Palm Theatre, San Luis Obispo facts for kids

The Palm Theatre is a cool movie theater in San Luis Obispo, California. It's located in the old Chinatown area, right across from the historic Ah Louis building.

The theater's logo and sign show respect for the area's history. They use Asian-inspired letters and palm fronds, which are like palm tree leaves.

How The Palm Theatre Started

The Palm Theatre was created by Jim Dee. He still owns and runs it today! When Jim was studying journalism at Cal Poly, he was a DJ for the campus radio station, KCPR.

During that time, Jim and a friend started showing movies at a small local theater. They called their movie program "Cinema Zoo." Jim loved movies so much that he opened his own small theater in 1979. It was called The Rainbow Theatre. After 10 years, Jim closed The Rainbow and opened The Palm Theatre instead.

Early Days of the Theater

In August 1988, Jim Dee opened The Palm Theatre in downtown San Luis Obispo. Jim's wife, Patty, helped a lot. She was the contractor who helped change an old office building into a movie theater. The building was built in 1955 and wasn't meant to be a theater. This made its setup a bit unusual.

The Palm Theatre has three screens. It can seat 268 people in total. The biggest screen seats 124 people. The two smaller screens seat 89 and 49 people each. This is a smaller number of seats compared to many other movie theaters. Because of the building's original design, The Palm Theatre needed three separate rooms for projectors. Each room projects movies onto one screen. Most modern theaters have just one projection room for all screens.

The first few years were tough for The Palm Theatre. Turning an office building into a movie theater was hard and cost a lot of money. Also, the theater mostly showed independent films and art films. These movies didn't attract big crowds at first. Jim had hoped that students from Cal Poly and Cuesta College would be interested in these types of movies. But that wasn't really the case.

There were also problems with the building's owner. Jim wanted to buy the building. In 1991, he was able to get a loan to buy it. But buying the building was very expensive. It almost made Jim and the theater go bankrupt.

Luckily, these money problems got better in the early 1990s. Smaller budget films like “Working Girl” started to become more popular. In 1992 and 1993, The Palm Theatre's business grew a lot!

The Palm Theatre Today

The Palm Theatre is known for showing independent, foreign, and art films. These are movies made outside of big Hollywood studios. But it also shows some lower-budget mainstream films. For example, in 2007, it showed Juno, which became the theater's most successful movie ever! They even brought it back for a longer showing.

Jim Dee chooses all the movies. He likes films that are "below radar," meaning they aren't always the most famous ones. He even asks moviegoers for their ideas! The Palm Theatre is also used by Cal Poly film classes. This is because the university doesn't have its own special rooms to show 35 mm film prints.

In recent years, many independent theaters have faced challenges. Some say that bigger theater chains try to stop independent theaters from getting popular new movies right away. Many mainstream films shown at The Palm Theatre are "second run." This means they are shown after they've already been in bigger theaters.

It's also become harder to show "second run" movies. This is because Hollywood studios often release movies on DVD much faster now. They do this to make more money and to fight against illegal copying of movies. However, Jim Dee still believes that watching movies with a crowd is special. He thinks The Palm Theatre will always have people who want that experience.

Jim Dee was even featured in an article in the Los Angeles Times. The article was called "Art of Survival at the Art House." It talked about how independent film distribution was changing. It said that The Palm Theatre was at the other end of the independent film world compared to big festivals like Sundance.

Even though The Palm is in a popular shopping area downtown and has two colleges nearby, students don't make up most of its audience. Because the theater often shows more unique films, it's been hard to attract college students. This is probably because the Fremont Theater and Downtown Cinemas are close by. Those theaters show more mainstream movies and big Hollywood blockbusters. Instead, it's often older people from San Luis Obispo and nearby towns who fill the seats on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

San Luis Obispo International Film Festival

The Palm Theatre has been part of the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival (SLOIFF) since it began in 1993. Jim Dee, the owner of The Palm Theatre, was one of the five people who started the festival. The others were Mary Harris, Cathy Peacock, Lee Cogan, and Jim's wife, Patty Dee. In 2007, The Palm Theatre played its biggest role yet in the festival. It hosted over 90 percent of all the festival's movie showings!

The festival started as a week-long event to celebrate director George Sidney and other classic films that were no longer in theaters. Now, SLOIFF is a week-long event where independent filmmakers can show their movies to an audience. They also get live feedback. While The Palm Theatre is a main part of the festival, other local theaters like The Fremont and San Luis Obispo Little Theatre also show some films.

The SLOIFF gives out several awards each year. The King Vidor Award is named after a famous filmmaker who lived nearby, King Vidor (1894–1982). This award is given to actors and filmmakers for their amazing work in movies. Past winners include Jim Dee himself! He received the award in 1999 for owning The Palm Theatre for so long and for supporting SLOIFF every year since 1993. The famous actor Morgan Freeman also won the award in 2006.