Wallace discounts to replace art films
By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer
Wallace Theater Corp. will end a four-year run showing art films at its Restaurant Row 9-plex and will switch to a discount feature format starting Friday.
The company decided to cancel the "Art House" featuring independent releases, foreign films and documentaries at $7.75 a ticket after disappointing results.
Instead, it hopes that the theater will keep going by charging $1 to see mainstream movies several weeks after their first release. For matinees before 6 p.m., there will be 50-cent bargain tickets.
"The art product was just not being supported by the community," said Steve Guffey, vice president of global operations for Portland, Ore.-based Wallace.
Don Brown, a former Honolulu Academy of Arts film curator who initiated the Art House showings at the Restaurant Row 9 and was general manager there for 18 months until October, said his impression was that ticket sales were good and that poor concession sales are to blame.
"In my estimation it was working," he said. "But the art patron doesn't buy the same (concession snacks), which is where theater operators make the most money."
Brown said Wallace upgraded chocolate at the theater, which also featured local art exhibits, but was unwilling to implement other ideas of his such as putting real butter on popcorn and selling espresso, smoothies and vegetable wraps.
"My vision was different from their vision, unfortunately," Brown said. "My vision was about the films. For me, concession sales are secondary. For them, they'd show anything to sell the popcorn. It's really a shame."
Guffey said the Restaurant Row theater, which opened in 1995, was caught between two newer and bigger competitors, Consolidated's 16 screens at Ward Entertainment Center and Signature's 18 screens at Dole Cannery in Iwilei.
"It has struggled to find its own identity," he said. "We had hoped that the art fair would work, but it just didn't."
Wallace started the Art House on a single screen at Restaurant Row in 1999 and expanded the format to all nine screens in June 2002. The discount format is the company's last option, but it has worked for two Wallace theaters in Kailua, the Kailua Cinemas and Keolu Cinemas, as well as a few theaters in Texas and Missouri, Guffey said.
Besides the regular discount rates, all shows on Tuesdays will be 50 cents. Hot dogs cost $1 every day.
"It's done well, and we wanted to serve the population the size of Honolulu with a discount facility," Guffey said.
The Restaurant Row theater will still be available for rent by festival producers who want to show independent, revival and foreign films.
Since about last month, the Art House has offered a mix of art and mainstream movies. Among titles being featured through Thursday are the Italian film "The Embalmer," the documentary "Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion," Ron Howard's "The Missing" and "Master and Commander" starring Russell Crowe.
Ann Brandman, film programmer for the Honolulu Art Academy, said she hopes that some of the larger-distribution indie films available to the Art House will be offered to the academy now that there are fewer screens to show such films.
"That'll be up to the distributors," she said, adding that the academy has always shown foreign, revival and smaller-distribution indie movies.
Also continuing to regularly feature art-house movies will be Consolidated's Varsity Twins and Signature's Dole Cannery, which is the predominant host of Hawaii International Film Festival movies.
Still, Brown laments the loss of Hawai'i's largest venue for quality films that generally aren't popular with the average moviegoer.
"I think there's definitely a market," he said. "I tried."
Reach Andrew Gomes at agomes@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8065.
