Established in 1987, ShowEast’s annual Salah M. Hassanein Humanitarian Award is presented to companies and individuals in the industry that make an impact in the philanthropic community. This year’s recipient is Mark Gramz, president of Marcus Theatres. Gramz begain his exhibition journey in 1971, joining the company while still in high school as a part-time concession attendant at a drive-in theater, and seasonal stints at indoor locations followed. He has been with the company ever since. Gramz took the traditional route to assistant manager and eventually general manager (GM) by the late ‘70s. He was GM at several locations before becoming district manager for the Milwaukee metro area in 1987. By 1991, he was promoted to vice president of operations for southern Wisconsin, and in 1997 he became senior vice president of operations. He was named executive vice president of Marcus Theatres in 2012, and a decade later, in 2022, Gramz stepped into the role of Marcus Theatres’ president. In advance of ShowEast, Gramz spoke with Boxoffice Pro about his longtime career with the Milwaukee-based chain and the charitable efforts he’s helped shepherd.
You made a decision in high school that shaped the course of your career. How did your first job in exhibition lead to a career in exhibition?
There was a drive-in theater within walking distance of my home, so it was easy to latch on to the crew that worked there. I didn’t answer an ad or send in a résumé; I was friends with a lot of the associates who worked there, so I was an easy acquisition and hire. It was my first gig. I started working part-time in refreshments at the drive-in cinema. The best thing I can say about it all is that despite finishing high school and going on to a four year university and getting two undergraduate degrees (one in economics and one in business finance), I never found a reason to leave Marcus Theatres. I started with Marcus Theatres when I was 16, and I’ve never had a reason to leave Marcus Theatres. I always felt that the culture was educational: It had a career ladder associated with it and growth [potential] attached. The culture had involvement, participation, and a sense of accomplishment on every step of the path here at Marcus.
You’ve worked at Marcus from the ground up to president, gaining a full understanding of exhibition at every level. What were those early days like?
I was in theater operations for a very long time. It’s an interesting business. It’s always been an interesting business. When I think about it and try to take a broader view of it, I always felt like we were part of culture. I worked at theaters that played exclusively or semiexclusively to our marketplace in the Milwaukee metro area. Movies like Tommy, Grease, Animal House, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, and The Empire Strikes Back. When you play those pictures and you see the passion that people come to the theaters with, the anticipation to see those movies, and then you see them come back time and time again to see the movie again, you realize that you’re part of culture and you’re sort of feeding the world what’s new— the latest and greatest.
It was exciting to be a small piece of that; at the same time it was exciting to have a business facility where you looked at it from a perspective of, “What do we do to maintain a habit of moviegoing? What do we do to get people to come back each week or every two weeks? What do we do here to improve our sight and sound? What do we do to improve refreshments? What do we do to improve seating? What do we do to make the environment even more attractive, to draw in even more people and to keep them coming back on a regular, consistent basis?”
What were those blockbuster eras like in the business? Was it any easier back then?
There were always periods of time like that, but there were always other periods of time where you felt like, “Wow, we’re just not hitting it right. We just don’t have the right titles.” I remember an era where musicals were big, but then that whole genre kind of went underground and movies like 1973’s Lost Horizon—which was sort of a forgettable musical—didn’t do very well. The Great Gatsby with Robert Redford didn’t do very well and wasn’t well reviewed. Then suddenly, something culturally new came up like Star Wars. Suddenly the cinema was the place to go; it was really culturally relevant to go to the cinema. We’ve gone through periods like that, and we continue to go through periods like that.
I recall when CGI became so good that suddenly things became possible that were not filmable when I was young, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Those were popular comics in the ‘70s, but they really didn’t become filmable to the point where they really looked like real-life comic characters, until Spider-Man came out in 2002. Reading a book or comics in the ‘70s, you looked at Spider-Man and Iron Man and those characters and said, “Wow, if only they could make a movie out of this.” Then we get to the point where CGI is such that you can do it. That’s been a great thing for cinema. I saw that this year with Denis Villeneuve and what he did with Dune. Again, those books were written in the ‘60s. They predated Star Wars. To make them filmable, like he did, that’s spectacular stuff.
Did you have any mentors who helped you along the way?
I feel like I’ve had partners along the way my entire career. I’ve had GMs that I feel were partners with me when I was a GM. I’ve had colleagues as district directors that were partners of mine. When I first became VP of operations, I shared the role with a person named Don Perkins, who unfortunately passed away a number of years ago, but he certainly was a mentor to me. Right now, I feel like I have something of that relationship with Greg Marcus. These last couple of years as president have been a very good thing. I think we have a strong relationship and are in strong agreement on some core principles that we have here.
As a leader in the industry, you’ve distinguished yourself in the philanthropic community as well. What role have industry charities have played in your career?
Marcus Corporation and NATO, particularly NATO of Wisconsin & Upper Michigan, both of those organizations have always been all about giving back to the community, employee volunteerism, and employee participation in charitable campaigns. Ever since the start of my career, I’ve been involved in and helped shepherd and guide and be part of charitable efforts. We have a couple of gift-giving campaigns here at Marcus—one for the United Way of Greater Milwaukee and [another for] the United Performing Arts Fund of Milwaukee (UPAF). We have had both those employee gift giving campaigns for as long as I can remember. We have a large kickoff event, and we have individual events at individual locations. We do quite a lot to try to encourage and support associate involvement in raising funds for those two charities in particular.
Also on the Marcus Theatres side, we are longtime supporter of Variety – the Children’s Charity of Wisconsin and also Variety the Children’s Charity of Illinois. We’ve been very much involved with them and the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation. One of the hallmarks of the Geneva Convention that NATO Wisconsin has put on for many years is that the money we raise there generally goes to either Variety or to Motion Picture Pioneers or both. Along the way, we’ve also donated money to a lot of different civic organizations and to individual municipal individual cities, libraries, and museums. In the case of NATO Wisconsin, there’s an organization we’ve supported for many years called the Children’s Outing Association (COA) here in Milwaukee, which serves underprivileged children. They have a campground which we have supported for many years.
This year Marcus Theatres loyalty program, Magical Movie Rewards, celebrated 10 years and 6 million members. Marcus also added its first ScreenX auditorium last year and recently opened Marcus West End Cinema. What are some of the other Marcus milestones, and what’s ahead for Marcus Theatres?
We are always trying to find ways to improve the moviegoing experience and to bring new experiences to people. We were an early adopter of recliner seating. We had one of the first 4DX screens in North America. We also had two Imax theaters back in the mid-‘90s where we played Everest, T. Rex: Back to the Cretaceous, and more of the original Imax products. We’re always looking for new ways to either attract a new audience or to enhance the experience for the existing audience. We were among the first theaters to put alcohol service and alcoholic beverage lounges into our lobbies. We’ve also moved to a better food and beverage menu, with more complete meals available at most of our locations. We’ve done a lot of different things over the years—as our audience has been looking for more and better amenities from cinemas—to serve that audience and improve our opportunities for sales.
You’ve been in this business a long time, what fresh joys and challenges have these past two years brought you?
We’ve been through a series of hurdles. It started with the pandemic back in 2020, and when the pandemic ended, we were faced with this environment where the studios were putting a lot of resources into streaming. We’ve shown ourselves to be resilient in that regard. If we put out great movies, customers were coming to the theaters and did want to get out of the house. So I think we kind of conquered that as an industry. Then we came up to the strikes, the Screen Actors Guild strike and the Writers Guild strike, and the lag period in production after that strike was finally settled.
We’re just now coming back to somewhere close to the reality of production we had before the pandemic. Now we just need to demonstrate that the industry is resilient, that the industry will serve a broad audience, and that we can play movies that are primarily for seniors, families, young adults, and teens. We can create momentum through the calendar and build attendance from the point after the production lag due to the strikes to where we’re back to full production, with a full slate of titles and a consistency of titles.
The fall slate and beyond is looking really good.
It looks really good. What I love to see is how a number of movies [have] overperformed. The overperformance that we saw, for example with It Ends with Us and Twisters, that’s significant stuff, because it indicates that maybe some of these surveys are old news. People do want to get out of the house: People are still interested in going to the movies. Once we get them back in the theater, it’s our job to find ways to get them back in on a continuous, regular basis and build that momentum.
I felt that our performance, for example on IF, and our catering to families, helped propel Inside Out 2. The opening wasn’t as strong as we wanted, but its length of run was really good. It helped give us a lead into Inside Out 2 and that overperformed and was a magnificent thing this summer. It’s building those first titles and getting people in the door and getting them to see trailers, standees, and posters. Then once you get the big picture, the blockbusters like Inside Out 2, it’s keeping that momentum going into Despicable Me 4 and to other titles like Harold and the Purple Crayon as we move through the calendar.
It’s all about the momentum and the consistency isn’t it? Getting people in and excited about the following week.
Yes, exactly, and giving them a great time. I mean, we’re all about entertainment. I say to the staffers, “We’ve got to create a fun atmosphere. Please have fun with customers. Make them feel like they’re a guest and make them feel like you’re at a fun place.” We have fun here at the theater.
Do you remember the first movie you saw in a theater?
It was downtown about a block and a half away from my office right now. It’s currently a legit [performing arts] theater, but it was a downtown movie palace back in the ‘60s. My mother took me to see Pinocchio.
Was that your hometown theater growing up?
My hometown suburban theater was on the southwest side of Milwaukee, and it was originally over 1,000 seats with a single auditorium. We played Earthquake, Tommy, Grease, and a lot of big attractions there. We played them for a very long time. I remember opening Grease, I think in June, and I believe we were still playing it in December!
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