By Alex Biese
ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS – Filmmaker Kevin Smith, a Monmouth County native who became co-owner of his childhood movie house in Atlantic Highlands in 2022, recently announced that the theater now known as Smodcastle Cinemas will host a screening of the documentary, “A Father’s Promise,” at 7:30 p.m. March 2.
The documentary recounts the journey of grief and healing experienced by Mark Barden, a father who lost his 7-year-old son, Daniel, in the Sandy Hook school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
The event is among the first special events to be scheduled following Smith’s recent announcement that the theater will transition to nonprofit status.
The screening will benefit three organizations: the newly-established Smodcastle Foundation, the Where Angels Play Foundation, which builds playgrounds in memory of the children whose lives were lost in the Sandy Hook School shootings, and Artists for Action to Prevent Gun Violence, an organization created and led by the subject of the film, Mark Barden.
The Where Angels Play Foundation is building playgrounds in storm-ravaged communities, such as those affected by Super Storm Sandy, including Highlands.
The screening will be followed by a concert by New Jersey native Fab Faux musician Jimmy Vivino.
“It feels like we’re working on the side of the angels, which is nice,” Smith said of hosting the benefit event.
“We do a lot of events at Smodcastle that are very me-centric, which makes the people who come to see the stuff happy but can tend to feel a little selfish as the guy at the center of it,” Smith told The Two River Times. “So it’s nice to be able to open up the house for other people to take the stage, particularly when you’ve got important issues like the one that’s raised in ‘A Father’s Promise.’”
Smith and the co-owners of the theater at 82 First Ave., a five-screen multiplex that’s been a Bayshore fixture since the 1920s, have applied for nonprofit status with the help of Atlantic Highlands mayor Lori Hohenleitner, said the Red Bank-born and Highlands-raised filmmaker who became famous with the debut of his first film “Clerks” in 1994.
“It just makes a lot of sense,” said Smith. “Keeping the theater open is important to us, and it’s important to the community as well. And, rather than make a business decision based on (asking), ‘Well, what can we get for the buildings?’ or something like that, we decided to stick with it and go (the) nonprofit (route) with the theater itself.”
While the theater continues to draw sizable crowds for Smith’s appearances with tickets moving briskly for his upcoming Vulgarthon filmography marathon Aug. 3, Smodcastle Cinemas owner and operator Ernie O’Donnell said that due to the harsh realities of the modern movie theater businesses, discussions of shifting to a nonprofit operation began six months or so after the theater’s October 2022 re-christening.
“This is really the only way to survive this industry,” O’Donnell said. “As great as Kevin is and what he brings to the theater, that’s a big responsibility to put on his back, basically to say, ‘Hey, if you don’t show up every month, we’re going to have problems.’ ”
Future plans for the theater include a film school, a memorabilia display and a benefit screening of Smith’s upcoming feature, “The 4:30 Movie,” later this year, O’Donnell said.
“I think it’s going to turn into something really nice, because by us still being a first-run movie theater – which, we’ll always do that,” said O’Donnell. The theater will continue to hold live events. “It’s just that we’re going to incorporate a few other things like a school and classes where kids can come in and learn about film and filmmaking from the ground up through Kevin and his other connections in the industry.”
This article originally appeared in the February 22 – 28, 2024 print edition of The Two River Times.
