Viewer’s Bonanza : New Theater to Double S.D. Art Screens

As Landmark Theatres prepares to open its much-awaited five-screen complex in Hillcrest, local fans of foreign and art films have one question: Does this mean San Diegans will get to see films in the same millennium as Angelenos?

The answer, in a word: maybe.

That’s the impression left by Bert Manzari, the Seattle-based film booker for Landmark, which owns art movie houses nationwide. He could only say that the new complex will mean films will probably open closer to the Los Angeles openings, due to several realities of the movie business, from distribution strategies to the length of runs.

Yet, the new complex, opening Friday, will almost certainly have a dramatic impact on the flow of films to San Diego. With one ribbon-cutting, the number of art screens in San Diego will more than double.

“I think it will be great for San Diego,” said John Wade, Western division sales manager for Samuel Goldwyn Films. “San Diego always has lacked a number of (art) screens.”

Landmark has a virtual monopoly on the San Diego art house market. It owns and operates the Cove, Park, Guild and Ken theaters, the only theaters in the county exclusively devoted to films that don’t get wide distribution.

The new Hillcrest facility, part of the post-modern Hillcrest Village office and retail complex on Fifth Avenue between University and Washington avenues, about a block north of the Guild, will give Landmark nine screens in San Diego.

According to Steve Russell, manager of Landmark’s San Diego operation, the new theaters will range in size from a cozy 100 seats to 300 seats, and will include some distinctive Landmark features, such as a concession stand with teas, espresso and fresh-squeezed lemonade.

The additional screens translate to flexibility and diversity for Landmark. Like most movie fans, Manzari can easily list a half dozen films that he would have liked to get on screens in San Diego sooner. Films such as Oscar-nominee “Open Doors,” “The Story of Boys and Girls” and “Mister Johnson” showed up in San Diego months after they first made a splash in the U.S. press.

“ ‘Mister Johnson’ was obscenely late,” Manzari said. “I didn’t know if we would ever get to it, and then we didn’t have time to do grass-roots publicity to make it work.”

But it will take more than five new screens to get most art films to San Diego sooner, Manzari said. There are still other factors at work, including distributors’ desire to build word-of-mouth on films in Los Angeles and New York before opening in so-called secondary markets such as San Diego.

Distributors also sometimes extract a guarantee from an exhibit for an extended run of a film in return for giving exclusive rights to screen a film in an area. That is only a small variable in Landmark’s decision making, Manzari said, but it is certainly a factor.

From Manzari’s point of view, the “biggest problem is we’ve had to pull off films prematurely while they’re still doing business.” In other words, the new screens will simply mean that many films will run longer.

The new complex will give Landmark increased bargaining power with distributors. It will be able to guarantee longer runs, or, if necessary, promise distributors that it will screen another of the distributor’s films as part of a contract.

“Now, we’ll know that we’re not going to get pushed off a screen because they have another film waiting in the wings,” said Wade of Samuel Goldwyn Films, which occasionally distributes films to Landmark.

Landmark plans to use all five screens for current releases, but some films will screen in more than one theater at the same time because distributors often want the largest possible audience. And, some of the screens might feature films that ran in La Jolla at the Cove but didn’t screen at Landmark’s uptown theaters. The complex will open with three new films--”Mindwalk,” “A Thousand Pieces of Gold” and “Life is Sweet.” “City of Hope” will move over from the Cove, and two other Cove veterans, “My Father’s Glory” and “My Mother’s Castle,” will be doubled-billed in the remaining theater.

More and more films are being distributed independently, and Landmark is clearly counting on the flow of quality films to continue. Instead of relying on obscure French films, in recent years Landmark has been able to offer well-publicized, critically acclaimed films such as “ Sex, Lies and Videotape” and “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover” and “Drugstore Cowboy.”

“Generally you don’t see as much art product” as mainstream movies, said Roger Willis, the new San Diego film buyer for AMC Theaters. “But there is an audience for them, and there is more art product coming out, and maybe that’s what Landmark is trying to get ready for.”

Observers of the local film scene are speculating on whether the audience and number of films are great enough to make it feasible for Landmark to maintain all of its theaters. Landmark operates 28 screens in Seattle, but that is something of a fluke. In Denver it has five screens; the same as in New Orleans. Landmark operates seven screens in San Francisco.

But Manzari has faith in San Diego’s art film audience, which has continued to grow. He pointed to “My Own Private Idaho,” which recently set an attendance record for a week at the Guild.

“It’s a very intelligent, well-informed film-going audience” in San Diego, Manzari said.

And Landmark will certainly benefit from its expertise in handling art films.

“They know how to work that market,” said Willis of AMC Theaters.

Still, some wonder whether Landmark will be able to rationalize maintaining all its theaters. The Guild, in particular, is just a block away from the new theaters.

“At this point we have plans to operate everything as long as it makes sense,” said Landmark’s Russell, noting that the Park and Guild, which are both able to handle more than 500 patrons at a time, are much larger than any of the new theaters.

And the Guild and Park may benefit from the new theaters, which local planners hope will further spark the revitalization of the area’s night life. The new facility will bring a large off-street parking structure to the area, where parking has always been a problem.

“I think we will get a lot of people who don’t go to our current theaters because they think they’re too funky,” Russell said.

The theater most affected might be the Ken. Although it is set up as repertory theater, playing different films almost every night, Landmark has been forced to open films for short runs in the Ken, simply because no other screens were available. For example, Landmark recently stuck Peter Greenaway’s “Drowning by Numbers” and Hal Hartley’s “Trust” into the Ken, and both disappeared after short runs.

With the new screens, Manzari said the Ken should be able to operate more as a traditional repertory house, featuring more festivals and theme nights, although some films will still occasionally open there.

“The nature of the business has changed,” Russell said. “Repertory, which was the mainstay of our business, is now just a fraction of our business.”

Landmark executives view the new theaters as a “win-win” event for audiences as well as distributors. It is hard to argue with that assessment. Even though the new screens could draw patrons away from film series at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, the museum’s film curator views the new theater as a positive step for the local film community.

“There is a symbiotic relationship between the programming attitude of Landmark and the museum,” said Greg Kahn, film curator at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. “If they show the Kirosawa film, and we’re having a Kirosawa retrospective, it increases people’s interest in Kirosawa. With more screens, it increases the chances of that happening.”