Chris Escobar, the new owner of The Plaza Theatre, shows visitors around the historic cinema with a boyish enthusiasm.
“I’ve always been an entrepreneur,” says 31-year-old Escobar, who recently purchased the theater on Ponce de Leon Avenue. “In elementary school, I was always the kid who sold the most candy or magazines. I would sell my toys on the front yard on a regular basis.”
He brims with ambition and energy when he points out the theater’s features and describes his slate of renovations and improvements. For instance, when the theater reopens its balcony, “The Plaza can be a 500-seat house – the largest regular cinema in Atlanta.”
A few of his other plans include enhancing its Art Deco marquee, preserving the wall of vintage posters that line its lobby and making room by the screen for a theater organ that can provide live accompaniment to films. “I have to pace myself,” he says, admitting that some of the renovations will take time.
Ever since the Plaza opened in December 1939 with Rosalind Russell’s “The Women,” the theater has seen enough reversals of fortune for a Hollywood melodrama. After serving its neighborhood for years, it declined until it became an adult cinema in the 1970s. Fortunately the past decade has seen improvements in the Plaza’s facility and attendance that Escobar plans to build on.
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The Plaza’s rehabilitation began in 1983 when longtime Atlanta cinema impresario George Lefont purchased the cinema and introduced art-house programming. He also opened the upstairs theater.
In 2000, Lips Down on Dixie began its weekly screenings and live “shadow cast” performances of the long-running cult film “The Rocky Horry Picture Show.” “When I first started coming, a ticket was $4.25,” says Candace Weslosky, an original cast member and the show’s current director and emcee. “At the time, we as the cast paid to get into the show to help the theater.”
Weslosky feels a connection to the Plaza’s history as a performance venue whenever she’s in the backstage space that provides the group’s dressing room. “I love seeing the slot boards in the floor, which is how they built stages then,” she says. “It was built by someone just like me, who loved music and comedy, but 70 years ago.”
After more than two decades and facing stiff competition from Landmark Midtown Art Cinema, Lefont sold the theater to Jonathan and Gayle Rej in 2006.
Escobar became involved as the executive director of The Atlanta Film Society, which organizes the Atlanta Film Festival and made its new home at the Plaza in the early 2000s. “We brought high-definition projectors, as well as marketing and know-how,” says Escobar.
But the theater needed a more extensive upgrade, especially with the film industry transferring from film to digital projection. Michael Furlinger of Furlinger Cinema Services bought the theater from the Rejs in late 2012. “Michael Furlinger buying the theater was one of the best things that could’ve happened,” says Escobar. “He had the capital and the business connections to have more involvement with studios for [booking] first-run releases.”
The Plaza has seen a significant turnaround in the Furlinger years. “We’re doing about 350 percent more in business than we did six years ago,” Escobar says. “The number of people who’ve come to Atlanta Film Festival alone has more than doubled. Five years ago, ‘Rocky Horror’ would get 100-125 people on a good night. That’s on our low end now. Over the last three Fridays, ‘Rocky Horror’ sold out.”
Having upgraded the theater, Furlinger began to look to new challenges. “For him, it was restoring the birdhouse, if you will,” Escobar says. “He’d accomplished what he’d set out to accomplish. We started seriously talking about [me buying it] back in May.”
Escobar says that Furlinger will continue his involvement with theater, including programming, during its current transition. “We’re going to have select first-run movies, as well as local and indie films and classics. The theater will be getting used more than ever, with more matinees and more midnight movies.”
While old buildings in the neighborhood have been sold and replaced with new ones, Escobar isn’t worried about the fate of the Plaza, which is expected to receive protected status as a historic landmark from the City of Atlanta before the end of 2017.
The Plaza will host the 42nd annual Atlanta Film Festival from April 13-22, 2018, and Escobar acknowledges that it probably could not afford to remain at the Plaza had someone else purchased the space. He plans to strengthen the relationship between the film society and the theater. “The film society will never spend a dime to use the theater,” he says. “Ten percent of the Plaza profits will be donated to the Film Society. That kind of commitment has never existed at the film society before.”
To increase community involvement, The Plaza will cultivate more relationships with groups like Lips Down on Dixie that holds screenings or events that combine film and performance. Weslosky also performs as part of the Cineprov troupe, which offers live comedic commentary of bad movies, modeled after the TV series “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Cineprov creator Larry Johnson became a contributing writer to “MST3K’s” 2017 Netflix revival as a direct result of performing with the show’s originator Joel Hodgson at the Plaza in 2013.
The Plaza Theatre got its liquor license in 2014 and as Escobar steps behind the bar next to the concession stand, he compares the films it screens to the drinks it serves.
“Our movies are vintage and nostalgic, local and foreign, independent – so our beers should be, too,” he says, nodding at the diverse labels in the display fridge. “If it’s what you see, it’s what you should drink.”
At a time when home streaming gives movie fans countless options without leaving home, cinemas must offer a unique experience. Looking ahead, the Plaza capitalizes on nostalgia for the theater’s history while embracing film formats of the future.
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The Plaza Theatre. 1049 Ponce de Leon Ave. 404-873-1939. www.plazaatlanta.com
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