Countdown to showtime at San Francisco's renovated Embarcadero Center Cinema starts in the lounge with a glass of craft beer or fine wine from the bar. A video monitor ticks down the minutes until a movie starts on one of seven screens.
The sign flashes "Now Seating," but there is no rush. An usher will show you to your seat, which is assigned, as is everybody else's. From the cocktail lounge, which is showing "Sports Center," you carry your drink to the screening lounge, whereupon you lean all the way back on the leatherette recliner, as a footrest comes up in the fashion of a Barcalounger.
"There is more room than a first-class airline seat," says Andrew Wittman, as he stretches out his 6-foot-4-inch frame, unable to touch the seat in front with his size 14 shoes.
This is the new Embarcadero, which reopened Friday after a four-month remodel, in a style intended to out-posh the Sundance Cinemas Kabuki. Patrons of the old Embarcadero will immediately notice that the two surly clerks who used to operate the box office are gone. The box office is gone, too, a first for San Francisco.
It has been replaced by four touch-screen kiosks for selecting your seats and purchasing tickets, which may also be done in advance by phone or tablet. All tickets are $12.50, up $2 from before the remodel.
Cash is still an option, if you must, but it is not made easy. You have to go past the bar and fight through the ticketed crowd in its last-minute rush in order to reach the concierge, who has replaced those surly clerks.
"We really are trying to get people to buy online, and that's what people prefer to do," says Ted Mundorff, president and CEO of Landmark Theatres, owner of the Embarcadero Center Cinema. "I don't think there is a need for a box office."
The concierge desk is an indication that the entire Embarcadero Cinema experience has been scaled up. The black-and-white poster of Johnny Depp in a fur coat lounging in a canoe in "Dead Man" is gone, as is the color close-up of Juliette Binoche in "Blue." In their place are lighted panels that shift with the mood.
The old snack bar at a roll-up window has been expanded to 36 feet, and across the way at the bar is hot food.
The weak neon flares still hug the corner of One Embarcadero, at Clay and Battery streets, but the third-floor entrance is also marked by silver letters spelling out "Landmark Theatres" on the roofline, the first such exterior signage.
Last Friday's grand reopening offered premieres of both "12 Years a Slave" and "Blue Is the Warmest Color." This Friday comes the premiere of "Dallas Buyers Club."
All three of those films are Oscar nominee hopefuls, and much higher-budget fare than when Embarcadero Center Cinema originally opened with "Great Day in Harlem," "Party Girl" and "Wild Reeds." That was on July 14, 1995, perfectly timed for the great boom in independent film. There were five screens and more product than they could accommodate.
The opening shows were followed by "Living in Oblivion," a spoof on low-budget filmmaking starring Steve Buscemi, an Embarcadero Cinema favorite. The second year, 1996, was possibly the best year ever in indie film, with "Trees Lounge," "Swingers," "Palookaville," "Lone Star" and "Trainspotting." The hit of the year, "Fargo," was booked for an exclusive at the Embarcadero, but Landmark let it go when that exclusivity was challenged. No harm. The indies came one after another, and so did the audience impressed by the notion of seeing independent and foreign films in a clean environment, a heretofore unheard-of concept.
"Art houses were run-down, crummy theaters because the art house audience was willing to go to those places," says Gary Meyer, founder of the Landmark chain, which is now co-owned by Mark Cuban of the Dallas NBA franchise. The longest run at the Embarcadero has been "Buena Vista Social Club," 28 weeks to barely nudge "Bowling for Columbine," which ran 26.
According to Meyer, the Embarcadero sold 5,000 tickets on a good weekend, a number not likely to be broken because the total capacity has been halved from 1,015 seats to around 500.
The largest room at the old Embarcadero was 200 seats. Now it is 140 seats. The smallest room is 30 seats, down from 120. Most of the seats are 40 inches wide, and all the seats are stadium, on platform risers.
The recliners are in the four screening lounges, which contain only three or four rows of seats. The reclining aspect alleviates the usual neck ache from sitting that close.
"This theater was designed with perfect dimensions for viewing," says Michael Fant, senior vice president of real estate and development for the Landmark chain. "We did sightline studies in every theater."
The general rule is the smaller the movie, the smaller the screening room. That is not how the Embarcadero works.
With digital, any movie can be in any room, in a minute's notice. It is all dictated by advance sales.
"All the screens are wall to wall, and they all have the same viewing experience," he says.
A year ago, Landmark closed the Bridge, leaving it with just one single-screen in the city, the Clay, along with the multiplexes Opera Plaza and Embarcadero.
"The day has come where single-screen theaters just cannot stay in business financially," Landmark President Mundorff said at the time. He also predicted more sports screenings in movie theaters "so people can form a community like they do in sports bars."
At Friday's opening, there were glitches. By the afternoon screening, the bar had not yet been stocked, which reduced the appeal of the lounge.
The opening showing of "Blue Is the Warmest Color" had to be discontinued when the subtitles would not work, requiring customers to wait an hour for the next screening. Paula Fraser had to unfold from her recliner and retreat to the lounge.
"I felt like I was in my living room," she says of the seating experience. "I took my shoes off."
Then the fire alarm went off, sending everybody out onto the plaza, including Mundorff, who had flown up from L.A. for the opening. Then the house lights stayed on as "12 Years a Slave" started in one of the screening lounges.
The recliners are push-button, and an operating manual would be helpful. Once fully reclined, you have to un-recline when somebody needs to get by. But the chairs are comfy. Too comfy, maybe.
"I have mixed feelings about the first-class airline seats," Meyer says. "I think they encourage sleeping."
True enough, an hour into "12 Years a Slave," two snores could be heard arising from the front row.
Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @samwhitingsf
No comments:
Post a Comment