‘How to Save a Milestone’ is here to save your streaming scroll with online debut
The Milestone Club is singular in Charlotte.
History papers the walls, and it feels like time travel as you glide across the floor towards the stage. In a city with a constant gaze towards progress, The Milestone seemed like yet another relic left behind.
But the community saved it and then documented it.
“How to Save a Milestone,” a documentary from filmmakers Liz McLaughlin and Jason Arthurs, chronicled how The Milestone was almost lost until a group of its most loyal workers, fans and artists banded together to save it amidst the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
After a year on the road, the local documentary is finally available to the world as Amazon and Apple TV have picked the film up for streaming.
“It was a long, slow decision because everyone’s just asking when is it going to be on streaming? We’re like, you’re missing the point. We want people to come support these venues and see the film there. But once we kind of let that run its course, we started the somewhat grueling process of getting it on streaming,” Arthurs said.
“I was kind of surprised by just how quickly many people came to the screenings and then messaged us the day that the movie came out and said, ‘I’m streaming it,’ Liz added.
“And I was like, ‘Oh, you’re watching it again?’ Just that kind of feedback was really, really neat to see, either they’re showing friends or just literally re-watching it.”
Giving love to local venues
For McLaughlin and Arthurs, the goal was always to bring the film to venues around the Carolinas as a way to promote those spaces, like The Milestone, that were filled with local music history.
“Some of the screenings were 10 people, and we had somewhere there were 300 people,” Arthurs said.
“We were just completely blown away by how people received the film, the impact that it had in these venues that we screened it. Andy the Door Bum ended up basically playing a performance after almost all of those screenings. He became really involved in the film, and just believes in the message. He believes in The Milestone.”
McLaughlin added that especially in Charlotte, there was an appetite to celebrate the film with around eight screenings in the Queen City alone. “On a wider look beyond The Milestone, independent venues are really still an endangered species. And when we were first planning this tour of screenings, we even (aimed) for outside the Southeast. We had already picked up some venues for New York and in other areas. And we had a long list… okay, these would be great places to screen. Maybe we talked to the owner or something like that, and maybe 20% of them on our little list closed over the time before we first started looking and when we were booking out that tour. That’s just really eye-opening.”
In North Carolina, only 29% of independent stages identified themselves as profitable in 2024, according to a report from the National Independent Venues Association.
According to their findings, independent venues in North Carolina had a $2.4 billion economic impact in 2024, serving nearly 5 million fans and providing over 16,000 jobs. In 2024 alone, fans attending independent shows generated $193.8 million in off-site spending — filling hotel rooms, crowding local restaurants, supporting shops, and tipping drivers, according to the report.
“(The screening turnouts) were really rewarding because that is the call to action for the film, not just to tell The Milestone story, but to try to just shed light on how important these spaces are then we can’t take them for granted,” McLaughlin said.
“I think, with venues … maybe there was a tight moment where you had a GoFundMe or something. You think this place is safe, but it takes saving every day because there’s no end to it at any moment. Things can flip or the margins are so slim that they can change at any time. So it just really takes them (having) a continuous community that really cares to prop these spaces up to keep them alive.”
Now on streaming
Fans of The Milestone Club who may have missed the film screenings can now find it for rental on Amazon (starting at $4.99) and for streaming on Apple TV.
Now, a lot of these folks going to The Milestone may want an analog option as well? I mean these are people making it out to support local venues in person. So is there a DVD on the horizon?
“It’s just expensive to print (DVDs) and (we’re) just unsure how many people even who expressed interest would actually buy it,” McLaughlin said. “I don’t think that’s something we’re pursuing. But that’s something we’ve gotten a lot of comments on.”
“I don’t know. We’ll see if we can find an option that is this really cool thing,” Arthurs added.
This story was originally published January 8, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
