Moving the Pictures

Independent movie theaters have had to pivot and adapt during cinema’s weirdest year — but they may be better off than their national competitors.

It was a good year for drive-in movie theaters.

For much of 2020, physical cinemas closed in light of stay-at-home orders across the country. In some places — including New York City and Los Angeles, the two biggest moviegoing markets — those closures continued through the end of the year. In other markets (including Pittsburgh), tentative reopenings were reversed amid the end-of-year surge in COVID-19 cases.

Unless you owned a drive-in theater.

While outdoor cinemas didn’t open as early in the calendar as they usually would, they became one of the first entertainment options cleared for safe operation; many reopened by May. As the year went on, drive-ins hosted for concerts, comedy shows, graduation ceremonies — even church services. Moreover, the lack of indoor entertainment options (or concerns about the safety of prolonged visits to places outside the home) led many people to revisit drive-ins — or, in some cases, discover them.

“We had many people say it was their first time here,” says Todd Ament, owner of Riverside Drive-In in Vandergrift. “It’s not necessarily the drive-in making a comeback,” he says, noting that they’ve done solid business since reopening in 2005, but “there’s a surge in awareness.”

Ament says that the year’s revenue was “lower than average — but still sustainable.” The same cannot be said for many indoor theaters; national chains, in particular, are facing a very uncertain future, with multiplex giant AMC saying they’ll run out of money by the end of January. Closures and audience reluctance are only half the problem; studios, fearful of greatly reduced box-office returns, have delayed most potential hits into 2021, leaving less lucrative films as the only new releases.

“We need [traditional theaters] to be open for the new releases to come out,” Ament says. “So, without major markets, and multiplexes all being shut down ... all the studio titles were getting bumped. So we had to do what we had to do to survive.”

At Riverside, that meant a year mostly filmed with classic films. Instead of a pair of new hits, audiences drove to the single-screen drive-in for a double feature such as “Hocus Pocus” and “Coco,” or “The Bad News Bears” and “Major League.” The throwbacks were popular, Ament says, but it remains to be seen how effective the tactic will be for a second year.

“I exhausted the easy list. ‘Grease,’ ‘Jaws,’ ‘American Graffiti’ ... ‘Dirty Dancing.’ The ones you know they’re going to come see, I blew through that list.”

Indoor theaters that did reopen experimented with classic favorites as well; by some accounts, movies including “Hocus Pocus” and “The Empire Strikes Back” actually topped the weekend charts at various points in 2020. Ahead of figuring out what to program, however, small theaters faced a big question: whether to open at all.

At the Tull Family Theater in Sewickley, exhaustive preparations and a steadfast focus on patron safety came first, according to Carolina Pais-Barreto Thor, the nonprofit cinema’s executive director.

“Once the restrictions were lifted, we delved into learning all the protocols that the CDC put forth and the best practices that other cultural organizations were implementing.” That included drastically limited capacity — no more than 34 people in their larger screening room, and 14 in their smaller theater — enhanced sanitizing of surfaces and stringent mask requirements (other than when patrons were eating or drinking).

Still, she says, it was important to allow patrons to assess the risk of indoor entertainment themselves. “We never, ever announced to our patrons — ‘You should come because it is safe.’ ... We want people to feel comfortable based ... on their situation, on their personal choice.

“One hundred percent of the people [who commented on the theater’s safety protocols] said, ‘We felt extremely safe here.’ When we closed [in December], we received an email ... [that] said, ‘We have felt safer at the Tull than at any other place since COVID.’”

As cinemas began to reopen in different parts of the country over the summer, some articles and authorities expressed a belief that moviegoing was inherently unsafe during the pandemic. To Thor and the Tull, the only recommendations that mattered were those of the CDC — whose recommendations, she notes, the theater exceeded in all cases — and those of local and state authorities. “I think that our audience specifically felt that we were serious about this,” she says, “to the point that we got multiple, unsolicited comments [about how safe patrons felt.]”

In addition to showings of new, independent films, the Tull also added throwback favorites. “We had more people come to watch ‘Elf’ and ‘Christmas Vacation’ than we had coming to watch independent, new releases,” Thor says. The theater has also offered private rentals, a “lifeline” that has meant much-needed revenue for many cinemas. Groups of friends wanting to see a new release would rent the whole theater for an added sense of safety; “Sometimes it was one small family that wanted to celebrate a birthday,” Thor says.

Even with some revenue coming in and pivoting to COVID-era solutions, however, “the losses were significant,” Thor says. In December 2019, the Tull sold 5,500 tickets; in the 12 days of December 2020 before state restrictions closed the theater again, they had sold just 250.

Thor says the theater can survive the year, due to extensive community support — “the region that we serve [has] feelings of ownership of the theater, as a cultural asset” — and its flexible, lean structure.

“We are so nimble — so light. We only have four full-time employees; the other employees are box-office staff, hourly staff ... Our roles were changed. We changed. We’re taking care of everything. Having that startup mentality, it was something that was a hallmark of the Tull Family Theater.”

While most theaters, for-profit and non-profit, have reopened when and where public-safety restrictions allow, some have opted to remain shuttered. The Harris Theater, a single-screen arthouse on Liberty Ave., is part of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust; like all Trust venues, it has not opened its doors since March.

Scott Shiller, the Trust’s vice president of artistic planning, says the decision not to open yet comes from a desire for a safe and permanent return to live events. “We really believe in the power of unforgettable, shared experiences ... We also wanted to make sure that, when we reopen, we’re reopening safely — and we can sustain the reopening on a long-term basis.

“When we reopen, we want to reopen for the long haul.”

Since April, the Harris has instead released films virtually through its Harris Theater @ Home platform. “We’ve virtually screened more than 50 diverse films,” Shiller says, “spanning the exact same type of work that we were doing in-person at the Harris. Because we were doing it virtually, we got to tap into an even larger pool of films that were available to us from around the world.”

Despite the number of competing options for streaming attention, the series is finding audiences. “We’ve seen about the same number of sales for our digital series as we were seeing in-person in January and February,” Shiller says, partially due to the broad accessibility of a virtual platform. Vitally, while most of the Trust’s normal sources of income are cut off, the Harris Theater @ Home series is generating revenue on a weekly basis; some films, including the documentary “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” actually outdrew what would’ve been possible inside the relatively small cinema.

The Tull has continued to offer virtual-cinema selections as well; “It’s something that we have invested in to keep audiences engaged,” Thor says. She’s quick to point out, however, that “the virtual screenings do not compare in any way with the revenue for ticket sales,” in addition to lost revenue from concession sales. (To all theaters, concessions are a driving force. Ament says that, from a business perspective, he needs to think of Riverside Drive-In as “a restaurant showing movies in the parking lot.”)

Unlike the beleaguered national chains, the Tull Family Theater, the Harris Theater and Riverside Drive-In believe they will emerge from the pandemic successfully and, in many cases, with more robust programming and offerings. Despite media rumblings that 2020 has posed an existential threat for movie theaters, the belief is strong that the power and appeal of moviegoing goes beyond simple access to certain films.

“I think audiences will return,” Shiller says. “I think that studios will continue to send films to cinemas. There will always be a need for in-person, shared experiences that are unforgettable — that is going to return.”

Thor agrees. “Those who come to the cinema, they want the cinematic experience; they want the big screen, they want the dark room, they want the community feeling.

“Those theaters and organizations that are re-imagining their role as arts organizations, re-imagining their role in the communities they serve, re-imagining their role as film-driven venues — those are the organizations who will thrive.”

STORY BY SEAN COLLIER // PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF SWENSEN