'It’s really not up to us': Chapel Hill movie theater owners await reopening

Diana Newton can pull out her calendar and tell you exactly when the Chelsea Theater first shut its doors: it was March 16, which was almost six months ago but feels more like six lifetimes ago. Newton is a programmer for the theater, which for 30 years has peddled in “first run, independent, foreign, documentary, and specialty films,” per its website. She says the initial choice to shut down was an easy one. 

“It was an inevitable decision,” she said. “When COVID started getting traction, we saw our audience diminish on its own.”

A week later, Gov. Roy Cooper announced Executive Order 120, which ordered all movie theaters, among a myriad of other businesses, to close. Since then, as COVID-19 numbers have persisted and amid much hand-wringing about the future of the movie business, Chapel Hill theaters like the Chelsea, the upscale Silverspot Cinema and the historic Varsity on Franklin Street have faced what is in all likelihood the greatest challenge of their respective existences.

“It’s really not up to us,” Soledad Gonzalo, marketing director for Silverspot, said. “If it were up to us, and we could open safely, we would do so.”

Some local theaters have considerable ties to Chapel Hill history. Perhaps most integral is the Varsity, whose building has exchanged hands and swapped names over the years but has housed a movie theater since 1927. Varsity management didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, and the theater’s website and Facebook page haven’t been updated since March.

To watch a film at the Varsity is to enter a time machine, where movies are cultural king. Film professor Rick Warner said that if places like the Varsity and the Chelsea were shuttered, it would be a catastrophe.

“What’s lost is that special, sort of communal, experience,” he said. “We know that watching a film with an audience is a totally different thing than watching it by yourself. You especially feel this in certain genres like comedy or horror. 

"Your emotional response is going to be determined a lot by how people around you are responding.”

Warner added that even before the pandemic, it was “kind of amazing” that films still had a theatrical window to begin with. Now, with a nation stuck at home, the foothold that streaming giants like Netflix — which added 26 million subscribers in the first six months of 2020 — and Hulu have could get even stronger. That only furthers managerial strain on people like Newton and Gonzalo, who have been forced to adapt or face the prospect of a more permanent form of closure.

Before Silverspot theaters closed, they instituted what Gonzalo called “dynamic seating”: blocking off the two seats on either side of a group. Since then, per N.C. regulations, the Chapel Hill location opened as a restaurant on Aug. 15 and has been serving food for takeout and dine-in since. And though it can’t screen movies, it can rent out theaters to people looking to show their own content, akin to a conference room in a hotel. 

The Chelsea, meanwhile, has responded by “walking on the wild side,” as Newton puts it. First there are the virtual online screenings — a particularly challenging ask, marketing-wise, considering the Chelsea’s audience skews older. There are problems as big as requesting rent relief and as small as getting rid of melted candy bars. 

And then there’s Chelsea management “boldly” deciding to start a new fundraising campaign, “Get Your Name in Lights,” which has thus far been a success and continues to accept donations. Newton says the upgrades, which include new chairs and a renovated lobby but also plexiglass at concession stands and touchless bathroom appliances, are designed to make the theater both nicer and safer. 

Looming over the entire theater reopening process is Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster “Tenet,” the purported savior of the film industry that opened in select U.S. cities on Thursday. The movie was originally slated for a July 17 release, and was pushed back just two weeks at a time — at the insistence of Nolan himself — before opening in most of the world in late August. 

While Newton and Gonzalo would both have loved to be open for that film, they acknowledge that public health guidelines are much more important. Others are less optimistic that “Tenet” is the godsend some think it is.

“(The film industry and media) are certainly wanting to push the narrative that there can be a big film that turns things around,” Warner said. “But there’s so many problems, one being we don’t really know that all the theaters in question can create a safe environment.”

Newton says she’s “hopeful and determined” to make it through, and is optimistic about a return to theaters on the horizon. And while Warner isn't sure about current public sentiment around theater safety, he thinks that when COVID-19 is finally — mercifully — in the rear view mirror, theaters will be one of the big winners.

“When it feels like it’s safe to go back out again, I really feel like people are going to flock to movie theaters,” he said. “There’ll be a kind of multisensory pleasure of reacquainting themselves with the magic of a movie theater.

"And they won’t even realize how much they’ve missed it.”

@ryantwilcox

arts@dailytarheel.com