You can stop weeping into your Junior Mints, San Diego. Less than two weeks after closure seemed imminent, a deal has been reached and the Ken Cinema’s show will go on.
Landmark Theatres, which has operated the single-screen movie house in Kensington since 1975, announced Thursday that the chain and the property owners reached an agreement “ensuring that the Ken Cinema will remain open for many years to come.”
Just days ago, it looked like it was going to be curtains for the Ken. Citing an inability to negotiate a new lease, Landmark announced it would be turning off the projector on April 27. A weekend-long festival of the Ken’s Greatest Hits was planned so movie fans could drown their goodbyes in one last showing of “Singin’ in the Rain.”
This weekend’s film festival will go on, but instead of being a farewell-fest, Landmark is calling it a “special thank you celebration” for patrons. On Friday, the Ken will screen “Seven Samurai,” with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” showing at midnight. Saturday brings “Lawrence of Arabia” and a midnight screening of “The Big Lebowski.” On Sunday, it will be three screenings of “Singin’ in the Rain.” The theater will close for a few days and reopen on May 2.
“Now instead of a sad celebration, this weekend will be filled with smiles and gratitude,” Landmark President and CEO Ted Mundorff said in a statement.
There are about 1,000-plus single-screen movie theaters left in the United States, with the Ken and the La Paloma in Encinitas being the only survivors in San Diego County. Landmark Theatres has a stable of 50 movie theaters across the country, including the Hillcrest and the La Jolla Village cinemas.
The 300-seat Ken has been a fixture in Kensington for nearly 70 years. Over the decades, it has given film lovers reels of memories of the illuminating days and nights they spent catching Tracy-and-Hepburn double-bills and midnight showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
When news of the impending closure spread, patrons took to Twitter and Facebook to express their love for this San Diego treasure and their horror that it could be going away.
Neither Landmark nor the Berkun Family Trust, which owns the building, released financial details about the agreement, but Mundorff says the community response was an invaluable part of the equation.
“The community spoke and we listened. Because of the outrage (about) the closing of this beloved theater, it caused Landmark and the Berkun family to sit down and get it done,” Mundorff said.
After Landmark announced on April 15 that it intended to terminate its lease, the owners and the property management firm said they hoped to keep the Ken operating as a movie theater. Given the fate of such former art-house theaters as the Guild in Hillcrest (now a restaurant) and the Fine Arts in Pacific Beach (now the site of a shopping center), however, it was hard to imagine that the Ken could stay in the movie business without Landmark’s .
“Who else could have done it? It would have been a catastrophe,” said Bill Richardson, a writer and musician who worked for Landmark in San Diego from 1978 to 1988. “No one could do it with the care and knowledge of the folks at Landmark. It wouldn’t have lasted.”
In Thursday’s statement, the company said it is looking to upgrade the theater with a new digital system and luxurious seating. According to Patrick Corcoran of the National Association of Theatre Owners, the price tag for going digital is about $70,000 per screen. The upgrade would bring the Ken in line with the 86 percent of theaters nationwide that have made the switch.
“One of the things that is both a blessing and a curse for the movie industry is the sense of nostalgia,” Corcoran said. “The idea of an ornate single-screen theater carries a lot of romanticism with it, but one of the things about modern movie theaters is that the actual viewing experience is superior to what it was even 20 years ago. A lot of that has to do with digital.”
There is no word from Landmark about how the company may or may not adjust the Ken’s programming. While many nostalgic fans love the Ken from its decades of showing classic- and foreign-film double-bills that changed every few days, it has since become the local outlet for Landmark’s more offbeat and demanding films — like the controversial “Nymphomaniac” series, or the documentary, “The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden.” At least one longtime fan hopes it stays that way.
“I have followed their programming over the years, and I think it has been superb,” Richardson said. “When a theater gets set up for a one-week run (of a movie), you can get a turkey in there and there is nothing you can do about it. But everything they have shown has been interesting, and the Ken is the best place for it. It’s for the discriminating filmgoer.”
