emerson College. Leda Lanes was his local alley.
“Every time I’d come back home, I would see the alley changing, something new was added or altered,” he said. “It made my imagination run wild.”
Behind the curtain, Lund could sense the grind of a local business trying to keep its head above water, trying to keep a foothold in a changing suburban economy while retaining its soul.
Leda Lanes closed for good last year. It was torn down in October.
Lund’s current project, “The Pinsetter” chronicles a New England candlepin joint over a ten-year span from 1994 to 2004. Per its synopsis, “an aging, morally dubious candlepin bowling alley owner, Henry Nash, battles precarious finances, changing tastes in entertainment and a conniving local politician to keep the communal dream of his suburban alley alive at the turn of the 21st century.”
Nash and his “Nash Lanes” are a clear nod to Lund’s hometown. But the film is just as easily a celebration of Boutwell’s and of candlepin bowling itself.
Lund surveyed candlepin alleys across New England, still with the vision of Leda in his mind. They landed on Concord’s lanes as the stage on which “The Pinsetter,” would unfold.
Inside, Boutwell’s has been taken back 30 years. In a good way, it didn’t take much. The TV screens for scoring each lane are dated, the new carpeting screams retro and the prices for the beer behind the bar are tantalizingly deflated. Little details added for the film – like the imitation stained-glass light fixtures from Leda that Lund’s team was able to salvage – have brought added charm and zhuzh. Overall, though, it’s all Boutwell’s. Everything from the gold-toned carpet murals on the wall to the blonde sheen of the lanes already had the potential for Lund’s vision.
“We wanted a space that felt like it had like different layers of history already within it,” Lund said. “It had the bones we were looking for.”
Boutwell’s opened its doors in 1959, and for years was owned and run by Daniel Murphy, a frequent state champ and well-known instructor who is in the Candlepin Hall of Fame. Andy Dellas bought it in 2015 and, together with his son, Alex, runs it now.
Lund doesn’t see himself as a regular bowler, but he’s true to his New England roots in his respect for the precarious physics and artful play of candlepin.
This kind of bowling debuted in Worcester, Mass. in 1880, according to the International Candlepin Bowling Association. The balls are smaller, like a big grapefruit, and have no finger holes. The pins are light and slender cylinders (hence the sport’s name), and they remain on the lane in between bowls, making for some finicky strategy.
No one has ever bowled a perfect candlepin game, or even come close.
“I like that candlepin is something that people scratch their heads at,” Lund said. “It’s full of chance and failure, and you never know what you’ll get.”
Like small business and filmmaking, success in candlepin isn’t straightforward. There’s daylight between the pins, and they flip and spin in unexpected ways. Splits are common. A faster, more powerful bowl isn’t always a better one.
“You feel like you can wield this thing and control this smaller object, but it isn’t even about where you land it,” added Derrick Eppich, a producer. “I think what is so intriguing about it is how simple it seems, yet how frustrating it is.”
At the same time, the size of the ball and the lack of finger-holes makes candlepin more accessible to people of varying ages, strengths and mobility-levels.
“It’s a truly democratic sport,” Lund said. “The Candlepin Bowling Alley is a space where everyone can intersect and hang out.”
The sport is concentrated in New England, though some bowling alleys have both ten-pin and candlepin lanes. The candlepin-only spots are fading and, with the closure of Leda Lanes last year, Boutwell’s is now the largest such spot in the state.
This spring, the Dellases told customers they’d be closed for several weeks in the summer. The leagues would be cancelled and the lights turned off. It struck many as an odd move for peak season, especially given the decline of other candlepin alleys.
“Candlepin as a very niche sport and regional sport is like very endangered,” Lund said. “For an alley to close down for an extended period of time and potentially lose their core customer base and their leagues,” he continued, was no small ask. A lot of other places couldn’t take the risk.
When the ramp up to filming began in June, passersby noticed the out-of-the-ordinary. A packed parking lot at what was supposedly an out-of-business Rite-Aid. Bumper stickers identified the vehicle owners as part of studio lighting and production associations. People in funny outfits crossed the street between the former drugstore and the supposedly closed bowling alley.
Filming for the project concluded this week, though some crews will still be in the area, packing up.
The aim for the independent film is for a festival premiere next summer – “Eephus” showed at Cannes – before it arrives stateside.
Boutwell’s is scheduled to reopen later this summer.
