Film Paradiso Beach Theatre owner Michael France is running late.
The blockbuster-movie screenwriter and St. Petersburg, Fla., native is quick to apologize over the phone. The surround-sound system in the St. Pete Beach landmark, home to a weekly showing of the cult phenom “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, had broken.
“It’s a major piece to the theater,” explains France, 45. “I’ve been on the phone all morning and we’re trying to get it down there as soon as possible.”
The broken sound system is the latest in a laundry list of problems France has faced since he bought the 68-year-old movie house in March. The theater has been running continuously since it opened in 1939, except for 18 months during World War II after German U-boats were spotted off Florida’s coast.
A half-hour after his scheduled appointment, France strolls into the theater, wearing his trademark attire: shorts, T-shirt and sandals. His light brown hair shows salt-and-pepper on the sides. The hours he spends on his bicycle, where he seeks inspiration for his screenplays, shows on his tanned and toned physique. Gold-rimmed sunglasses wrap around his face, giving him a straight-from-Hollywood look. He scales the dimly lit staircase to the theater’s projection room, takes a seat in a dusty green leather chair, and apologizes again.
“I always thought it would be cool to own a theater,” he says with a smirk. “But I never knew about the little things that are out there. I never thought I’d be coming home with 20-page homework assignments.”
While he misses his friends and the restaurants back in Los Angeles, France says St. Pete Beach is home. And now so is the Beach Theatre. He bought the place to show movies that no other venue in the country is showing, he says. He also hopes to continue offering its stage as a venue for local talent, from comedy to the sing-along, lip-synching cast of the “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
France’s hunt for hard-to-find movies began in the early 1980s at the Hippodrome State Theatre, where he worked as a projectionist while he attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla.
“There were so many movies I wanted to see, but the only way to see them was to get them booked,” he said.
After graduating with an English degree, he headed to New York to attend the Columbia University School for the Arts and then out to Los Angeles. He wrote and sold several movie scripts, including “Cliffhanger,” the 1993 blockbuster starring Sylvester Stallone, before coming home to St. Pete Beach in 1994. He and his wife, Elizabeth, are raising their three children on the beach in Pass-a-Grille, and France continues to write screenplays.
In 1997, he saw a notice that the Beach Theatre was for sale.
“That’s when I thought, ‘I should buy that,’ ” he says. “But I missed it.”
According to the Pinellas County Tax Appraiser Web site, the theater was sold for $289,000 in 1997. It came on the market again early this year, and France scooped it up for $800,000.
After he bought the Beach, France says he heard that some regulars were afraid that he was moving away from quirky and independent films to more mainstream features, like this summer’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.” Not true, he says. The popular blockbusters will only be used to fill in slow times and shore up attendance to keep the theater alive.
“We’re just trying to react to the ebb and flow of the population,” he says.
One Beach Theatre tradition France did question was whether to keep hosting the weekly Saturday night showing of the cult classic, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“I wasn’t too sure whether it fit with who came here,” he says.
He remembered going to “Rocky Horror ” as a teen, and seeing the theaters trashed by food-throwing fans.
“It was ‘Let’s fill a garbage bag full of trash and throw it around the theater,’ ” he says.
But along with the campy film, France inherited two veteran theater managers when he bought the Beach. They argued that “Rocky Horror” drew an average of 140 fans every week, and urged France to keep it.
“They kept telling me that was our biggest show,” France says. “Then I saw it, and the crowds and the performance. I loved it.”
On each of the past two Saturdays, “Rocky Horror” crowds have numbered as many as 200, levels normally reached around Halloween.
Theater manager Dave Bricker wasn’t a fan of the movie when he joined the Beach Theatre seven years ago –- just about the time “Rocky Horror” first played there.
“I just thought it was one of those dumb alien movies,” he says.
He has since become the face of the theater on Saturday nights, spending much of his time in the lobby glad-handing the audience or cheering on the cast of “Rocky Horror.”
“These people are like family to me,” he says.
Bricker, 28, is a St. Pete Beach native who started hanging out at the theater in 1997. It had just gone through a major renovation. The lobby’s dingy carpet was replaced with black-and-white checkerboard vinyl, new seats were installed and walls repainted. Bricker had been working an usher at a theater at Tyrone Square in St. Petersburg when he was offered a similar job at the Beach. He eventually moved up to management.
He tried to buy the Beach Theatre when it came up for sale earlier this year, but was outbid by France.
“Some day I’ll own it,” he says.
If Bricker is the theater’s front man, co-manager Chris Nickelson is the guy behind the screen. France says that Nickelson has been his expert on everything from vendor contracts to daily housecleaning logistics.
Nickelson, 29, is a Colorado native who spent summers in St. Pete Beach and finally moved here seven years ago. Three years ago, he got a job at the Beach Theatre, where he has demonstrated a knack for finding creative solutions in a pinch. For example, when the theater’s antiquated projection equipment needed a new belt, Nickelson discovered that replacement parts were no longer being made. So he improvised.
“I went to Walgreen’s and bought nylons,” he says. “They held for at least a year and a half.”
Nickelson admits he was skeptical of France bringing his big-Hollywood background to his funky and beloved Beach Theatre.
“When I heard he bought the place, I already despised him,” he says. “But now I want to help him. I respect what he’s trying to do to her.”
France’s life-long mission to show hard-to-find movies is well under way at the Beach Theatre. He recently showed the 1973 rock documentary film “Let the Good Times Roll,” starring Chuck Berry and Chubby Checker. The film hasn’t been available from the studio for years, so France ordered a copy from its vault.
“I came in and watched it myself and thought, ‘This may be the last time anyone will ever see this.’ You can’t get it anymore,” he says.
He plans to schedule more unique movies in the fall when attendance picks up.
And in the wee hours of a recent Sunday morning, France and his wife, Elizabeth, chat with “Rocky Horror” fans under the glow of the Beach’s neon marquee. Inside, his theater is a mess, plastered with rice, toast and water.
But Michael France is pleased.
“Just look,” Elizabeth France says after yet another campy night at the theater. “The man’s got a grin on his face.”
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