Boxoffice - March 219

INDIE FOCUS
SCREENS
3
CAPACITY
Auditorium 1: 122
Auditorium 2: 60
Auditorium 3: 52
TOP TITLES
2018
Won’t You Be My
Neighbor?
RBG
BlacKkKlansman
The Shape of Water
Bohemian Rhapsody
TOP TITLES
HISTORICAL
Spotlight
Lady Bird
Three Billboards
Outside Ebbing,
Missouri
The Lady in the Van
Fast forward. John Tierney hired Stuart Landon
and Adam Porter to co-manage Midtown Cinema.
They did a deep dive into repertory, throwing
programming at the wall to see what stuck. We went
digital, hired a team of fabulous creatives, spruced up
the lobby, and started up an immediately successful
membership program that today has 2,400 members.
Our members are fiercely loyal and a lot of fun.
FOOD & BEVERAGE
We aim to offer as many local concessions options
as we can, including coffee from Elementary Coffee
Co., a vendor at our local farmer’s market, ice cream
from Lancaster (that’s Amish country), and baked
goods from a café around the corner. Because of
some rather antiquated liquor laws in Pennsylvania,
we don’t sell alcohol ourselves in the theater, but a
microbrewery called Zeroday Brewing Co. is in the
rear of our building and patrons can get a crowler (a
32 oz. can) to go and “BYOZ,” as we say.
PROGRAMMING & COMMUNITY
At Midtown Cinema, we love having fun
with our films, especially our repertory bookings.
Every third Friday, Harrisburg holds a “3rd in the
Burg” gallery walk and we deemed our cinema the
unofficial after party with a $3 showing of a fun,
nostalgic, or cult film. This year we’re showing
fantastic, fun films like Clue, Monty Python and the
Holy Grail, the first Harry Potter film, Office Space,
The Muppet Movie, Mean Girls, Star Trek II: Wrath
of Khan, The Toxic Avenger, Spirited Away, Hocus
Pocus, Donnie Darko, and National Lampoon’s
Christmas Vacation.
Every month, we have the supreme honor of
hosting a team of improvisers—a comedy improv
panel called “Down In Front!”—who sit, well,
down in front of the audience and riff on some of
the best of the worst piles of movie. Movies like
Manos: The Hands of Fate, Plan 9 from Outer Space,
and The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. We love going
out into the community and sharing our love of
film. We often can be found with a table or a tent
at a local market or festival. One year we rented a
huge tent to house our outdoor, air-conditioned
screening room! It wasn’t quite air-conditioned
enough, but we showed animated shorts that were
fun for all ages.
We also like to have fun outside at Midtown
Cinema. We host a local monthly flea market—the
HBG Flea--each summer. Every year we also host
the Harrisburg Jewish Film Festival, which continues
to grow each year.
We have been lucky enough to host a lot of
live performances, including the local story slam
group, drag and burlesque, live jazz scoring silent
films, and lots of bands. We’re also on staff at a
local professional theater in town and we decided
to produce Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize–winning
play, The Flick, at Midtown Cinema. The play is
about a small indie movie house named The Flick
and three of its down-on-their-luck employees who
28 MARCH 2019