‘Cinema is my faith and the Castro is our Vatican’: shakeup at landmark San Francisco venue stuns locals | San Francisco
fFor years, underground San Francisco drag performer and cinephile Peaches Christ has been filling the city’s renowned Castro Theater with her Midnight Mass series, juxtaposing cult film screenings with live drag parody re-enactments and stage interviews. These loving but irreverent late-night events are an integral part of LGBTQ+ culture at the city’s preeminent art-house theater, itself one of the most visible landmarks in San Francisco’s most famous gay district.
As Peaches Christ puts it, “Cinema was my religion and the Castro is our Vatican.”
And now, a month after hosting the US premiere of The Matrix Resurrections and a few months before its 100th birthday, the owners of the opulent 1,400-seat movie palace have announced that it will soon become primarily a live entertainment venue and will no longer screen many films at all.
Wednesday’s news sent shockwaves through the city’s artist and film communities and revealed a partnership between Castro and Another Planet Entertainment (APE), a Bay Area concert promoter. Known for preserving other historic venues — and for producing Outside Lands, a three-day music festival usually held in Golden Gate Park every August — APE announced that it is planning a major renovation of the interior and famous marquee, as well as a dramatic transformation in the kind of events that the Castro will host.
“We want to present all types of programs in the theater – comedy, music, film, community and private events and more,” the organizer said in a press release.
Cast members stand at the premiere of The Matrix Resurrections on December 18th. Photo: Noah Berger/AP
The news stunned local filmmakers and festival programmers, who urged APE to seek input from the community – so much so that the promoter rushed to placate the reeling city, saying nothing unexpected would happen overnight.
Century-old movie theaters and single-screen theaters have been disappearing from San Francisco for years, victims of rising operating costs and the popularity of streaming services well before the pandemic hit. But as a cultural institution, the Castro Theater is unique. It is home to numerous festivals and premieres and matinee screenings of Camp Hollywood classics such as Gray Gardens and Auntie Mame. A destination for American film buffs, where you might watch a painstakingly restored 1940s noir, witness director Peter Bogdanovich belittle Cher during a Q&A session, or just sing along to Grease.
Already dark for 15 months during Covid, the Castro reopened in June 2021 to host the 45th edition of Frameline, San Francisco’s long-standing LGBTQ+ film festival.
Continuing a long-standing tradition of prefixing every film with live music from the in-house organ – no longer a “Mighty Wurlitzer,” but arguably the world’s largest pipe-digital hybrid organ – the return of the theater embodied the dawn of last summer’s optimism in California briefly eased its pandemic restrictions on indoor gatherings. It’s also very, very gay: San Francisco, the Judy Garland-revived theme from the 1936 disaster film of the same name, is always the last song before the curtain goes up. Consequently, the theater’s large and vocal queer fanbase was particularly saddened at the prospect of losing it forever.
“We know there won’t be the same amount of screenings at this venue and of course we’re very saddened by that,” said James Woolley, Executive Director of Frameline.
However, he did confirm that the 46th iteration of the festival, an anchor of San Francisco’s Pride Month celebrations, is still ongoing in June.
Peaches on stage at the Castro. Photo: Courtesy of Peaches Christ
Although Peaches Christ was initially dismayed, a call to APE put her mind at ease.
“They assured me that the programming would be very well thought out. They’re not going to program it like they would Bill Graham, or remove the seats,” she said, referring to a much larger venue that welcomes EDM DJs and mainstream musicians.
While concerned that the Castro might devote itself entirely to live performances, Peaches noted that comedy festivals like Sketchfest had long since broadened the scope of what the theater was doing. Second screenings were hardly his bread and butter.
“As much as I would hate to see the repertory calendar disappear when you went to the screenings, nine times out of ten it was less than half full,” she said. “I ran a cinema and have been in the business for a long time. I knew it wasn’t a sustainable model.”
Peaches is optimistic about APE as a local entity that’s much smaller than national companies like LiveNation. They promised her they would honor her existing contract and also assured her that they would install a new cinema screen, improve accessibility for people with disabilities, and make other necessary repairs.
“What the general public doesn’t see is that the Castro needs a huge electrical upgrade,” she said. “The old wiring sometimes caused circuit breakers to trip. It was stressful.”
Still, the underlying economics are what they are, which is why many San Francisco theaters are now derelict (or repurposed as gyms).
“Theater business is tough, and I think it’s especially tough for independent historic single-screen arthouses. You can only charge so much for a movie ticket,” said Lex Sloan, filmmaker and executive director of the 110-year-old single-screen Roxie Theater, the oldest such venue in San Francisco. “We are more than just cinemas. We are places where people make memories and make new friends. Places like the Castro and its programming are the quintessence of what makes San Francisco weird and wild.”
