In March 2020, Adam Bergeron was starting to wonder if he had made a big mistake. He and his team had decided to temporarily close the Balboa Theater in response to reports of a rapidly spreading virus, but other cinemas remained open. Was he needlessly missing out on earnings?
The next week, he had his answer: Every theater in the city went silent. Some never opened again, and the rest stayed empty for at least a year, with the Balboa only reopening in May 2021. In those 14 months of closure, Bergeron and other theater owners kept busy with outdoor events, virtual screenings, and other out-of-theater programming to keep their businesses afloat.
As we emerge into some sort of new normal, those changes aren’t going away. The Balboa continues to mix in a couple live performances a month, while others have drastically altered programming to adapt as older adults and parents of young children appear reluctant to come back to the movies.
The highest-profile example is the Castro Theatre, the city’s iconic single-screen palace, which is now operated by Another Planet Entertainment (APE), best known for the Outside Lands festival. APE has big plans for concerts and other live events and is changing the venue’s interior space.
The Roxie, which has been screening films in the Mission for more than a century, has increased live shows, says executive director Lex Sloan, such as concerts, dance, filmmaker Q&As, and drag shows. The 4 Star Theatre in the Richmond, which Bergeron’s company CinemaSF now operates and is renovating, will serve food, beer, and wine — and include a café and gallery space — when it reopens. (Hopefully in July, Bergeron adds.)
These venues are pulling through, according to Landmark Theatres cofounder and industry veteran Gary Meyer, who left Landmark in 2000, because they’ve gone beyond the projector. “More and more theaters are going to have to start thinking on those terms,” he says. After nearly 50 years in the film business, he says the last two years are the most difficult he’s ever witnessed for small cinemas.
‘I love this neighborhood’
For the Roxie’s Sloan, unorthodox programming was the only option during the 434 days the theater was shuttered. It hosted drive-in satellite screenings for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival at Fort Mason and collaborated with the Balboa on drive-in screenings at Pier 70. The Roxie also tried virtual screenings, but they earned a paltry 8 percent of the theater’s 2019 in-person revenue. The real financial support, Sloan notes, came from donations and memberships while the theater was closed.
The Balboa had the advantage of a curbside parklet for socially distanced screenings, fueled by popcorn and T-shirts sold from the ticket window. (The Roxie is ineligible for a parklet because its frontage is occupied by a bus stop.)
The Balboa parklet became a community hub, and Bergeron says this strengthened ties with neighbors: “During this whole thing, I think everybody looked around and went, ‘I love this neighborhood. Let’s just continue to support.’”
The Roxie reopened in May 2021, and Sloan says it is “hopefully approaching a place where we can break even.” It has sold out several screenings since March.
A December drag show at the Roxie starred filmmaker and longtime performer Peaches Christ, who has been hosting Midnight Mass — a series of “drag queen cult movie celebrations” — at SF cinemas since the late 1990s. “God, I made a whole movie about my fear of losing single-screen movie theaters,” Christ says, adding that now is the time to rally around the cinemas that have survived the last two years.
The Castro deal
Around the time Bergeron was second-guessing his decision to close the Balboa, Christ was wondering if she’d have to cancel a big live show at the Castro, a drag parody of the 1992 film Death Becomes Her. After several false starts, the show will finally hit the Castro in August. Beyond that, who knows? The new management has not said if it will raise rates to book the venue, according to Christ: “When [my events] don’t do well, I lose my shirt. There was no deal struck, but they said their intention was to continue doing business with me and to make it work.”
APE spokesperson David Perry says the company was working with community groups and performers to set rates that work for everybody. It is too early to say whether those rates will be different from the rates performers are used to, he adds.
Contracts for performers are just one of many concerns about APE’s Castro acquisition. Another is the initial plan to replace orchestra-level seating with tiered standing room, which Perry says is not final. (Current seating arrangements will be in place at least until the end of the year.)
If it goes through, Landmark’s Meyer says the renovation would ruin “the sight lines and the whole atmosphere.”
Bergeron shares the seating concerns, but is hopeful the Castro will continue to be a home for local film festivals, even if the days of Casablanca matinees are over. Bergeron is also glad APE can fund some overdue repairs; the company has already installed a new sound system and plans to fully restore the interior.
“Another Planet is a good operator,” Meyer remarks, estimating the company can only host 50 to 60 events a year. “That means there are 300 days where they need something going on, and they definitely want film to be a part of that.” (Frameline’s 46th annual LGBTQ+ festival is on next month’s agenda, and Perry says that “there will always be films at the Castro.”)
Then and now
San Francisco was once a major capital for film festivals and cozy screening rooms. For a brief time in the 1990s, Landmark was operating six art houses within SF, including the Clay, Lumiere, and the Embarcadero Center theaters. Only the Opera Plaza fourplex remains.
Don’t blame it all on COVID. Even before the pandemic, cinemas were competing with streaming services. “Attendance [at the Balboa] was definitely waning, and it doesn’t take long for these little movie theaters to falter and teeter,” Bergeron says.
When people these days are willing to put on pants and brave traffic or transit for entertainment, according to Meyer, they’re more likely to choose a play, concert, or other limited-time show that they can’t get at home. For movie theaters, hosting live events is no picnic. They’re expensive to produce and generally loud enough that other events in the theater can’t be happening simultaneously.
The Balboa hosts one or two concerts a month because they’re “fun and cool and an alternative way to spend an evening,” but Bergeron never expects them to be profitable, and says the Balboa’s “best bet is still to book popular movies.”
But venues like the Roxie will continue to experiment with a different mix, fingers crossed that pandemic-weary San Franciscans will embrace nights out — and the shared communities that gather in these spaces.
Whether it’s watching French New Wave films, midnight horror camp, or a live show, it’s the crowd and the setting that matter.
“These cinemas, especially these old single-screen theaters, became like churches to us,” says Peaches Christ. “This is where we came together as a community to find fellowship. I’ve never had as much of a spiritual experience as I had going to Frameline, and being with 1,000 queers and seeing something presented on screen that you did not see in the mainstream. Streaming at home isn’t the same.”
