Ky J. Boyd and his husband Michael O’Rand, plus COO Roxanne Goodfellow and the rest of their hardworking team, are the magic makers behind the scenes at Rialto Cinemas. Boyd serves as the Director of the three-theater chain while O’Rand is the CFO. Recently Boyd, who owns and operates Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol, Cerrito (El Cerrito), and Elmwood (Berkeley), took time out of his hectic schedule for an interview with the San Francisco Bay Times.
San Francisco Bay Times: Please share some of your earliest memories of enjoying movies. What films from your formative years did you enjoy, for example, and was there a particular theater(s) that you frequented at that time? What do you remember most about it?
Ky J. Boyd: My first moviegoing experience was seeing Walt Disney’s The Aristocats at the Liberty Theatre in Great Falls, Montana, where I grew up. [That was] probably in 1970 or 1971 when I was about age 6. I was transfixed by the magic of the movies. Then, in kindergarten, we had a movie one day. I can’t tell you what the movie was, but I was fascinated by that movie projector in the back of the room, the reels going round, and the film moving through the projector making magical images on the screen.
I grew up on a steady diet of mainstream Hollywood films all through my youth because Great Falls didn’t have an arthouse cinema. Then, in my freshman year of college at the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana, I saw a movie that changed my life. It was Jean-Jacques Beineix’s film Diva. I had never seen a foreign language film before. Diva opened me up to a whole new world of cinema I had never known existed. The reason I’m an exhibitor today is because I wanted to bring movies like Diva, movies outside of mainstream Hollywood to audiences.
San Francisco Bay Times: Did Rialto Cinemas begin with the Sebastopol Theater and is it your flagship location? How did you and your husband Michael O’Rand became involved in this business?
Ky J. Boyd: Rialto Cinemas began in Santa Rosa in 2000 when I achieved my lifelong dream of owning and operating my own movie theater. It was a failing 5-screen theater that we transformed into one of the top 50 arthouses in the country, and it was paradise for ten years and 8 months until our lease ran out. We opened in Sebastopol in May of 2012 and have been thriving there ever since. In June of 2007 we acquired the Elmwood Theater and in July of 2009 we acquired the Cerrito Theater.
San Francisco Bay Times: All three of your theaters are such unique venues. What do you think makes each one special and distinctive?
Ky J. Boyd: Sebastopol is the flagship. With 9 screens, it is the fullest realization of my vision of a theater that combines the best of Hollywood with a diverse array of independent, foreign, and specialty films. We may not have the most number of screens in Sonoma County, but every week we have the most diverse lineup of movies of any theater in Sonoma County because we don’t just put 5 screens of whatever the hit of the week is, which is how most multiplexes operate. I like to have a diverse selection of movies on screen because the tastes of the moviegoing audience are diverse. We don’t all like the same things, so why should movies be a monoculture?
The Elmwood is the truest arthouse of the three theaters and also frequently the most challenging to program. Being the last three first-run movie screens in Berkeley is quite a surprise to us. The Elmwood was always David to the twin Goliaths of Landmark Theaters (Shattuck, Cal, and Albany Twin) and the Regal, which operated the United Artists Berkeley 7 and was the largest theater chain in the country. So, to be the last man standing is a bit surreal. We made a choice with the Elmwood when the downtown theaters all closed not to cater solely to blockbuster mentality. That would have been the easy choice. But we decided to stay true to what works at the Elmwood and continue forging our own path with an eclectic mix of films as three screens allows us to present.
The Cerrito, because it has a full kitchen and thus higher overhead, is the most straight-up commercial of our three theaters because it needs hits to maintain its overhead. The Cerrito was our introduction to the world of food, beer, and wine, and it has proven quite successful and has influenced how we have developed both Sebastopol and the Elmwood. It is also, thanks to a gorgeous renovation/restoration, the most beautiful of our three locations.
San Francisco Bay Times: In the very good Healdsburg Tribune profile piece about you and Michael, you mention, “Running a theater is a relationship business.” Elaborate a bit more about that, explaining what you mean, particularly in terms of what goes on from the business side of things.
Ky J. Boyd: In the movie business, I like to look at it as we have two sets of customers. The first is the moviegoing public because we have to show movies people want to come to see. The second set of customers is the film distribution community—the major studios and the independent distributors. Without them and the movies that they represent, we would have nothing to show and thus nothing to sell. So, there is a bit of a game to how booking the theaters works. The thing the movie business has taught me over 25 years is to be pragmatic.
Working with the studios and distributors is a relationship-based business. There are films that are important to me as a programmer that we show, but there are also films that are important to the studios and distributors that we show. So, if you want in on the smaller releases, you have to play the game. I could care less about comic book movies, but that is the IP (intellectual property) that currently drives Hollywood. So, we do play many of those movies at the Cerrito so that we can play other movies that appeal to us as programmers. Gladiator II is important to Paramount. September 5 and Better Man, both of which are also from Paramount, are films we want to show, so we play the game. It helps that Gladiator II is a gorgeous, well-made movie that is going to get lots of recognition, especially in the design and technical categories during awards season. Booking films isn’t as easy as just choose this and then choose that. It’s about how all the pieces fit together. I liken it to playing 3D chess.
San Francisco Bay Times: We strongly believe that local theaters such as yours are very important to neighborhoods, forming a welcoming community gathering space with experiences that are memorable yet affordable. Please share your thoughts about how local theaters such as yours benefit neighborhoods.
Ky J. Boyd: There is a concept known as the third place. The term was coined by Ray Oldenburg. The first place is your home. The second place is your place of work. Third places are places in the community where people come together to meet, socialize, and exchange ideas. Coffeeshops, restaurants, bookstores, and movie theaters are all third places.
One of the phrases I love is “changing the world through film.” That is something that I truly believe that we do. Movies have the power to transport the viewer out of their own thoughts and ideas, giving them experiences that impact them both emotionally and intellectually. Movies are part of our societal conversation. Theater such as the Elmwood are important gathering places in the neighborhood. We give people a reason to come out and visit the neighborhood. We draw people, not just from the immediate neighborhood, but from across Berkeley, Albany, Oakland, and the surrounding area, which benefits many of the local businesses in our neighborhood.
San Francisco Bay Times: Many smaller theaters have closed or changed formats over recent years. Rialto is bucking that trend. What have been some of the keys to your success, and conversely, what are some of your biggest challenges now?
Ky J. Boyd: As I said earlier, when Elmwood became the only theatre in Berkeley, we made a strategic decision to stay true to our roots and bring in the kinds of movies that we believe are best for the theatre. We also, in all our locations, believe in the big screen experience. It doesn’t matter how big your TV at home is or how great your sound system is, the experience of seeing a movie in a movie theater cannot be replicated in the home environment. It’s that magical alchemy of a group of strangers gathering together in a darkened room to share a common emotional experience through which they become an audience. Comedies play better with an audience. Dramas are more impactful when shared with an audience. Thrillers are scarier with an audience. Unless you are inviting random strangers off the street into your home, the movie theater experience is unique to movie theaters and cannot be duplicated in the home environment.
Sure, we all have lots of access to movies now through too many streaming services to even remember. But home watchers tend to be more casual watchers. When you can pause and stop and pick the film up later (if you actually do), or interrupt to take phone calls or do laundry or whatever, you aren’t surrendering to the experience of being fully immersed in the film the way you are in the theater environment. Take Alfonso Cuarón’s beautiful 2018 film Roma, for example. Everyone I’ve ever talked to about that film either loved it or couldn’t get into it. Those who loved it saw it in movie theaters not on Netflix, even though the film was made by Netflix. Casual home watchers couldn’t surrender to the experience Cuarón intended, and thus missed the joys and rhythms of that movie, and that is just one example.
San Francisco Bay Times: You all have some of the best movie popcorn! We know that, at the Elmwood, there has been renewed effort in expanding some of the food and drink options. Do you plan to continue to go in that direction in future? And back to that popcorn—why do you think yours is so good versus that of some of the larger chains?
Ky J. Boyd: Popcorn isn’t that hard, though the quality of what you get at some theaters certainly makes it seem hard. Good popcorn is five things: good quality seed, good quality oil, real salt—not that butter-flavored popcorn salt crap—and popping the popcorn at the right temperature and making it fresh constantly. And then you top it with real butter. We do offer a vegan butter topping option, but it’s not the same.
With the Elmwood, figuring out how we could expand our food offerings and offering beer and wine was a real challenge. The concessions stand is about the size of a postage stamp and we have extremely limited storage space. So, we spent a lot of time researching products and options. I like the mix that we’ve come up with of six or seven beers, a couple of ciders, five wines, and a limited menu that we can produce quickly and consistently in the space we have to work with. There are lots of convenience food product options out there, but not all of them are good. Is our pizza as good as, say, Summer Kitchen? (Summer Kitchen is one of the popular restaurants in the Elmwood District on College Avenue.) No, but it is a quality frozen pizza option that works in our context.
San Francisco Bay Times: How does your team decide what to run at any given time, and particularly during the holiday season? And please highlight some of your favorite films and events slated to run through the holidays and in the not-too-distant future.
Ky J. Boyd: As I mentioned before, film programming is a relationship-based business. I’m fortunate to have an incredible creative partner in our film buyer Doug Endicott, who is based in Los Angeles. He represents us to all the studios and distributors. Doug and I are on the phone so much collaborating that Michael sometimes refers to Doug as my other husband.
Doug and I both have a strong sense of what films belong at the Elmwood. There are films that Doug will define as important and then there are others that I feel are important. Mine tend to be the smaller movies like the animated film Flow that is playing as of the time of this interview. (Editor’s Note: Members of our San Francisco Bay Times team saw Flow at the Elmwood and cannot recommend it highly enough. This beautifully rendered, thought-provoking animated film is one of the best of 2024.)
We balance both of our perspectives, but at the end of the day, because I am the theater owner, if it comes down to a choice between this or that, I have the deciding vote. Everyone thinks film programming is an easy and fun job where you just get to watch movies all day. That is so far from the reality. Doug and I have been collaborators for 25 years and we have a very good working relationship that benefits the theater. Sometimes we have an embarrassment of riches and sometimes we are trying to piece together a lineup out of a less than desirable selection of films. The challenge is we do not make the movies; we can only choose from the movies that are made, and we don’t get a vote in when distributors decide when/how to release their films.
It’s easy for people to say, “Oh, you should show more classics,” or more this or more that, but the bottom line is this is a business. We have rent, employees, and insurance to pay, and we have to show films that we think are going to be popular because butts in seats are what pay the bills.
San Francisco Bay Times: Did either you or Michael ever get to meet any of your favorite film stars or filmmakers?
Ky J. Boyd: In 2005, Michael and I were at the Brokeback Mountain party at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). I was coming back from the restroom and Michael introduced me to the woman he was talking to who happened to be my favorite director, Gurinder Chadha, who made What’s Cooking?, Bend It Like Beckham, and other films. It was such a thrill to get to meet her and talk with her. I love her work because it is always about multiculturalism, strong women, and communities coming together. I also got to congratulate Jake Gyllenhaal on the film at that party, but for me, meeting Gurinder Chadha was a much bigger thrill.
In 2014, Michael helped me meet director Julie Taymor, who was at TIFF with her film of her stage production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That was also a thrill because she was so kind and accessible and I got to talk to her about my favorite theatrical moment in the musical The Lion King, which was so simple but so emotionally powerful at the top of Act II when the silk fabric that represents the water dries up. She was thrilled at how much I loved that moment because it is pure theater.
San Francisco Bay Times: Is it possible that Rialto Cinemas might expand, hopefully into San Francisco at some point?
Ky J. Boyd: We are always looking at potential opportunities, but expansion is a very expensive proposition with a fair amount of risk. So, it has to be the right location with the right deal that makes sense for the long term. It’s hard because we’d love to save lots of classic theaters, but it has to make financial sense.
https://www.rialtocinemas.com/
Published on December 19, 2024
Recent Comments