Behind the scenes at Arkadin Cinema and Bar’s long-awaited indoor space

After four years of outdoor screenings on their backlot, Arkadin Cinema and Bar is opening its finished indoor bar and theater space, with the first month of new programming kicking off this week. Ahead of the opening, we sat down for a chat with co-owners Keith Watson and Sarah Baraba about the new space, how they’re planning to evolve their programming, and how they fit into the increasingly robust St. Louis repertory film scene.

Tell us about the vibe you’re going for with the design and decor of the new space.

Keith Watson: I think what we had always said for a long time was a ‘70s grandmother’s basement kind of vibe. I think actually it’s gotten a little bit even more polished than we expected it to get along the way, just because it’s a custom-built space. But yeah, we’ve got a ‘70s kind of sunset motif going on in the theater itself. And then we’ve got little ‘70s-ish accouterments around the bar and stuff, too. That’s kind of the overarching idea. We always had the 1970s in our mind; a kind of den, cozy, comfortable, not so much your totally standard theater space. 

What’s the seating and capacity going to look like?

KW: We’ll have about 50 seats total. We were waiting on 30 standard type theater seats that are custom-made in China. 

Sarah Baraba: They’ve taken months and months to get here. And then we have some barstools in the back, like a row of eight of those. And we’re going to have a long table that we were having custom made and then some like eclectic seating as well that we have in there now, armchairs and things like that. 

I’ve seen on Instagram you all posting about different things you found at thrift shops to fill out the space. What are some of the most interesting things you found? 

SB: Well, definitely that [plaster projector piece] I picked up at the estate sale for the Way Out Club. It probably should have been painted or something like that. But it’s got all these faces on it from classic Hollywood movies and Universal monsters and stuff. 

KW: Yeah, like Laurel and Hardy are on there, Charlie Chaplin is somewhere, it’s got Frankenstein and Dracula and those kinds of guys.

SB: That’s probably the best find. 

KW: We also found zebra chairs, so we put those in the bar. And we got these pretty cheap pea-soup green armchairs that we put in the theater and some vintage bar stools that we have in the bar. So I think those are some of our favorite things. 

How are you expecting the programming here at Arkadin to evolve now that you have this indoor space? 

SB: We’ve got a few things that will keep going. Like we’ll still do Strange Brew the first Wednesday of every month and Silents, Please the second Wednesday. Silents, Please, is actually going to pick up another slot in the month. We’re not sure of the regular date yet, but it will be on the weekend monthly. They’re going to do a family-friendly screening, like a Saturday or Sunday matinee.

KW: Just generally speaking, there are things that we couldn’t really do outside or that just don’t work that well for various reasons. One is that we could never really have kids out there. We were working through the Heavy Anchor, and they have a pretty strict license that way, whereas we don’t. So we’ll be able to have kids and family-friendly screenings. And we had done a little bit of it outside, but we definitely want to expand on the more—for lack of a better word—“arthouse” type of selections. Things that are a little quieter that are a little harder to deal with outside with street noise and all that kind of stuff. I think we’ll have a pretty good space here for that kind of thing. 

SB: It seems like Sundays are going to be more of our arthouse days. Matinees and such. Maybe Saturday during the day, too. But then reserving Friday and Saturday nights for more grindhouse-y stuff. 

KW: Yeah, Grindhouse on Friday, Arthouse on Sunday.

SB: Then throughout the week, too, we’re going to try to put in events that aren’t necessarily movies. So, for example, we’ve talked about curating music video nights or trivia. Some of your more standard bar events, but with some kind of Arkadin twist. 

KW: We want to make the theater work as a standard “sit down and watch the movie, be quiet” type of space, but also where you can put the lights up a little bit and it’s a more friendly space. It’s not necessarily like everybody’s got to be quiet and watch something. One idea that keeps coming to my mind is like showing a vintage Eurovision competition, because they’re really absurd. It’s something that’s on and it’s hopefully low enough where people can talk and it won’t be too disruptive or anything like that. 

I know that the Webster Film Series just did Joe Dante’s Movie Orgy recently, which is going for that same collective viewing idea, but on a very large scale. 

KW: Right. Like hours and hours. 

I mean, you’re probably not planning on doing a full Satantango, eight-hour type of thing… 

SB: Oh, we’ve talked about it. 

Oh, really? 

KW: That was one of the first things that we talked about doing, and then when we talked about it, Webster actually did it. They had like a lunch break built in and everything. And I really wanted to go, but I was sick that day and couldn’t go. Anyway, I think we would like to do things like that, but logistically, you have to figure it out because it’s a lot of movie. 

SB: I’m really excited about an idea like that, because we could get like a food truck to come in and [use that for the] lunch break. Other programming things that we talked about are, for March, we’re going to do some Women’s History Month programming.

KW:We want to focus on female directors. We’re going to show Jeanne Dielman. It just recently got the number one spot on the Sight and Sound list, and I think it fits well into Women’s History Month. It’ll be a cool movie, and It’ll be a good test case for how something like that works here. 

That’s a hard one to watch in your house—to set a full three hours aside and not be distracted or anything.

KW: Exactly. And that’s something we always talked about as being one of the big benefits of a movie theater in general. It’s not necessarily just with the movie, where the screen is bigger and the sound is better or whatever. I mean, we’ve tried to do that in our space as much as we can. But just the idea that you put a movie on a screen, and it gives an environment where people can really focus in on it without the phone ringing, the dog barking, noticing the spot in the next room you should have mopped or whatever. All the distractions that come from watching a movie at home. 

SB: We’ve released a March calendar, and that has the Women’s History Month programming. And then we’re probably going to just do that on Sundays with a few other things here and there. But then just showing movies that we really love and would like to share with people that we haven’t necessarily gotten to show outside. We did this Maniacal Mondays series in October where we did a mystery horror movie every Monday, and that worked really well. So we definitely want to bring that back. We don’t know that we’re necessarily going to keep it to horror, but we’ve talked about some different series we could do where it would be a surprise movie. We haven’t quite worked out the price yet, but something really cheap. Come in, get some popcorn, have a beer. Enjoy a crazy movie that you might not have picked out on your own. 

Tell me about what the bar situation is going to be like.

SB: It’s a full bar. So we will have beer, wine, and then our cocktail menu is going to be soda-centric, which I know sounds not exciting, but I feel like we’ve put together a few fun cocktails that work with the small space that we have. 

KW: We don’t have the gun that you have at most bars, and we don’t have draft beer. We just don’t have space for it. But we will have everything that people want. 

How does it feel to finally be realizing this space that you’ve been putting together for almost four years now?

SB: It’s exciting. It still feels a little bit unreal. I feel like we’ve got excited and then we’ve had to pull back the reins a couple of times. But now, having the space built out and putting all the equipment in and making a drink menu…it’s happening.

KW: It’s definitely exciting. There’s been a lot of logistical decisions. When you open a movie theater, you think about, “Oh, what movies do I want to show?” And then when you open a movie theater, the vast majority of your decisions are more like, “What contractor do we use?” and “How do we navigate getting licenses from the city?” and “What furniture is good?” Lots and lots of decisions that aren’t necessarily that fun all the time. So what I’m excited about is that we’ve gotten past that, for the most part, and we’re finally getting to the fun part, which is just picking out movies and showing them to people, seeing what people respond to, and hopefully seeing people really enjoy the space. 

SB: We’re not small-business owners by trade or anything like that. Neither of us have a business degree. We didn’t have any training on how to do this. I feel like this is kind of like the definition of DIY, and there’ve been a lot of bumps along the road. But we’ve navigated them, and now I feel like we’re experts in opening up a small business. If you ever need to open up a business and navigate the city, let me know. I know all of the tricks now.

Considering the DIY ethos that has driven this whole venture, how do you think Arkadin fits into the increasingly robust repertory film scene here in St Louis?

SB: For real, it’s exploded here. But that’s exciting. And we’re glad to be part of it.

KW: When we first started out, there was Webster and there was the stuff that Cinema St. Louis would do, and Late Night Grindhouse once a month. But other than that, there wasn’t a lot. Now you’ve got Alamo Drafthouse doing rep stuff. Obviously, Cinema St. Louis has the Hi-Pointe now. Webster keeps chugging along and seems to be doing even more than they used to. The landscape has changed a little bit. I think as far as how we fit into that, I hope that we all complement each other. That’s what our goal is, to just try to find our niche. I think we’re a little more on the scrappier end of it. We have our own space to play with and do different things. And that may be to the furthest end of the arthouse and to the furthest end of the grindhouse—playing the fringes of things as much as we can. We also have Drinkolas Cage, which we did outside. I don’t know that there is something totally, exactly like that, and we want to do things that are in that vein of alternate ways of interacting with movies.

What excites you most about the future of Arkadin?

KW: Being inside! Laughs. Not having to look at the weather forecast a million times in a day to figure out if we can do a movie or not. There were a lot of fun parts about being outside, but there were also a lot of huge hassles with it. Having a space where we know we control the space and environment, that is attractive. And the opportunities that it opens up. There are just certain movies that were hard to do outside, especially because we could only operate when Heavy Anchor was open. 

SB: What’s exciting to me is being able to share movies with more people. What I love with the silent movies in particular, is people who come out who’ve never seen one before, and they’re like, “Wow, that was great. How have I not watched silent movies before?” Or we did a screening of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and this kid came up to us afterwards and was like, “This was my dad’s favorite movie, and now it’s my favorite movie.” I was just like, “Oh my god!” Like that kind of stuff. It’s fun to be able to provide those memories for people.

KW: To be incredibly cheesy, what makes it all worth it is when somebody comes out and they don’t even need to say it, but you can just feel that they had a really good time. That this is something they will remember. Anytime we’re able to do that, that’s the best.