Boxoffice - October 2018

SHOWEAST 2018
that would be affected. So if San Juan
in the north was hit hard, you still had
hotels and power in Ponce in the south.
Hurricane Maria was totally devastating
in that the entire landmass was affected;
there wasn’t one square inch of the island
untouched. It came two weeks after Hurricane
Irma, which affected the islands
of St. Thomas and St. Martin, where we
have theaters. With Maria, every one of
our theaters in Puerto Rico remained
closed six or seven days after the storm.
It was frustrating, and there was such a
huge unknown around that period, we
didn’t know when we’d see the light at the
end of the tunnel. The hurricane came on
a Wednesday, and I remember that first
weekend was the first time in my life that
I didn’t even want to look at weekend
grosses from the U.S. I didn’t even want
to know because it was too sad; it was
almost like having an arm cut off. It took
about six or seven weeks to start to turn
the corner towards a predictable recovery.
We did have some theaters with generators,
and when they started operating
again the second weekend after the storm,
people came back. We had curfew, so our
last shows were at 4 p.m. because people
had to be in their homes by sundown.
When the power started to come back,
it came back near the highways and
areas near our theaters. We probably had
around half of our theaters back operating
five weeks after the storm in locations
spread out across the island. We received
tremendous damage—working through
those insurance claims was and it still is a
full-time job in itself— we had to throw
out all of the chairs in some of these theaters;
I think we had to buy 250 air-conditioning
units within 10 weeks of the
storm. The numbers are mind-boggling.
How long did it take to get your entire
circuit back up and running?
We reopened our last closed theater in
Puerto Rico on December 28—that’s 100
days after Maria. We opened St. Thomas
on February 8, and we hope to reopen in
St. Martin sometime in April.
It seems like these natural disasters are
occurring more and more often. Is there
any way to prepare a business like this
for the next one?
All our theaters outside Puerto Rico
have emergency generators because the
norm in those markets is that energy is
undependable. You work it into your initial
design. A generator for a movie theater,
once you finish getting it installed,
probably runs you between $250,000
and $300,000, plus ongoing maintenance
costs, so you try to avoid it unless there’s
no other choice. Our theaters in Trinidad,
Dominican Republic, Antigua, St. Lucia,
and Guyana all have backup generators.
But having them in Puerto Rico wasn’t
the norm until now—now we know we
need generators for half our theaters in
the island ahead of the next storm season.
Only 4 of our 31 theaters in Puerto Rico
had generators, but we learned that those
generators allowed us to get into those
theaters to clean up and assess the damage
faster and limited longer-term damage.
Since the island was hit head-to-toe,
even getting diesel for those theaters with
generators proved to be an ordeal. It’s not
an exaggeration to think we will need
our own diesel truck for next hurricane
season.
What role did your cinemas play during
that lengthy reconstruction period, as
the country was in the middle of a very
difficult recovery effort?
There was great appreciation [from the
public] that we were able to get theaters
back up and running as fast as we did.
Obviously, if you own the theaters you
don’t think it’s that quick. But compared
to what was going on in the island, we
were back up and running rather quickly.
People were grateful they had a place
where they could go take a break, a place
with air-conditioning and snacks, where
they could see a movie and escape for a
couple of hours. In St. Croix, which was
also hit, the governor of the Virgin Islands
was tweeting away that our theaters
were now open, encouraging people to
go to the movies and take a break. We
extended price specials for early shows,
more than we usually do, which customers
also appreciated.
I would like to mention and thank
John Fithian for putting us in direct
contact with the kind folks at the Will
Rogers Foundation in California who
were so comprehending and understanding
to provide direct grants to over 140
of our employees whose day-to-day living
expenses mushroomed, as their homes
were severely damaged and being without
power and water for such an extended
period of time. This outreach by Will
Rogers adds to my gratitude for being a
part of this industry.
What do you think the future holds
for exhibition? What are some of the
biggest challenges ahead?
The fact that theaters today are more
luxurious, more comfortable, have better
picture and sound—that’s a big advantage.
In terms of what we need, the variety
of supply is important, making sure
we don’t have too much of a homogenous
offering. This year’s Oscar season is a fantastic
example of a great group of diverse
films, a wonderful mix of product. I keep
my fingers crossed that Fox Searchlight
will continue under Disney. You hate
hearing that specialty films don’t have to
be seen at movie theaters, that you can
see them on a smaller screen—and I don’t
know where that’s going, if that’s part of
what you hear from younger audiences
who like to see movies on their mobile
devices. Let’s face it, there’s great home
entertainment technology out there and
we really need to keep our eye on the
ball. I think that the introduction of
home video made us a better industry; we
couldn’t take it for granted that the only
place you could see a movie was in a theater.
That’s what led to a better moviegoing
experience: better seats, better sound,
bigger screens. n
This story originally appeared in the April,
2018, edition of Boxoffice.
74 BOXOFFICE ® OCTOBER 2018