Five years after the closure of the Nickelodeon, is indie film culture in Santa Cruz dead, or merely in hibernation?

The marquee out front of downtown Santa Cruz movie theater the Nickelodeon has a simple message. “See You Soon. Temporarily Closed. Stay Safe.”

Like thousands of other movie houses around the world, the Nick closed in the spring of 2020 in reaction to the COVID pandemic. And in the weeks and months following the closure, that message was warm, confident, reassuring. Today, 5½ years later, that message lands differently. Depending on who’s looking at it, it feels either forgotten and melancholy, or hollow, mocking, even cruel.

In that five-years-plus period, the Nick has gradually morphed from a symbol of the pandemic shutdown to a symbol of the struggles of the movie industry. Its bizarre state of limbo raises questions for locals who may still harbor a deep love for the enlightening, ennobling art of cinema: Will indie film culture ever come back in Santa Cruz? Is the Nickelodeon crucial to any future for arthouse film locally? Are there models in other cities that could work in Santa Cruz, or at least provide inspiration for those who want to push the ball forward in reviving that culture?  

Cinema Paradiso

The Nickelodeon Theatre was once the center of a thriving arthouse-cinema subculture in Santa Cruz. Not too long ago, the box office at the Nick was a beehive of activity on a Friday or Saturday night, movie fans fresh from a screening of an indie or foreign film mingling with others standing in line for tickets. Often neighbors or acquaintances would bump into each other, and the first topic was always movies. 

Today, the Nickelodeon — a small, four-screen theater owned and operated by Landmark Theatres, based in Los Angeles — is a ghost house. It’s now missed more than 290 weekly opening nights. Landmark said that there are no imminent plans for the theater.

I have a history with that theater. For more than 20 years, I was the staff film critic for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and in that role I was invited to media screenings at the Nick every Thursday morning at 10 a.m. with a handful of other local writers. Many — heck, maybe even most — of the most moving and galvanizing experiences I’ve ever had interacting with movies happened there. 

In the 1990s, arthouse cinema — a catch-all term that includes foreign-made, independent, avant-garde and other films that fall short of Hollywood expectations for a blockbuster — was at its zenith. Whether it was the elegant films of Merchant Ivory, uncomfortable and provocative films from Lars von Trier or Gaspar Noé, or surprise hits such as “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” the world’s finest cinema came to Santa Cruz through the portal of the Nickelodeon.

At the end of each year, Good Times critic Lisa Jensen, freelance raconteur Bruce Bratton, the redoubtable critic and poet Morton Marcus and I would all come together at the Nick to reveal our favorite movies of the year. We would sell out the big theater there, and I was continually astonished at the vigorous discussions about film that took place in the lobby and on the sidewalks out front. 

The theater first opened for business in 1969 — its first film was a Swedish romance called “Elvira Madigan.” It had been converted into a theater from the house where Bill Raney and his first wife, JoAnne, had lived. Raney’s local movie business grew to include the old Sash Mill theater, which showed old classics and cult films. Raney sold the entire business to Jim Schwenterley, a former Sash Mill employee, and though Schwenterley had to close the Sash Mill, he expanded arthouse cinema locally with the revival of the Del Mar Theatre on Pacific Avenue. In 2015, he sold both the Nickelodeon and the Del Mar to Landmark. (Landmark leases the Del Mar; the building is owned by the city.)

Countless longtime locals have stories of great film experiences at the Nickelodeon during its half-century in business. But increasingly, the Nickelodeon is remembered with the same wistfulness as beloved but now-defunct cultural touchstones as Logos or Caffe Pergolesi. Whether or not the Nick ever opens its doors again is unknown — perhaps even by Landmark, its owner. Through a spokesperson, Landmark declined to comment on the fate of the Nickelodeon, except to say that there were no plans to open it in the near future. 

The 400 Blows

But the bigger question looms: Is the once-thriving subculture of arthouse cinema in Santa Cruz gone forever, already a relic of another era? Or is it simply in hibernation, or yet to be picked up by a new generation and ready to spring into life once the Nick or some other theater reopens with a new commitment to the community or a new vision for programming?

In the post-COVID world, what was once embraced has now become suspect, and there is no more vivid example of this change of public perception that a small, intimate movie theater. Seen solely through the prism of pandemic safety protocols, the Nickelodeon itself is a horror movie, a windowless box that invites more than 500 strangers to congregate inside every day — the smallest of the Nick’s four theaters is not much bigger than a living room. 

The Nick might not be able to reopen today even if there was a will to do so. In a terse email, Landmark spokesperson Mark Mulcahy said, “Watching all our locations and working hard at getting people back in theaters. It has been a difficult task.”

In 2016, the movie house was subject to a lawsuit claiming that it was lacking in accessibility for moviegoers with disabilities. In 2020, after the pandemic shutdown, that lawsuit was settled. But Landmark would not comment on whether it made any improvements to the building in response to the suit. The City of Santa Cruz has no outstanding code compliance issues with the building, nor are there any active building permits for the property. 

To be fair to Landmark, there is scant evidence that opening a new movie theater makes any kind of economic sense these days. Arthouse cinema nationally has been decimated by no fewer than four powerful business realities: (1) an expensive move toward digitization in the 2010s, which forced many theaters that couldn’t afford the upgrade out of business; (2) movie fans’ clear embrace of the convenience of home streaming; (3) the Marvel-ification of the mainstream, or Hollywood’s rush to exploit comic-book properties, at the expense of independent cinema; and (4) the pandemic’s long shadow, which has crippled the movie industry and permanently shifted  consumers’ habits away from the big-screen experience. 

Still, Landmark itself is a troubled company. Since 2020, Landmark has permanently closed at least 10 theaters across the country, including such beloved California movie houses as the Ken Cinema in San Diego, Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley, the Clay Theater in San Francisco and the chain’s flagship theater in Los Angeles, The Landmark on Pico. The company now operates 26 theaters, a number that includes the Del Mar, but not the Nickelodeon.

The company is owned by real-estate mogul and billionaire Charles Cohen, who defaulted on an enormous loan of more than $500 million in February 2024. In a foreclosure auction in November 2024, several of Cohen’s properties were put up for auction, including Landmark Theatres. But the theater chain received no bids, and Cohen retained ownership. The Nickelodeon’s state of limbo is likely a tiny part in a bigger struggle between Cohen and his creditors.

The Road to Wellville

The Nickelodeon’s box office is within sight of the corner of Cedar and Lincoln streets, where a big, bold, expensive new downtown branch of the Santa Cruz County Library is expected to open in a couple of years. As the new library exerts a kind of gravitational pull bringing culturally minded visitors to downtown, will there be activity at the Nick, under Landmark or someone else? No one can say, but any new emerging model there or elsewhere is not likely to look like the old business model.

In cities with bigger populations like San Francisco and Los Angeles, many arthouse cinema theaters are doing well, and many of those are nonprofits. The Roxie Theater in San Francisco dates back to the 1920s, but refashioned itself as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) in 2009. 

When I spoke to Lex Sloan, the Roxie’s executive director, she was standing outside her theater. “The vibe is electric,” she said of the typical Friday night atmosphere at the Roxie. “We sell out shows frequently, multiple times a week.” The Roxie has only two screens, a bigger theater with 233 seats and a smaller one with 45 seats. The theater shows a wide range of films, from new indie films such as the documentary “Orwell 2+2=5” to drama “Fairyland,” to musical event films like “Mitski: The Land,” to throwbacks and classics like “Carrie” or “Nightmare Before Christmas” (it is October, after all). The calendar at The Roxie has a wonderful sense of chaotic creativity. 

That calendar reflects a kind of “whatever works” philosophy of programming that doesn’t rely on multiple screenings of one or two films a day, as most commercial movie houses do, to attract audiences.

Where mainstream movie theaters customarily devote their screens to one or two films on a loop throughout the day, the Roxie works on the other side of that spectrum, said Sloan.

“On an average week, we will show anywhere from 16 to 20 different movies, which is a lot more work,” she said. “I’m not gonna lie. That’s 20 more movies to promote and keep track of. But having that variety of programming allows us to really make sure there’s something on our screen for every audience.” The Roxie’s versatility is also reflected in its ability to screen movies in both formats — digital and analog (old-fashioned celluloid film through a projector).

That kind of approach demands a different kind of audience, filmgoers who are aware of the movie house as a brand and a curator, not those only interested in seeing the latest film at whatever interchangeable theater is most convenient. 

Like Santa Cruz, Monterey had its own beloved downtown arthouse cinema that was shuttered during the pandemic. The Osio Theater on Alvarado Street closed permanently in 2020, several months after the pandemic shutdown. Before that, the Osio – named for a local family in early California history – had already experienced a Lazarus moment when it declared bankruptcy and closed in 2015, only to come back to life the following year. 

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Retired teacher Brant Wilkinson is now spearheading an effort to bring the Osio back to life again as a nonprofit and a kind of a community performance center. “As we foresee it,” said Wilkinson, “it’s going to be a mixed-use facility. It would be predominantly film, but one of the theaters will be dedicated to live performances. Or it could be used for public gatherings, discussions, art displays, whatever. Basically, we’re trying to think as large as we can just to make this thing work.”

There are examples of small, former arthouse cinemas recasting themselves as a place where movies coexist with live theater and other uses, the closest being 3Below Theaters, occupying what used to be the indie house the Camera 3 in downtown San Jose. 3Below has been working hard to find a successful formula, its latest a high-profile effort at curation called “The Big Screen Project.” 

The New Parkway Theater in Oakland is also pulling out all the stops to bring audiences back to the movies, including karaoke and a special Saturday morning screening of cartoons featuring all-you-can-eat cereal.

But is it working? To take one prominent example, Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film based on a novel by Thomas Pynchon, “One Battle After Another” — perhaps the most critically acclaimed film of the year, which you’d think would have the muscle to jumpstart arthouse cinema — could lose $100 million, according to Variety.

Still, at least at the highest levels, big money is being invested in the movie business and prominent theaters are looking to get back in the game. Manhattan’s Upper West Side Cinema Center is poised for an energetic rebranding. The famous Castro Theatre in San Francisco is currently closed, but is planning a big reopening early next year as a newly revitalized movie house/performance space (though some cinephiles aren’t convinced). 

The Last Picture Show?

Evidence suggests that, if arthouse cinema returns to Santa Cruz, whether it’s the reopening of the Nickelodeon or some other venture, it’ll probably require a heavy lift, with creativity in programming and a big push in promotion and outreach. It’s also uncertain that a new arthouse cinema could find an obvious marketplace landing spot in Santa Cruz. Indie movies, after all, can often find an entry point at the Del Mar and Santa Cruz Cinema, and the Rio Theatre occupies the spot of a versatile former movie palace repurposed as a performance venue. Also, the distinction between “mainstream” movies and “arthouse” movies that once gave the Nickelodeon its raison d’etre is not as clear as it used to be. 

“Mainstream and arthouses, there’s definitely a blur between the two,” said Paul Gunsky, who owns and operates CineLux Theatres, which includes theaters in Capitola and Scotts Valley. “What you used to consider a traditional art film is now [more likely to] flow back and forth between an arthouse and a mainstream theater.”

Dennis Bartok moved to Santa Cruz from Los Angeles with his wife, Marja Adriance, earlier this year, partly because Marja is a Santa Cruz native. Bartok runs a film distribution and restoration business called Deaf Crocodile. He has expressed interest in opening some kind of arthouse-oriented film theater in Santa Cruz. He even took a tour of the Nickelodeon a couple of years after it closed.

Bartok, who also ran programming at the nonprofit Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, has been actively looking to fill whatever vacuum the closing of the Nickelodeon has left behind. “We are still interested in that,” he said. “I think if we did it, it would probably have to have a wider scope to include live music, live theater performances, author talks, a number of the kinds of things we were doing down in Los Angeles when I was running PRS. You have to cast a much wider net. You’re open to working with a lot of different communities.”

Count filmmaker Paul Bronislaw Kmiec as a believer that Santa Cruz could cultivate a new arthouse audience. Kmiec took on a leadership role in reviving the moribund Santa Cruz Film Festival, which just finished its 25th anniversary season, and its first in three years. 

Several years before the pandemic shutdown, Kmiec worked at the Nickelodeon and Del Mar. So he witnessed the crowds and experienced the buzz in the lobby.

“The Nick was the place to go in town,” said Kmiec, “for that experience, to see the more intentional, independent, auteur-driven films. All the major artistically driven Oscar films, and [the films from] the pedigree film festivals like Cannes and Berlinale, those are the types of films that would be at the Nick. And to this day, anyone I speak to from any walk of life or age will bemoan the silent, strange death of that theater.”

Those arthouse audiences at the Nickelodeon, up to the 2010s, tend to skew toward older audiences. But Kmiec believes that Gen Z is ready to embrace both classic and arthouse cinema. How that translates as a business strategy is yet to play out, but Kmiec wants to make sure the SCFF is on the leading edge of whatever emerges from that uncertainty. 

“I don’t think this is as terminal or as tragic as many people think it is,” he said. “I think if we snapped our fingers and The Nick was back, people would go — 100%. The Nick is like a cherished thing, in the same way that the Del Mar is. But the Nick is a much smaller intimate setting and people also love that.”

No snapping of a genie’s fingers, however, will entirely bring back the old days of arthouse culture in Santa Cruz. Digitization, streaming and the pandemic have carved out new realities in the movie industry. The old business-as-usual is likely gone for good. What will endure, however, is the urge to see transformative art in a film context. New generations aren’t likely to be too different from previous generations in that regard. The only question is the business model. Especially as Santa Cruz moves inexorably into a new downtown culture, how great film will be delivered and experienced is still to be determined. That’s a script yet to be written. 

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