Roxie, once fading to black, now thriving
In 2014, the board of directors of San Francisco’s longest-running movie theater — the oldest continuously operating movie theater in the entire United States — huddled at a table contemplating some grim numbers. The question before the board was whether to pull the plug on the Roxie Theater, a part of the city’s cultural life since its opening in 1909.
No one doubted the rich history. This is the theater where San Franciscans long gone went to see tworeelers, discovered Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford and, later, Clark Gable and Bette Davis. For a brief period in the 1970s, it was a porno theater, but it recovered by the end of the decade and became, by the 1990s, the most adventurously programmed repertory house in the country. This glorious past no one on that board once ever questioned. The only question was whether there would be a future.
“The choice was close up shop or fight the good fight,” says Diana Fuller, the longtime president of the Roxie board. “We decided to fight the fight . ... The vote was unanimous.”
Flash-forward to 2017. The Roxie — the beloved invalid of the repertory scene, always one fiscal quarter away from padlocks and boarded-up windows — is back. No, it’s better than back. It’s making money. And it has a new executive director, Elizabeth O’Malley, who is determined to keep it that way.
“I know we have a history of ups and downs,” O’Malley says. “But for us in the internal Roxie community, it’s just understood that the Roxie will never be down in the dumps, ever again.”
The financial turnaround is the result of several factors. In the past few years, under the leadership of Executive Director Dave Cowen and now O’Malley, the theater has embraced its place in the heart of the Mission District and looked for ways to interact with the community. It has broadened its presence on social media. And it has made use of its nonprofit status to pursue donors and grants.
Just in the past few years, the Roxie has been supported by grants from San Francisco, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Phoebe Snow Foundation, the Owsley Brown III Philanthropic Foundation, the Thendara Foundation and the Northern California Community Loan Fund. In the case of the last, O’Malley says, “the Roxie pursued a grant to support capital improvements to
“For us in the internal Roxie community, it’s just understood that the Roxie will never be down in the dumps, ever again.” Elizabeth O’Malley, executive director of Roxie Theater
our theater and partially underwrite our considerable rent expenses.” The Roxie was awarded $50,000.
“Many people weren’t aware that we’re a nonprofit,” O’Malley says. “My goal is to push forward the Roxie as a nonprofit and to instill a culture of philanthropy that will allow it to thrive in the future.”
As nonprofits go, the Roxie has been bringing in good money. As O’Malley has observed, the standard for most nonprofit exhibition spaces is 60 percent earned revenue and 40 percent contributed revenue. The Roxie, however, earns 80 percent of its $1.18 million annual operating costs from tickets and concessions.
O’Malley was appointed executive director in August. Before that she was assistant director of individual giving for the Sundance Institute in Los Angeles. But as a native of San Rafael, she welcomed the chance to come back to the Bay Area.
“I grew up on independent film, going to the San Rafael, the Castro and, in my teenage years, getting over to the Roxie to see the weird and the interesting — the edgy stuff that maybe my mother wouldn’t let me see.”
She inherits a theater that was already beginning to turn around, with an audience that has grown by 15,000 people in the past fiscal year. To do the math, that comes to an onaverage increase of more than 40 paid admissions daily in a theater that has about 225 seats.
Part of the success comes as the result of the Roxie’s embracing the best in Spanishlanguage cinema. Eighteen months ago, Isabel Fondevila, a native of Spain and the theater’s director of programming, launched the Roxie’s RoxCine program, which has brought in films from all over the Spanish-speaking world. To get the word out, the theater has worked with the Cine Mas Latino Film Festival, Spanish radio programs and community organizations.
“The consulates of Spain and Mexico in San Francisco have also helped us spread the word,” Fondevila says. “We started with a few films, here and there, and it worked. You could see people coming here who usually never come to the Roxie. We kept going, and then we got a grant (from the San Francisco Arts Commission) and went full force.”
The $20,000 grant allowed Fondevila to twice attend the Guadalajara Film Festival, where she discovered quality films that never found distribution in the United States. “With some films, I think, how is this possible that no one is releasing this?” Fondevila says.
In the past year, among other programs, the Roxie has had two successful Pedro Almodóvar festivals, a “3 Amigos” festival of the early films of Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu, as well as several well-received one-offs.
The early Almodóvar and “3 Amigo” festivals were big box office hits, with several soldout shows. Fondevilla says that two of the top 10 grossers in the first year of those festivals were “You’re Killing Me Susana” and the documentary “All of Me.” The theater has applied for a second San Francisco Arts Commission grant and will know the results in the spring.
“How can the films that we show represent the community that we serve?” O’Malley asks. “A big part of my job is the idea of reaching out to the people that surround us. This has an impact, a social impact, that is about bringing people together. The Roxie has taken a grassroots approach. A huge part has been Facebook. We’ve brought back our bimonthly calendar. Word of mouth has been really good, and so have Yelp reviews.”
Increased revenue has enabled the Roxie to buy a stateof-the-art Digital Cinema Package (DCP) player, which means optimum projection of digital movies. The interior has also gotten a face-lift, with a new paint job.
“We are in a building from 1909, and certain things will always be a bit shabby chic.” The men’s and ladies’ rooms, for example, are still only single occupancy, O’Malley says. “In any case, a little wait on line is a small price to pay — at least that’s how audiences have been thinking about it since 1909.”
Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle’s movie critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle