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ideas begin in the lobby with me chatting with a<br />
customer as I drink my coffee.<br />
I joined my friend (and one of our regular<br />
customers), who bought two tickets to see<br />
Avengers: Endgame in Imax at my movie<br />
theater, and then did the same thing when<br />
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker came out.<br />
We waited in line, got our seats in the soldout,<br />
jam-packed theater, and soaked up<br />
the experience. I’ve worked countless “big<br />
openings” and premieres, and these were the<br />
first two where I took it all in exactly as our<br />
customers did. It was cool. We had a blast<br />
and I recommend the experience to any senior<br />
managers or theater owners who may not have<br />
recently enjoyed this type of experience. It is<br />
awesome in a way that calls back the magic that<br />
M. Night spoke about way back when.<br />
How has your theater grown?<br />
When we opened in 2006, it was a 10-screen<br />
theater and we quickly added four more screens.<br />
Then we installed an Imax. In 2010, we opened<br />
our second location in Wilmington, Delaware<br />
(also 15 screens), and recently opened Penn Cinema<br />
Huntingdon Valley, a 7-plex outside Philly.<br />
My wife and I also took over an old-school<br />
twin in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, called The Main<br />
(www. facebook.com/TheNewMain/). It’s funny<br />
because I have four sites to manage and book<br />
films for, which feels massive to me. I do not<br />
know how you guys with tons of sites manage<br />
it all! However, it is fun and I enjoy working<br />
with the studios. When we opened, we used<br />
a third-party film broker, but we eventually<br />
decided to book our films directly. This has<br />
been great. I love working directly with the<br />
studios and have formed great relationships and<br />
friendships over the years with our “friends in<br />
distribution,” as NATO refers to them. But it’s<br />
true, they are our friends, and they do want<br />
the same things we want, namely to deliver<br />
the best possible content to the most possible<br />
people. Sometimes we have to work through<br />
some things, but in the end it has been a terrific<br />
experience for me. I believe it makes me a better<br />
theater owner for putting in the effort. (“So<br />
then, I say, ‘Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little<br />
something, you know, for the effort, you know?’<br />
And he says, ‘Oh, uh, there won’t be any money,<br />
but when you die, on your deathbed, you will<br />
receive total consciousness.’ So I got that goin’<br />
for me, which is nice.”)<br />
What is your biggest challenge (i.e., does<br />
anything keep you up at night)?<br />
I think the greatest challenge facing anyone<br />
with more than one location is the inability to<br />
be in more than one place at a time. I would love<br />
to be on-site at each theater every day, but that is<br />
just not realistic.<br />
Luckily, our management team is second to<br />
none, and they got it all under control. So with<br />
that challenge sort of under control, I think the<br />
next greatest challenge, and this probably should<br />
be discussed in a deeper way somewhere else,<br />
but I think the exhibition industry faces some<br />
real challenges related to the frequent lack of<br />
choices from certain types of vendors. In many<br />
aspects of our operations, often important ones,<br />
we only have one or two choices. So when there’s<br />
nowhere else to turn it can be frustrating when<br />
the “one vendor” falls short of our expectations,<br />
but maybe there’s nowhere else to turn so we are<br />
left just trying to tolerate subpar service. That<br />
is a real challenge that in many ways limits our<br />
industry’s ability to really excel.<br />
What’s your favorite movie and what concessions<br />
would you have while watching it?<br />
I am a Godfather guy, but I also need to give<br />
a shout-out to Moonstruck, Christmas Vacation,<br />
and Rocky. My most typical movie routine is to<br />
get fresh bagels and hot coffee at my local bagel<br />
shop (what’s up, Dosie Dough!) and go watch a<br />
movie by myself at 7 a.m., or whatever. When<br />
I go out with a gang of friends and either check<br />
up on our colleagues’ operations at another<br />
theater or join the audience in our own theater,<br />
I’m a Twizzlers guy with a water. That is not to<br />
say I have not grabbed an odd box of Goobers<br />
too! I am an easy film critic. Sit me up front<br />
with some treats and I am happy.<br />
PENN KETCHUM<br />
“I recently [one<br />
year ago] began<br />
doing a weekly Penn<br />
Cinema Podcast<br />
[available on<br />
iTunes, all podcast<br />
platforms, and<br />
Facebook]. This has<br />
been a wonderful<br />
experience for<br />
me.… We record<br />
the show, take<br />
listeners’ notes,<br />
and sometimes<br />
present ‘live’ with<br />
our customers in<br />
the audience. It has<br />
given me a great<br />
chance to interact<br />
with customers at<br />
all our locations<br />
and a great place<br />
for customers to<br />
share their views<br />
too. It is a really fun<br />
escape … just like<br />
the movies.”<br />
MARCH <strong>2020</strong> / 15
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