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St. Pete’s Greenlight Cinema one-ups Nicole Kidman ad

Bill DeYoung

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Eugenie Bondurant appears in Greenlight Cinemas' in-house promo, premiering Friday. Screengrab.

Since it premiered last fall, actress Nicole Kidman’s one-minute commercial for the AMC Theatre chain has become a cult phenomenon, inspiring memes, tributes and T-shirts.

Kidman: “We make movies better.” Screengrab.

Screened pre-feature in AMC movie houses (but conveniently watchable on YouTube), the exquisitely produced spot features the glamorous Oscar winner strolling into an empty theater and extolling the virtues of the big screen, as opposed to the home video or streaming experience: “That indescribable feeling that we get when the lights dim, and we go somewhere we’ve never been before.”

The Australian star is shown watching clips of Jurassic World and Wonder Woman. “AMC Theatres,” she purrs at the end. “We make movies better.”

“I can’t tell you why it worked or why it’s gone viral,” Kidman told GQ. ”But what I can tell you is that the reaction is a direct result of the amount of people going back to theaters to enjoy the movies. And that is exciting.”

So, mission accomplished.

Mike Hazlett, owner of St. Petersburg’s independent Greenlight Cinema, has also been feeling the pinch of revenue lost to stay-at-home streaming. “We launched at the end of 2019, and it was a completely different world in the movie business,” he says. “Completely different. But we hung in there.”

As the most severe effects of Covid are (hopefully) disappearing in the rearview mirror, “if you’re Tom Cruise or Darth Vader or whatever, those films are doing fine,” Hazlett opines. “But there is a big, massive hole in the movie business for adult dramas and adult thrillers and comedies.

“And streaming is really a problem.”

With tongue firmly in cheek, Hazlett – whose bread and butter is adult dramas, comedies, foreign films and classics – decided to address the issue with satire. St. Pete-based film actress Eugenie Bondurant has filmed a homage to the Nicole Kidman spot; starting Friday, it will screen before every feature at Greenlight.

“We come to Greenlight Cinema for something different,” the 6-foot-1 Bondurant says in voiceover, as she strolls into the lobby with the same elegant grace she displayed on the runway at Balenciaga’s Paris couture show last week.

Greenlight, she intones, is “the place where a beer is five bucks. And you can take a selfie on the coolest couch in St. Pete.”

Bondurant, who teaches acting in the Greenlight space, recruited dozens of her students to play the “audience” for the spot, which was created by local videographer Curtis Graham.

Hazlett is thrilled with the results. “Curtis really hit it out of the park,” he says. “I think it’s great. It shows what we’re trying to do down here. It’s creative, and I think people are really going to get a kick out of it.”

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