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SECOND ACT

Movie producer Moctesuma Esparza moves into the theater business

By Donna Mitchell

It was a Tuesday in early August, and it was supposed to be Moctesuma Esparza’s day off. Instead, the Hispanic rights activist and film producer found himself racing around Los Angeles taking phone calls and attending meetings about a new movie and his latest career move: developing cinemas for retail and entertainment centers.

Esparza, whose films include such standouts as Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Selena and The Milagro Beanfield War, is throwing himself into this latest venture. He founded Brea, Calif.-based Maya Cinemas in late 2003 to develop state-of-the-art multiplexes in the U.S., and is the company’s CEO. Maya opened its first and, at press time, only cinema in Salinas, Calif., last year and plans to build about five more by October of next year. Eventually, Esparza says, Maya will operate as many as 500 screens across the country.

More important, Maya will make moviegoing eventful again, says Esparza. Its lobbies will flaunt Mayan and Egyptian decorative motifs, in the manner of the movie palaces of the industry’s heyday. The auditoriums will be equipped with the latest technology and will feature contemporary seating systems. There will even be crying rooms for those restless tykes. Women in particular are sure to do a double take, because these movie houses will have twice the normal number of ladies rooms.

“We are bringing back the days when people loved going to movies because it was also about going to a movie palace,” said Esparza. “During the last 20, 30 years, people were building boxes with paint. That really hurt the movie theaters, and so my commitment is to return to the movie palaces.”

For all the opulence inside, there will be little escapism when it comes to some of the titles on the marquee. Esparza is using Maya to bring Latin American stories to film — including some films of his own produced by Maya Productions, the theater chain’s sister company. At press time Esparza was producing Walkout, a movie based on the Hispanic student walkouts of 1968, when about 20,000 high school students in East Los Angeles abandoned their classrooms for two weeks to protest poor educational conditions and to demand change. Esparza, whose parents emigrated from Mexico, participated in the walkout, and he makes a cameo appearance in the movie in the role of a supportive parent.

Movies such as Walkout are part of a promised diverse lineup of movie features, including first-run Spanish-language features, foreign and domestic, targeted mainly to urban audiences in largely Hispanic neighborhoods. As a sign of its commitment to the communities from which it expects to profit, Maya Cinemas will sponsor a $100,000 educational scholarship program aimed at the students, says Esparza.

Most of the cinemas will anchor open-air centers with retail and restaurants as well as housing. In May Maya struck a deal with Chicago-based Urban Retail Properties to co-develop seven mixed-use centers with entertainment space. Maya will provide the multiplexes and Urban Retail will build the shopping center space and other real estate components, such as housing. The projects are to go up in New York City and Chicago, as well as Texas and New Mexico.

Developers typically select retail tenants with particular consumer niches in mind, but up to now this has not been the case with movie theaters, which have generally appealed to broad audiences, observers say.

“He is unlike any other theater retailer,” said Ross B. Glickman, chairman and CEO of Urban Retail. “He understands the demographics, desires, concerns and opportunities in those [Hispanic] communities.”

The partnership also makes sense because Urban Retail has a strong tradition of developing projects in American cities, and the firm wants to invest more heavily in Hispanic markets, Glickman says.

Maya is also building a shopping center on its own. The open-air Bakersfield (Calif.) City Center will be anchored by a 14-screen Maya multiplex, naturally, and will contain about 50,000 square feet of national retail tenants and restaurants. Maya management hopes to complete the center in the third quarter.

“We’re taking it one step at a time, getting involved in larger projects,” said Esparza.

This foray into shopping center development is not the first sharp turn in Esparza’s career. He entered the University of California Los Angeles to study history, intending to become a political activist and community organizer. And indeed he did organize plenty of community political events. A fallout with a history professor prompted Esparza to enroll at the film school, from which he graduated with a master’s degree in the early 1970s, he told the San Diego Latino Film Festival. He also credits the Spanish-language films and big-time Hollywood features he took in during his childhood in East Los Angeles with influencing him to become a movie producer.

Esparza’s organizational and executive skills have served him well, whether applied to political events or movie projects. And they serve him now as a developer, he says. “Being able to negotiate, develop and acquire properties and go through the manufacturing process is all very similar.”

These days Esparza spends much of his time pushing forward with expansion plans for Maya, an activity that has brought his career in the movie industry full circle. He grew up watching movies and admiring the movie houses, and now he’s grown up to produce movies and build the cinemas.

“It is gratifying,” said Esparza, “but it’s been more like a spiral than a circle for me. You’re either moving up or moving down [in the film industry].”

In any case, Esparza seems headed for very many busy “days off” to come.