New Port Richey’s first heyday was during the silent movie era of the 20’s.  Gloria Swanson, Thomas Meighan, and company all converged on New Port Richey.   The Palms Theatre opened in 1921.  It was replaced by the Thomas Meighan Theatre in 1926.

Sound movies premiered in 1930.  The theater went through many changes over the years.  I remember going to the movies there back in the 1960’s.  The theater closed in 1968 with the opening of the Rocking Chair Twin theater behind the Southgate Shopping Plaza.

The theater was sold to the Suncoast Young People’s Theater group in 1972 and reopened as the Richey Suncoast Theater later that year.  As New Port Richey’s oldest theater, the Richey Suncoast Theatre produces various plays and hosts live musical performances.  In recent years, the theater has come full circle, showing silent movies as part of the various film festivals, including the upcoming Thomas Meighan Film Festival on May 1st and 2nd.

You can find all sorts of trivia about the Palm and the Meighan theaters on the fivay.org website.

Movies have had a resurgence in New Port Richey in recent years.  The Parks & Recreation Department’s Movies in the Park series have been extremely popular, attracting hundreds to each movie.   These movies have been held in Sims Park, but are moving to temporary locations during the Sims Park renovations.  The next movie will be held at Gulf High School on April 18th.  The movie will be the Lorax and is free of charge.  Recognizing the popularity of this series, the City Council recently authorized the purchase of a new $22,000 projector for this program.

We’ve seen a few, mostly forgettable, movies filmed in and around New Port Richey over the years.  The movie industry is in the process of switching from film to video.  It won’t be long before you can’t see a movie that comes in a film can.

Interestingly enough, we do have video production facilities right here in New Port Richey.  The Brilliant Factory, one of the original incubator tenants, has moved across the alley with two other companies and they have their own green screen setups that allow them to do some pretty fancy videos.

What is a green screen?  It is the blank screen that the weatherman stands in front of during the evening news.  It looks like a weather map to viewers.  The folks at the Brilliant Factory can do the same thing when creating a video for you.

This Tuesday night, the council will consider leasing the back of the Business Incubator building to a Multi-Media company that does online video and Internet content production.  The big room at the back of the building will become a sound stage.

This will give us two video production facilities right across the alley from each other!  Wow.

You might think at first:  “This is nice, but so what?”  It is more important than ever for companies to get themselves noticed online.  Just last week, I took one of my clients over to the Brilliant Factory and introduced him to Ann and Jeff.  My client needs a quality online video to showcase why people finding him online ought to sit down and do business with him.  I’ve seen some of the excellent work that the Brilliant Factory has done free to promote the city.

Being able to walk with my client over to a business like the Brilliant Factory is EXACTLY the reason we need to continue building a downtown filled with complimentary businesses.  The downtown that results will be far more than the sum of the individual parts.

I guess the city has come full circle:  We hosted silent film stars early in the 20th Century and here we are not quite a hundred years later building a business community on the cutting edge of 21st Century Internet technology.

 

Rob Marlowe, Mayor