Landmark founders back in the picture at Seven Gables
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The marquee on the side of the Seven Gables Theatre on Northeast 50th Street just off Roosevelt Way Northeast attempts to reassure fans of its art and foreign films: "Open under old management."
A year after Seven Gables' parent company went through bankruptcy, Paul Richardson and Bert Manzari, who owned the company before it was taken over by a discount movie chain, are back.
Richardson and Manzari were brought back by Oaktree Capital Management of Los Angeles to run Landmark Theatres Silver Cinemas, which came out of Chapter 11 protection on May 25.
Both are investors in the restructured company. Richardson, who got his start in the specialty-film business in Albuquerque, returns as president and chief executive. Manzari, who was the film buyer and president of the local Seven Gables chain and helped form the merger that created Landmark, is the company's new executive vice president.
"We have a lot of years here," said Richardson. "This is our baby, our child. We have a financial stake in the new company, which we think is in the best shape it's ever been in the years Bert and I have been involved in it."
Landmark operates 52 theaters around the country with about 160 screens, most of which feature art-house and foreign films. It owns nine theaters in Seattle - the Broadway Market, The Crest, The Egyptian, Guild 45th, Harvard Exit, Metro, Neptune and the Varsity, in addition to Seven Gables.
Richardson and Manzari spent about 17 years at Landmark before it was bought in 1998 by Silver Cinemas, a chain of discount theaters based in Dallas. Landmark Theatres Silver Cinemas was $120 million in debt when it filed for bankruptcy on May 16, 2000.
None of the Landmark theaters was seriously affected by restructuring, but 30 Silver Cinema discount theaters have been closed. The restructured company will continue to operate 21 Silver Cinema discount theaters.
"If a buyer came along (for the Silver Cinemas discount theaters) Landmark would be happy to go back to being an art house," said Richardson. "That's the focus of the company." He and Manzari were touring Landmark properties in Seattle this week, reassuring employees things will get better and promising movie buffs cleaner and better-staffed theaters.
Manzari and Richardson said Landmark Silver Cinemas got into financial trouble because of a sudden decline in the popularity of discount theaters and because Silver Cinemas didn't know how to run art and foreign-film houses.
The bankruptcy settlement means construction will resume on Landmark multiscreen theaters in New York's SoHo District and in Bethesda, Md. The restructuring won't have much effect in Seattle, where Richardson said theaters remained profitable through the bankruptcy.
Seattle film critic John Hartl said that during Silver Cinema's brief ownership, the company tried to put more mainstream commercial films in Landmark's theaters. With the exception of the multiscreen Metro, Hartl said, local theaters resisted. The variety and quality of specialty films remained relatively high here, he said.
Seattle had a long history of independent specialty theaters before most were bought out and merged into Landmark in the early 1980s. Randy Finley opened The Movie House in 1969. He eventually sold that theater after converting an old American Legion Hall to the Seven Gables Theater, the name he gave to the chain of theaters Landmark eventually purchased.
Finley, who first hired Manzari, generally gives the two executives good marks in running specialty theaters. But he said the industry has too long been dominated by people who don't know what they're doing.
"This outfit out of Texas (Silver Cinemas) was a discount operation that was booking (specialty theaters) like strip malls and shopping-center theaters where the average viewer is 15 or 16," said Finley, who quit the business in the early '80s and now owns Mt. Baker Vineyard and Winery near Bellingham. "That's a problem, especially when you have an intelligent, sophisticated audience like the one in Seattle."
Finley said what's been missing in Seattle, of late, is good promotion of the films being shown here.
"You can't expect people just to show up. That doesn't happen anymore. Not with television," he said.