Green Light Cinema re-builds its business model
Even the biggest flatscreen TV, streaming the biggest movies, can’t compete with the 17-by-6-foot screen at Green Light Cinema in downtown St. Pete.
For Americans, however, home streaming has pulled ahead of going out to the movies in the numbers race. “There’s a contraction going on in the film business,” observes Mike Hazlett, Green Light’s owner. “It’s not remotely close to where it was pre-Covid. It’s just a different landscape, and I’m not sure it’s ever going to get back to where it was.”
Still, some people still swear by the immersive experience of a large screen, top-drawer sound and a darkened, air-conditioned room.
Hazlett and his wife Sue opened the 80-seat theater in October 2020, during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. “The margins are tight, but I think I can make it work, or at least help pay the bills,” he optimistically told the Catalyst opening week. “And if I can supplement it with specialty stuff during the week, I think I can kind of hang in there.”
Nearly four years later, Green Light has a solid company of regulars who come to watch the latest, water-cooler independent films – festival movies – and the occasional classic.
Even so, the money hasn’t exactly been pouring in. That’s why the Hazletts made their plight known in early July, by announcing they were transforming Green Light into a nonprofit. They asked for donations.
In the first 10 days, supporters contributed $8,000, for which Hazlett is grateful. Between donations, sponsorships and maybe even some sort of a grant down the road, he says, $120,000 annually would keep Green Light far in the black.
“We’ve been on a cashflow basis for four years,” he says today. “I’m juggling the money, I’m paying everybody, and we got there last year. But I hustled my ass off.
“So I’m like, I can continue to scratch and claw and at least make this thing break even, like we did last year. But I’m working for free, and I’m working seven days a week … it never ends.”
Hazlett remembers when theatrical films didn’t turn up on pay-per-view TV until they had exhausted their big-screen earning potential.
“There used to be something called a theatrical window,” he says. “A film would be in the theater for five, six months. That’s why you had ‘second-run’ theaters.
“Disney’s current policy is 17 days, which is basically three weekends. And there’s a lot of films where they do a thing called ‘day and date,’ which is in the theaters and on some platform the same day.”
All of which means a painful loss of exclusivity for movie theaters. The big multiplex chains might live through it, what with Spider-Man and the big, loud blockbuster universe, but boutique screening rooms like Green Light have to find alternate revenue streams in order to stay afloat.
“You’ve changed people’s behavior patterns around how they view film. And it’s a real headwind. And they’re going to have to figure it out. That’s so far above my pay grade; all I can do is book the best films, keep working our lane and keep building up the audience. But it’s a very, very challenging atmosphere right now.”
The Hazletts have delivered film screenings and other special events around the community; they’re actively looking for other engagements, and corporate sponsorships (“you gotta underwrite”), and they’re talking to the City of St. Petersburg.
There’s an annual Short Film challenge for budding creators.
Green Light is home base for the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
Eugenie Bondurant’s Station 12 Studio acting classes are held there seasonally.
Starting in September, there’ll be a monthly screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with the local “shadow cast” Hell on Heels.
“Part of this is we’re trying to understand the market,” explains Hazlett. “We’re trying to build a history, and we doing that in these circumstances that are really difficult.
“January, February and March, we are always going to do really well. The snowbirds are here, and we’re in awards season. And that’s kind of right in our wheelhouse. Oscar shorts, nominees, that’s great.
“We got to April, May and June of this year and we went right off a cliff.”
Hazlett says he realized then that “the writing was on the wall.” A little help was needed; and so was born The Friends of Green Light Cinema.
“I think this is the right move for us! We got 90 donations in the first 10 days. That felt good.”
