8mm Forum: Strand Theatre Wildwood NJ

This is topic Strand Theatre Wildwood NJ in forum General Yak at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Guy Taylor, Jr. (Member # 786) on July 25, 2013, 06:44 AM:

Glad to see this little movie theater on the boardwalk has reopened.

Posted by Pasquale DAlessio (Member # 2052) on July 25, 2013, 08:15 AM:

Progress! One step at a time. One small step for man. One giant leap for film. [Wink]

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on July 25, 2013, 11:08 AM:

That's great!

The Sea Theater is the one closer to the Ocean Holiday where Dino Everette did a 9.5mm show at one of the early CineSeas and John Black had the gang go over at the very first one.

It's closed and for sale:

Sea Theater

I had the bright idea of the bunch going to the Delsea Drive-In theater Friday night until I figured out it's at least an hour away.

Posted by Guy Taylor, Jr. (Member # 786) on July 25, 2013, 12:29 PM:

I love drive in theaters. The closest one to me is about 100 miles away. I walked past the sea theater while in Wildwood last year. If memory serves, it was on Pacific Ave. More or less the downtown area.

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on July 25, 2013, 12:59 PM:

That's the one!

One of my bucket list items:

A vintage Mustang convertble, a drive in movie and a generous supply of bug spray.

(Maybe that's really three items!)

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 559) on July 27, 2013, 01:11 AM:

The "Sea Theatre" looks like a nice set up.

Its got lots of potential...might be just the thing for the "US" members of this forum to get involved in?..."film society" or something [Wink]

put your thinking caps on chaps [Roll Eyes]

Graham.

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on July 27, 2013, 08:45 AM:

It's a nice idea Graham, but we already have a theater in Wildwood: twice a year, one night only! (It's got a swimming pool! -although it's usually closed when we are there...)

I have a running joke with my wife: every time we drive past a store that is being renovated she asks "I wonder what's going in there?" and I answer "That's my movie theater."

-It's funnier to me than her, I'm pretty sure. (Running gags only go so many years between married people!)

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 559) on July 28, 2013, 05:01 AM:

Steve, it would be nice to own your movie theatre [Smile]

I have been bouncing that idea around for years but like yourself my wife just [Roll Eyes]

and thats it [Frown]

Graham.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on July 28, 2013, 08:41 AM:

If I invested in my own movie theater I would probably not succeed at all. For one thing I would not be showing any of the modern violent and action films, which constitute about 9O% of Hollywood's current output. My showings would be mainly the classic films of Hollywood's golden era. That would eliminate just about all teenagers and younger adults from my potential audience. Second, I would not sell any popcorn at my concession stand, the noise of munching popcorn is very annoying, and the smell and clean up of greasy buckets would just not be worth it. Then I would ban all cell phones from the theater, anyone found using one would be escorted out and given a 6 month probation before they could come back! [Big Grin]

So, as you can see, my cinema business model is just about the opposite of what is required to succeed in todays cinema world.

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 559) on July 30, 2013, 04:25 AM:

Paul I think you are right... [Big Grin]

What I used to say to our last cinema time manager was to look at who our audience was out there... "young families" and the "over 50" and focus getting the right films for them, not teenagers, they went else where.

The good thing for us is that we could pick the films "we wanted" from each film distributor and plan months ahead. The reason I mention this, is that when we secured our "bread and butter" films, there was always some room to try something a bit different, to throw in the mix sort of speak.

We did this a number of times, one last film I took the chance with smack bang in the middle of the school holidays, was adding in an evening session of a Samoan film called "Oritar" and was sold out the very first night we ran it [Smile]

...lots of thanks from the Samoan community over this one.

The main thing is being able to make lots of money with usual stuff whether we like them or not, which in turn you can then afford to take chances with adding in the classics, like we did with the films of David Lean etc.

Anyway I hope that little "Sea Theatre" cinema does survive even though it has only 70 seats.... its got potential [Smile]

Graham.

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