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MARQUEE AWARD<br />
MARQUEE AWARD<br />
SANDRA<br />
BULLOCK AT<br />
THE PREMIERE<br />
OF THE BLIND<br />
SIDE, HELD AT<br />
THE PRYTANIA<br />
A<br />
YOUNGER<br />
RENE BRUNET<br />
AND HIS FATHER<br />
RENE BRUNET SR.,<br />
THE FOUNDER OF<br />
THE FAMILY<br />
BUSINESS<br />
hurricane—Wedding Crashers, Pulp Fiction and<br />
Brothers Grimm—to the emergency workers<br />
helping restore the city.<br />
As New Orleans returned to some semblance<br />
of normalcy, the Prytania decided to<br />
renovate the theater in order to make it first<br />
class and state-of-the-art. It spent a price tag<br />
of $800,000 to replace the roof, drapes, seats<br />
and carpets, as well as make numerous structural<br />
changes to the lobby, including a new<br />
coffee bar. A new Sony 4K digital projector<br />
was installed along with a brand-new sound<br />
processor and speaker system that, when necessary,<br />
can be “crazy loud,” says Robert. “Most<br />
theaters can’t do what we do with sound<br />
because it would interfere with the auditorium<br />
next to it, whereas we only have one.”<br />
These aesthetic and technological upgrades<br />
have “drastically paid off for us,” adds Robert,<br />
“because we raised the bar in New Orleans.<br />
People love coming here.” And the theater’s<br />
post-Katrina grosses drew the attention of its<br />
competitors and encouraged other cinemas<br />
to convert to digital. “I don’t want to brag,”<br />
says Robert, but with the booming sound<br />
and digital projection on the theater’s 36-foot<br />
screen, “we’re told our picture is almost second<br />
to none.”<br />
The Prytania’s owner is already eyeballing<br />
new 8K projectors and hopes to be the first in<br />
the South to install one. “Our goal is to keep<br />
the Prytania Theatre—which is going to be<br />
100 years old soon—the most modern, stateof-the-art<br />
theater. We want to make sure our<br />
sound and our video—our presentation—is<br />
amazing.”<br />
As for the century to come, says Robert,<br />
“Let’s hope that somebody at Boxoffice will<br />
be talking to a fifth- or a sixth-generation<br />
Brunet operating the single-screen Prytania<br />
Theatre.” For now, Rene continues to hold<br />
court in the lobby while Robert helps run the<br />
show. “I don’t consider it work,” says Rene,<br />
now in his eighth active decade in the exhibition<br />
business. “I just am there as part of my<br />
life and pleasure—it’s the job of a lifetime for<br />
me.”<br />
50 BOXOFFICE PRO MAY <strong>2012</strong>
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