A highly anticipated sci-fi movie opened up in theaters with a special midnight showing this past Friday. For the Saturday edition of his town's newspaper, Ryan wrote a column about local interest in the movie. He found that the attendance for the midnight showing at his town's theater was 219 people. Among all the theaters in the state, attendance at the midnight showing had a mean of 261 people with a standard deviation of 19 people.
(a) Find the $z$-score of the attendance at the theater in Ryan's town relative to the attendances among all the theaters in the state. Round your answer to two decimal places.
\[
z=\square
\]
(b) Fill in the blanks to interpret the $z$-score of the attendance at the theater in Ryan's town. Make sure to express your answer in terms of a positive number of standard deviations.
The attendance at the theater in Ryan's town was $\square$ standard deviations (Choose one) $\mathbf{\nabla}$ the mean attendance among all the theaters in the state.

Step 1 ：Given that the attendance at Ryan's town's theater is 219 people, the mean attendance of all theaters in the state is 261 people, and the standard deviation of the attendance of all theaters in the state is 19 people.

Step 2 ：We can calculate the z-score using the formula \(z = \frac{X - \mu}{\sigma}\), where \(X\) is the attendance at Ryan's town's theater, \(\mu\) is the mean attendance of all theaters in the state, and \(\sigma\) is the standard deviation of the attendance of all theaters in the state.

Step 3 ：Substituting the given values into the formula, we get \(z = \frac{219 - 261}{19}\).

Step 4 ：Solving the above expression, we get \(z = -2.21\).

Step 5 ：This means that the attendance at the theater in Ryan's town was 2.21 standard deviations below the mean attendance among all the theaters in the state.

Step 6 ：Final Answer: (a) The z-score of the attendance at the theater in Ryan's town relative to the attendances among all the theaters in the state is \(\boxed{-2.21}\).

Step 7 ：(b) The attendance at the theater in Ryan's town was \(\boxed{2.21}\) standard deviations below the mean attendance among all the theaters in the state.