As the pandemic morphs from a current event to a chapter in the history books, life is largely back to normal — whatever that means.
But there are a few lingering reminders of the shutdown, most notably in the form of businesses that still have not reopened.
One of the most notable around here is the Valley Art theater on Mill Avenue in Tempe. Locals have been calling on Dan Harkins, the movie theater’s owner, to re-open next month to once again screen “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
KJZZ contributor Robrt Pela says it would be an ode to the value of small business.
ROBRT PELA: In the old days, you were either a Sombrero Playhouse person or a Valley Art theater patron.
These two revival houses—one of them at Seventh Street and Camelback in Phoenix, the other on Tempe’s Mill Avenue — showed Old Hollywood classics and obscure foreign films and indie arthouse movies on double bills that changed five times a week. You heard that right — two movies every other day, Monday through Thursday, with special double bills every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
On Tuesday, you could see a Humphrey Bogart double-header from the 1930s, and on Wednesday it might be Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” paired with George Franju’s “Les Yeux sans Visage,” both from 1960.
If you wanted to throw rice and shout obscenities at a movie screen, you went to one or the other of these cinemas on Friday and Saturday at midnight to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
We were very much a divided community. Everyone who went to the Sombrero to watch Richard O’Brien’s camp musical were convinced that the Valley Art “Rocky Horror” fans were a bunch of poseurs. And of course, the Valley Art people knew for a fact that the Sombrero midnight movie crowd just plain sucked.
Originally a proper playhouse, where one might see a bus-and-truck production of some old warhorse starring a Tinseltown has-been, the Sombrero had become a movie revival house in 1976, showing double features until it closed in 1981.
The Valley Art, opened in 1940 as a first-run movie house, had a similar schedule. Though it lasted as a revival house and boutique cinema until closing up shop during the COVID pandemic.
Harkins Theatres, which owns Valley Art, has been promising to reopen its flagship movie house for six long years. Local cinema fans have been whining that it has yet to. And when “Rocky Horror” star Tim Curry died last month, the grumbling reached a crescendo.
Fans are demanding that the Valley Art reopen right away, with a retrospective of Tim Curry films, and then stay open for good.
It’s a sweet argument, and not entirely wrong. But it’s also a reminder of how complicated our nostalgia-driven demands can be.
Because, on one hand, I’m not sure there are enough of us these days who want to go to the movies — or do anything that requires leaving the house and sitting next to strangers. We can blame streaming services (seriously, when’s the last time you went to the movies?), or parking, or the fact that we’ve all become too tired to go out after 8 p.m.
Would those of us who’d gone to a local revival house in the '80s be able to support one today? Or are we just asking to revisit our youth for a night, leaving Dan Harkins to pay the bills on his parents’ old movie theater? Nostalgia doesn’t pay the rent. Running a single-screen art house in 2026 can’t be cheap. Licensing fees are high, and the audience for such a place can be unpredictable. It may not be economically feasible to resurrect Valley Art in the form we remember.
Or, as my husband put it when I asked him about this: “Look, if the Mason Jar reopened and Gentlemen After Dark were playing there, would it be any fun? They’d be old and I’m old and I’m sure we’d all rather be at home watching ‘Ted Lasso.’” But, you know. My husband watched “Rocky Horror” at the Valley Art in the '80s, so don’t listen to him.
And, on the other hand, Variety recently reported that a national survey by the Art House Convergence, a coalition of independent film exhibitors, suggests that audiences are returning to independent cinemas in surprising numbers. Not just returning, but seeking them out. The survey found that people are craving communal viewing experiences, especially ones that feel local, and curated, and a little eccentric.
In other words, exactly what Valley Art used to offer.
So maybe when people say, “Reopen Valley Art in honor of Tim Curry,” they don’t just mean “so I can wear a sequined corset and yell at a movie screen one more time before I die.” Maybe what they’re really saying is, “Give us back a place where a movie feels like an event.”
It does feel like a disservice to the community to leave this gorgeous little movie house empty for so long. Valley Art isn’t just a building; it’s part of Tempe’s history. Its neon marquee, its old-timey ticket booth, its decades of oddball programming are all part of a story about how the East Valley once valued art that wasn’t shiny or corporate. Letting it sit dark suggests a kind of indifference that Tempe doesn’t deserve.
And if the Art House Convergence survey is right, Valley Art might even thrive. Not because we’re clinging to the past, but because we’re finally ready to admit that our past held more than a couple pretty good ideas.
Dan Harkins did not respond to requests for comment.
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