Silver Screens Worth Their Weight in Gold

It was Friday morning and employees of the AMC Covina 30 were ready for the weekend crowds. The floors were swept, the candy counters were stocked and--most importantly--the vacuum-controlled movie screens were up and running.

Myke T. Tovar, a marketing manager for Kansas City, Mo.-based American Multi-Cinema Inc., peeked into Theater 15, where customers would settle down to watch the Warner Bros. suspense flick “A Perfect Murder” on a Torus Compound Curved Screen. This screen uses powerful fans that act as air pumps to keep the viewing surface pulled back into a concave dish shape.

The screen is designed to provide a highly efficient, mirror-like surface that reflects a picture that’s comfortably watchable from any seat in the house. “The fans are so quiet you can’t hear them,” Tovar said, pressing a finger lightly into a pristine, rubbery expanse as pliant as a balloon.

Moviegoers give little thought to the thing they stare at for hours at a time, theater operators say. But the exhibitors have screens on their mind these days as they chase share of a burgeoning, multibillion-dollar market while screen makers scramble to meet demand that’s been exploding like the visual effects in a Bruce Willis movie.

The industry’s growth is being driven by fast-rising multiplexes that draw throngs of moviegoers who enjoy multiple snack bars, spacious, stadium-style seating arrangements and thundering audio systems. Last year, exhibitors nationwide sold nearly 1.4 billion tickets worth $6.4 billion--attendance unequaled since the American cinema’s heyday just after the dawn of television.

“We’re putting more butts in seats than at any time since the 1950s,” said Jim Kozak of the North Hollywood-based National Assn. of Theater Owners.

Kozak said the film industry’s output is beamed onto 31,865 screens in 7,480 theaters coast to coast, a net increase of 2,134 screens in 1997. Add to that theaters spreading rapidly across Europe, Asia, Canada and Mexico, and it’s no wonder that screen makers can barely keep up.

“We’ve been working overtime at full capacity, 12- to 14-hour days, six days a week,” said Gorman W. White Jr., vice president of Hurley Screen Corp. of Forest Hill, Md., one of the three major cinema screen manufacturers in the United States. “We’ve gone through an expansion, doubled our capacity and we still can’t keep up with business.”

White and executives of his two major competitors, Technikote Screen Corp. of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Harkness Screens of Fredericksburg, Va., report that delivery times can drag on for 12 weeks or longer.

In Hollywood’s Golden Age, sailboat canvas was rolled with aluminum paint to create the original “silver screens.” Today’s screens are made from seamed, vinyl-like material, perforated with tiny holes that swallow 6% of the light but allow the soundtrack to blare through from speakers behind the picture. Each screen is uniquely tailored for its auditorium.

Installation businesses are swamped too, according to Bill Miller, president of Theater Service & Supply Co. of Chatsworth. Miller said he cut back on the firm’s service and maintenance work to meet plans for installing 200 screens in the western United States this year and at least 250 more in 1999.

Miller said he charges about $1,500 per installation. On top of that, exhibitors pay screen makers $2.50 to $10 per square foot for the material. Screens range from 800 to 3,000 square feet, but audiences are demanding bigger pictures, so the average size is increasing. More new screens in the 2,000-square-foot range are being made--easily boosting a screen’s starting costs into the high four figures.

Which is why exhibitors cringe when the house lights go on and reveal food stains--or worse.

“We just replaced our Big Screen and somebody threw a golf ball through it two weeks later,” said Edwards Cinemas Corp. Vice President Frank Haffer, using the chain’s moniker for the behemoth 80-by-40-foot viewing area in its Newport Beach theater.

Many different missiles can truncate a screen’s decade-long life expectancy. Certain chewy candies--banned by some companies--cling, then melt under 5,000-watt projector beams. Soft drinks are shaken and sprayed through straws. Thieves occasionally knife their way through screens to reach the expensive speakers.

Attempts to clean or patch only make matters worse, reducing reflectivity and leaving behind distracting blemishes, said Mitchell Schwam, Technikote’s vice president of sales.

“There is no way of repairing a damaged screen,” he said. “You basically have to replace it.”

Tovar of AMC said the well-behaved customers at the 4-month-old Covina multiplex has kept all 30 screens in perfect shape, including the eight Torus models. AMC is the only circuit with Torus screens, which are in about 500 of its 2,486 auditoriums, company spokesman Dick Westerling said. The $25,000-and-up Toruses are seamless surfaces created by a spray-on and peel-off process. Because they are part of a vacuum system, they cannot be perforated, so speakers are arranged around them in the theater.

Toruses were introduced in 1987 by Sigma Design Group, a Santa Monica partnership comprising three engineers who specialize in theater design, and the screen’s manufacturer, Stewart Filmscreen Corp. of Torrance.

Although the Torus has a minuscule share of the market--industry groups don’t compile sales segment figures--Sigma partner Gerald Nash said his company has been scrambling to keep up with demand just like the dominant players.

“We’ve been up to our eyeballs dealing with AMC and themed entertainment and specialty projects,” Nash said, adding that AMC currently has at least 30 cinema multiplexes in the construction pipeline, and he expects that about one-quarter of the screens will be Toruses.

Ironically, although Southern California is the world capital of movie production, family-owned Stewart Filmscreen is the Southland’s only producer of cinema screens.

Patrick Stewart, president and CEO, said the company went into the business in the 1940s, led by the late founder and family patriarch Roy C. Stewart. Later it merged with Trans Lux Corp., the newsreel theater chain, and began making rear-projection screens for film production.

Stewart & Sons won two Academy Awards for technical achievement.

Vice President of Sales Donald R. Stewart said cinema screens represent only a small part of the company’s revenue, which he said approached $20 million in the latest fiscal year ending Oct. 31. Patrick Stewart said the company’s sales have increased 20%-plus annually for the last 10 years.

Stewart makes large, high-end roll-down screens for school and conference venues; screens for aircraft pilot-training simulators, and color-keyed seamless screens for film production.

Stewart also holds a large segment of the market in rear-projection screens in theme parks, Las Vegas sports books and military command-and-control rooms, including the large monitors in the Cheyenne Mountain, Wyo., air command center that track ballistic missile trajectories.

Such a product line has given rise to a wry slogan, Donald Stewart said: “We can use our technology to entertain you or nuke you.”

White, at Hurley Screen, said the industry has been developing brighter, more luminescent screens with tinier perforation holes. Research is being conducted on more efficiently curved surfaces. The future may bring theater-sized video-projection screens.

But for now, exhibitors still lack something their grandparents would have been happy with: a screen they can easily clean a Coke off of and make it look like new.

Joe Ward, vice president of Harkness Screens, doubts that will ever happen.

“I don’t foresee a washable screen,” Ward said. “It sounds good in theory, but I just don’t think it’s possible.”