The Tampa Theatre has been on something like a tear lately. The nearly century-old movie palace just announced a stellar Nightmare on Franklin Street lineup, is looking a much needed upgrade and renovation in the eye and even dodged a major bullet (more like falling oak) in all of that Irma business.
The theatre — named one of the world’s most beautiful by both the BBC and Trump-approved CNN — has also been making music fans happy for ages now, but it’s been pretty cool to see staff marry cinema to music in a big way lately (a great John Coltrane doc, deep dives into the Beatles Rubber Soul and one about East Bay punk).
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Before the October 3 screening of Pearl Jam’s Let’s Play Two — a Danny Clinch-directed concert film that captures the band’s historic 2016 Wrigley Field shows — CL caught up with marketing director Jill Witecki to see how and why the films are coming to town and whether or not we can expect to see more soon.
Read our short Q&A below, and get more information on the screening of Let’s Play Two via local.cltampa.com.
Our film calendar builds in a couple of different ways. We do work with a film booker in California who books the bulk of our first-run films. Often, she will e-mail us that we are going to play a certain film on a certain date or run of dates. Sometimes (but not as often), we will see an e-mail from a distributor with something that looks interesting, and we’ll send it to her with a request to please schedule it for us. When it comes to the classics series, we come up with that schedule and list internally, and then send it to her to make the requests and confirm the bookings.
Who is pushing the music films?
With the upcoming hat trick of music films, Turn It Around came to us through the booker: the distributor was looking for dates and screenings in our area, and our film booker asked if we wanted to play it. The timing worked out perfectly, as that is the week after WineFest weekend, which means we have a “broken” schedule that week – ie: interruptions that would prevent a standard Friday-Thursday film week. During broken weeks, we look for opportunities to do short, two to three day runs and/or “one night only” screenings of specialty films. Once Turn It Around was locked in for Wednesday, we asked our booker about anotherDeconstructing the Beatles title, knowing it would be a great opportunity to promote his upcoming live performance. Right around that same time, we got a distributor e-mail offering bookings of Chasing Trane, and voila! A music mini-series was born.
The Pearl Jam film popped up — again, courtesy of our booker — a few days after that. And given the success (read: sell-out crowd) we had with their first concert film a couple of years ago, we jumped at the chance. Again, we had another broken week due to Snap Judgment live show, hosting the Theatre Tampa Bay Awards, and then the Scott Frieman lecture, so there was a perfect hole for it on Tuesday, October 3.
On its best days, booking a one-screen, 1,400-seat movie place is a juggling act. But between the team here and our booker on the other coast, we have gotten pretty good at packing as much content as we can into that one space…the only “dark day” on the calendar every year, by design, is Christmas Eve.
Can we expect more to be announced?
Music films specifically? I’m sure at some point, but there’s nothing in the hopper right at the moment. Instead, expect in the coming days announcements and run dates for Sundance darling Beach Rats, comedic road-trip three-qualThe Trip to Spain, shoe-god doc Manolo, a joint venture with Oxford Exchange to present the Tampa stop of astronaut Scott Kelly’s book tour, the lineup for our popular annual “A Nightmare on Franklin Street” series, plus the return of TIGLFF to Tampa Theatre.
The renovations are upcoming, is it bittersweet for you or just sweet?
Nothing but sweetness. So many people have expressed concern that we’re getting rid of original elements of the building, but nothing could be farther from the truth: the seats, carpet and drapes that we’re replacing are not the originals, but work that was done in 1976 when the city bought the building. Their collective hearts were definitely in the right place, and we have to assume that the choice of “red everything” was their interpretation of what a movie theatre should look like.
But our architect, John Eberson, actually felt that red was a “bad luck color” for theatres, according to his writings, and his original designs were much more diverse, including chocolate brown seats, ornate end standards, a richly-patterned carpet and a pin-striped main curtain. Likewise, Tampa Theatre did not open with a concessions stand, and the first one installed back in the ‘30s was a low, compact counter that didn’t seek to compete with the architecture. What we’ve got now was installed in ’76 at the same time as the rest of the work I mentioned earlier.
I do understand that for a lot of people — myself included — what is here now is the only Tampa Theatre we’ve ever known. But I am really excited by how much research we’re doing and the amazing team of architects and restoration experts we have assembled that are doing everything they can to restore Tampa Theatre to Eberson’s original vision….I can’t find anything to be bitter about with that.
People don't think about the Tampa Theatre first when they think of live music or musical experiences, but I've always had very good ones there whether its a concert/music doc/a concert (Lalah was great, Ray LaMontagne and Damien Rice two of my all-time faves) or even the Wurlitzer before a flick. How do you think music-forward arts consumers can keep Tampa Theatre closer to top of mind?
You said it yourself: people only have to come to one show here, and they never forget it. Tampa has a ton of great music venues of all sizes and styles, but before almost all of them, there was Tampa Theatre, built at the height of the Vaudeville era, outfitted with a Mighty Wurlitzer Theatre Organ and a 21-piece orchestra, and designed from the ground up to be a spectacular acoustic space for unamplified live music.
91 years later, live acts and filmmakers alike seek out Tampa Theatre specifically because of the intimacy and amazing atmosphere this venue offers. And with 600 show times a year, surely any arts consumer can find at least one excuse to come check it out?
Thanks!
No, thank you.
This article appears in Sep 14-21, 2017.