By JOE KERNAN

There is hardly a native Rhode Islander alive who is over the age of 15 who does not have a personal memory of Rocky Point Park and many older people have even more memories of the amusement park that could have justifiably been called “the people’s resort.”

Thirty-two-year-old David Bettencourt, a Burrillville youngster who grew up to be a mature filmmaker, has done his best to preserve the essence of Rocky Point for those unfortunates who never had a chance to experience it first hand. Bettencourt’s documentary, “You Must be This Tall,” is the story of Rocky Point as only a lover could tell it.

“Everyone that goes to see it is going into the theater with memories of Rocky Point,” he said, as he set up his equipment for a showing at the Narragansett Theater last week. “That’s what makes it interesting for me. Everyone is walking away from the film talking about Rocky Point.” 

“You Must Be This Tall” spans the history of the amusement park, which has been an escape mechanism for Rhode Islanders since the mid 1800s. It presents an accurate picture of the ups and downs of the park, from its hey day in the era of the streetcar to its sad decline and death at the hands of time and the revolution of American entertainment from the public place, like the park, to the contracted world of television, video games and personal electronics.

Bettencourt said it was a trip to the Six Flags amusement park in Connecticut with his family and his seven-year-old son that planted the seed of the project in his mind.

“He’s the reason why I did it,” said Bettencourt. “We went to Six Flags and he was so excited, he was asking when we would do it again. Then it occurred to me that we don’t have anything like Rocky Point in Rhode Island anymore. We don’t have a place that a family can go and spend a whole day.”

When he realized how much such a place meant to his boy, he mined his own memories and then prospected for other people’s accounts of the amusement park that was so central to coming of age in Rhode Island until it closed in 1995.

He touches on every era in the park’s history and tells stories that may or may not be known to people who remember the park.

He follows the park through fires, hurricanes, through several renovations right up to the uncertain future that it faces now.

Old paintings, old photos, old home movies and the living memories of older fans come together in what is both a virtual resurrection of the Rocky Point experience and an extended elegy that mourns its passing. He even resurrects one of the least notable presidents in American history and notes how Rutherford Hayes made a phone call to Alexander Graham Bell from Rocky Point.

“They were absolutely thrilled to hear from us,” Bettencourt said of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center. “Apparently they don’t get too many visitors.”

Bettencourt of course includes memories of the Shore Dining Hall, the “Largest in the World.”

“You Must Be This Tall” was easier to conceptualize than it was to realize. Even though he did find old footage, Bettencourt cleverly integrated his own filming into the movie seamlessly.

“I used Super-8 film and 16 millimeter film to create a grainy look to the new stuff we shot,” he said. “The old rides don’t exist anymore so we went to other parks that had the same rides that Rocky Point had and filmed them. A lot of the rides were auctioned off and ended up in other parks.”

But to ask for total veracity from a filmmaker is to ask a filmmaker to leave his imagination out of the movie and that’s not what Bettencourt did. He wasn’t after a definitive and detailed account. He wanted to create the Rocky Point people remember, which will never be the same memory. Bettencourt is first and foremost a filmmaker and not a historian, although he relied heavily on expert advice from people like historian Donald D’Amato and a number of former employees, one of which uses the salt language you would expect from a roustabout.

Bettencourt also did a fine job of recreating the graphics of the park and credits designer Ryan Arruda for giving the picture the period look that Bettencourt was after and people remember.

Now that Bettencourt has done a more than creditable documentary, he now looks forward to making feature films, his original ambition.

“I messed around in high school making short movies,” he said. “Movies of skits that were influenced by British comedies like Monty Python and Are You Being Served.”

Bettencourt, who now lives in Cranston, attended URI with every intention of being a writer, but movies insinuated their way into his life and he went on to film school at Boston University.

“That’s where I got to use better equipment,” he said. “That’s where I made what I call my first ‘big boy’ film.”

In addition to British comedy, Bettencourt cites George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, George Romero and Sam Raime, among others as influences – not exactly well-known documentarians. For the short time that “You Must Be This Tall” is on the screen, Rocky Point lives again. That’s an achievement anyone could be proud of.

But, as much as he is pleased to see “You Must Be This Tall” succeed, he is also anxious to move on to other projects.

“We made this movie that has put our name out there,” he said. “Now we’ll see what comes next.”

You Must Be This Tall is currently playing at the Warwick Showcase Cinema at

Call 736-5454 for the times and screening room.