Greg Marcus: Full interview

You know, I think it speaks to the importance of staying true to your principles, following that compass, pointing north. And if you do that, then you have a chance of getting to 90 and maybe 100 after that.

You know, actually growing up the name wasn't really on the theaters as much as it is now. Every theater had its own name. And I don't even know if we had a policy trailer that, you know, the part where it says, 'Welcome to Marcus Theaters.' I mean, maybe we had a little some dancing popcorns and some sodas on the screen to remind you to go get some popcorn. But it's funny as I thought about what kind of questions I might get and the issue of what did I first remember, I think I look actually at my own kids and understand it's really easy to understand being in the theater business, right? Oh, you own the place where we go see movies as opposed to like a hotel is a little bit more of an abstraction for them. They don't go to a hotel. So I think the theaters were amongst the earliest things I remember. There was a movie we used to show when I was a kid. We'd have birthday parties and we had a little screening room and we'd show 'The Ghost of Mr. Chicken' which was a Don Knotts movie which no one knows about. But sort of my memories are of that and I do remember coming to the hotels because my dad was very, very involved in that. That was his focus at the time, not really the theaters. That was my grandfather running that. And so I remember coming to the hotels as a kid and looking down. We'd be in the foyer and looking down at the candy at the sort of the sundry shop that where they had like the candies and stuff and you could look in from overhead. So that was fun. And we were also in the restaurant business too. And probably people don't realize that at one point restaurants were the biggest part of our business. And we owned a lot of Big Boys. And so I remember going to Big Boy quite frequently.

No. You know, my parents were very careful to make sure that my brothers and I realized that we were very lucky and that we had a responsibility and that to sort of run roughshod would have been inappropriate.

Well, you know, we have actually he left us with a statement basically. And we have a thing in the company and this is what I was when I first talked about staying true to your foundational concepts and what that true north is. We have a thing in the company called Ben's Commandments and he put it down as his sort of 'how I think about business' and we still use it to this day. Which is, you know, number one, your associates, your employees, they're your most important asset. So take good care of them like you take care of your most important asset. You know, own your own real estate. Keep your balance sheet strong. These were the kind of things that he was sharing with us that to this day, had our balance sheet not been the way it was, I don't know that you and I'd be sitting here because we'd have been done under by the pandemic.

Well, it all comes back to remember where you came from and don't lose sight of what got you there. And so we talk about when we get into a community, a lot of times a developer, and we view ourselves as developers. Real estate's an important part of what we do. Some developers will go into a community and they'll do their project and there's nothing wrong with it, but then they will go on to another project in another community and they leave. They're not there for the long haul. We've had the philosophy that because we operate the business, we don't just build it. We operate the businesses. We're there for the long haul and we're there to be a part of that community because we didn't just build the building. We're running the business. And so being a staying a part of RIP and saying we still own the first one, that says a lot when you say to somebody, 'We want to come do business in your community. And by the way, we're not just here to make a quick buck and get out. We're here to stay.' And by the way, we still own the first theater we built 90 years ago. It's a pretty good example of that.

Well, it's again one of those lessons that you have to take care of your community, and that's what we're doing. I've always said there's two things. If you have the capability, you have the responsibility. And so that means if you've been so lucky to be able to have success, you need to take care of others with that success. But also, our business is specifically really hard to move. This hotel isn't going anywhere. The theaters aren't going anywhere. And the people that come to the theaters and the people that work in the theaters, the hotels, whether it's the customers or the associates, the idea is that if you don't have a strong community, you're not going to attract people to want to live there and work there and patronize your businesses or come to your hotels from out of town. And so in giving back, in being philanthropic and taking care of our community, we're not totally altruistic. We're taking care of our businesses as well.

Well, I'd be lying if I said I never thought about it. I was, you know, what happened was I'd finished law school and I'd always been into the movies and that was one of my favorite parts of our businesses, although I love them all. And I had been a photography minor in college. So I felt like for some reason I thought that would give me some sort of standing. And I applied to a program at USC, the University of Southern California, which is one of the, it's like the Harvard of film schools. And I got in. Now, I went to tell my dad. I'll never forget. I said, 'Dad, I got into film school.' Now I could hear him almost gulp like 'What do we do in film school?' But I was already a lawyer and an accountant. So he couldn't say, 'Well, what if this doesn't work?' If it didn't work, okay, I've got I can be a lawyer or be an accountant. I'll be okay. And so I went and I quickly figured out I was tired of school. And I went to work for a producer and she was a very, very important producer at the time in Hollywood. And we were working on two movies at the same time. 'What About Bob?' which is a relatively classic Bill Murray movie, and then a movie called 'The Doctor' with William Hurt. And so I was in a really good position if I wanted to stay in that industry. I was working with the right people and working for the right people. But I ended up deciding that I really wanted to be a part of what we were doing and come back to the Midwest and I didn't see myself spending my life out there.

Yeah, you know it's interesting and it's funny. I see this with my kids now at the age I was in my mid-20s and I'm thinking, 'I got to get on with my life.' Now I look back go, 'Get out of your life, you're a kid.' But I sort of felt this pressure to, and by the way, no outside forces. My dad would never tell me what to do, never said come back, and I always knew it was an option but he never said you should come back or anything of the like. But I just felt, 'Okay, am I going to be here the rest of my life? Probably not.' And so if I'm not going to do that, well, probably should start heading back. And I actually went to Chicago first and then I came home. But yeah, start to get to work on what you'll do.

I mean, the movies themselves. It's so funny. I see so many of them. It's hard to actually pick like one or two that were seminal in terms of that. I mean, I remember Titanic was a huge movie. But it was really this one. James Cameron is now we're coming up on Avatar 3. Never bet against James Cameron. It's an important lesson I learned starting with, actually go back to Terminator. I love Terminator. I mean, I love the movies. And what I love about the movies, I go every week. And people always say, 'What's your favorite?' I see so many. If you go every week, and maybe I don't make it every week, but I go very regularly. I have a regular date night with my wife. And what I like about the movies is that it's a relatively inexpensive way for people to be together and to get out of the house and do things together. And I think in today's world, it's actually even more important because in a world where we're all in our own silos and we don't leave our houses so much anymore, there's a horrible stat about adults spending an hour and a half more a day at home just losing their minds, I think. It's not good. We humans were meant to be with other humans. There's a reason for that. And going out to the movies and being with other people and getting out and just breaking away for a couple, I call it a little two-hour vacation. That's what matters to me. That's what I think is important. And having our community, a place where community can be together and you can see other people that may not look exactly like you, all may not think the way you think, but all enjoying each other. That's the most important thing and that's been a constant and I think it's something we have to remember. There is something different about laughing, screaming, reacting with a group versus reacting on the couch to whatever you're watching.

Yeah, that's obviously a huge topic coming out of the pandemic, of course, the dual challenges that you've been through now when it comes to the rise of streaming and the coronavirus pandemic. Which one ended up being the most challenging? Which one do you think has the most lasting issues that your industry will continue to respond to?

Well, not so much. It's just it's impact. Yes, we still have tentpoles and people are still going to their movies, but we just, the biggest other challenge we're having is that a small fraction of people not going. But let's just talk about Memorial Day this year. Record weekend. We had a record weekend for Memorial Day. People are going to the movies and not just the big ones, the medium ones, the ones they don't know about, the 'Sinners' of the world. Wasn't 'Sinners' a great movie? But who knew? Although Ryan Coogler, Michael B. Jordan, we should have known. But the other issue we have is not enough movies. They're not giving us enough in the theaters right now. It's starting to build back up. And that really was the pandemic. It shrunk the pipeline and it takes time to rebuild it. And the other problem we have is that everyone wanted to be Netflix. All the studios want to be Netflix, which it's not possible for everyone to be Netflix. And they got a lot of challenges on their balance sheet and as they're going through a transition, the studios I'm talking about, as the studios go through a transition, their balance sheets constrict how much they can spend to make movies. So we're getting less movies. But now Amazon's saying they're going to make a whole bunch of movies and Paramount just got bought and they said they're going to up their movie output. So when all that comes together, we should get back to a you know, so it'll all come. So pandemic gives us less movies, shrinks the pipeline. Streaming was coming anyway. As we get back to a more full slate of movies and hopefully the windows change a little bit and get a little less tight, then just streaming and so maybe a little bit of impact but not as much.

You know what? You still need the attendance. We still need the people. We still need the box office and the excitement around people going. But the idea of getting a bigger share of wallet is an important concept and being able to leverage our food and beverage skills, which we probably, it's interesting. I do think that we have, and I've been around to a lot of theaters around the country, I think we have the best food and beverage, the pizzas and the hamburgers and all that stuff, of anyone in the industry. And as you know, it's not fancy. What we do is we're not doing steaks. And we certainly know how to make great steaks. We've got Mason Street Grill and we've got Chop House. We've got lots of great restaurants. Now the Studio Kitchen, that's the new name for the restaurant in the St. Kate. We have lots of great restaurants in our portfolio. We understand how to make really high-end food, but we just sort of took that mentality and said, 'Okay, we're not going to do that here. This is a burgers and pizza, but why not have great burgers and have great pizza?' And I think our burgers and our pizza, it's phenomenal. Everyone knows the Furos. And people, if they don't know our burgers, they're delicious. They could be some of my favorite burgers of all time. Go get them if you haven't had them.

It's just what you're talking about. I think that the next thing that will be sort of what is the alternative content? What are the things that we can do that's not just movies? We want to be more than just a place for movies. That's a tough call, that's a tall order to try and get people to think about you as something maybe a place to go see a comedy show or a concert. I mean, still filmed and on a screen. Probably not live, but I mean live, it can be live being broadcast live, but not someone in the room with you. Or sports. Watching a Packer game on a giant screen is incredible. It is the way it is. If you're not going to be there, it is the way to see it because the goal line is five feet wide. When we project that on a big screen it's huge.

Yeah. Oh yeah, there's 4DX, there's D-Box, there's ScreenX. That's the one we actually the newest one where we got the wraparound screens which is pretty cool. It's very funny. What I like the most about it throws some people off and they don't know it's coming because what happens actually on those wraparound screens is sometimes they turn off. They're not on for the whole movie and people think it's broken. It's like no. And actually I now it helped, I knew what was going to happen. I find it actually a little bit of a moment of break because when your senses are being surrounded for two hours that's a lot of input coming in. So I actually like when it goes down for a few minutes and you focus in the middle screen and then it comes back. That's what I like. It's kind of a nice mix.

You know, it's interesting. I sometimes I look up there when I'm on the screen and think I don't know because I want to, I'm like really me? You know, it's funny. I should talk about sort of how it started and what the history of it was because it wasn't this, I wish I could tell you it was that well planned. It started because I'd never been on the screens before. You got to go back to 2012. So, 13 years ago. I'd never been on the screens. My dad never been on. My grandfather was never on. We were never anything we did. I was the co-chair of the community United Way campaign, going back to this idea of how we believe that giving back is important and philanthropy and being a part of the community. So I was of course part of the United Way campaign and I was the community chair and so every week I'm going into the offices the United Way offices and getting the update. How's it going? This is a big campaign. It was $50 million that year. It's up to now $60 million. And the person who's running marketing said, you know me, I like to joke around. I like to have some fun. And she says, 'You know, Greg, have you ever thought about going on the screen and doing a public service announcement? You give us a PSA every year and you play it on the screens before the movie, but would you make the appeal yourself?' And I said, 'Can I think about that? I've never been on the screen before.' And I thought about just what you're talking about, this idea of who, what to most people, especially outside of Milwaukee, nobody knows what Marcus is. It's a building where you go see a movie. And to this day still, I believe no one is coming to our theaters for me or for the name Marcus. They're going because Spider-Man is there or Superman is there or 'Sinners' is there or Avatar which is coming is there. They're coming for those. Now, we have to do a great job and if they have a choice, we want them to pick us and we want them to say, 'I don't want to wait for it to come out at home because the experience isn't good there.' So we have a responsibility. But nobody knows who we are. I said, 'If I could go on and welcome people and put a face to the name, and have a little fun, if I could do that, I'll do the appeal.' That's what I told him. And they said, 'If you'll do the appeal, you can pretty much do whatever you want.' I said, 'Okay.' And so that's how it started. And I went on, it was really only for a few months. And I noticed after a few years of doing that was helping United Way and it was people were noticing me and I was starting to feel like okay I feel like I'm part of the community even where I might not even be, maybe in Lincoln, Nebraska they might think I'm part of Lincoln when I may not be there as much, where that could be important one day when we have to do something there or in Fargo or Minneapolis or wherever it might be. And so that's why and it just was one of those things where I figured out well I don't think I'm hurting the business. I'm not sure I'm helping it but I'm not hurting it. And all these years now I've had like 250 million impressions. A lot of people know who I am. To me I'm just me. I get up every morning and I'm just the regular old Greg. But I love that you could see that in the humor too. It's like take it or leave it. This is who I am. You can either enjoy it or not. What you see on that screen is me. It is totally me.

Yeah, David's a little older than me and his kids are a little older than mine. So mine aren't there yet. I don't know if they will be. There's no, similar to me, there's no pressure. No one has to come back. The option is open to all of them if they want to be a part of what we're doing. They're smart. They're hardworking. And so if they want to, that's an opportunity for them. And they have to come back and work hard and prove themselves, but I'm confident they would because they've done great already in their lives. But nobody yet. So yeah, you're stuck with me unfortunately. And I'm like, am I getting too old for this? At what point am I too old?

Yeah, it's I'm going from Daddy Greg to Grandpa Greg, but I'm not a grandpa. Not yet.

Probably not much except that my former CFO who was with us for many years, we used to say if you work at this company and you aren't quoting movies all the time, and if you don't know the quotes, if you don't know what they mean, then you probably aren't going to fit in here in a way because we're constantly quoting. There seems to always be an appropriate movie quote for whatever we're doing.

I'm trying to think of what I can say on the air. Animal House. Not too many probably. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? There you go.

Yeah. Well, it's there's two reasons to own. It's really talking about owning the real estate. Everybody else tends to just lease their tenants and we own and we're our own tenant in a way. One is that a lease is debt and I go back to one of our foundational principles and that is keep your balance sheet strong. Well, one of the ways to weaken your balance sheet is to put a lot of debt on it. It's like owning your house and if you put a giant mortgage on, if things don't go well and times slow down, you might have trouble paying the rent, paying your mortgage. And so paying your rent and paying your mortgage can be very similar in the theater industry. And so if you can put a smaller mortgage on, the rent becomes larger. So by owning you can control what that outlay is. So that goes to keeping a strong balance sheet. It also, for us it's been very strategic in that we can move fast when different changes to the industry come along. That could be the most important of all, that idea of being able to be strategic and move quickly. And I can point back in our history through all these years where it's mattered. So for example, when we went from slope floors to the stadium seating, the risers, we saw someone else do it. It wasn't our idea, but when we saw it worked, we moved very quickly and very quickly had the most stadium seating on a relative basis of any theater chain in the country. And recliners. The move to recliners was the exact same thing. Or food and beverage. When we wanted to put in kitchens and bars, we didn't have to go to a landlord and have a negotiation or we're at the end of our lease. If you only have a couple years left on your lease, if you're renting an apartment and you're about to leave in a month, are you going to fix it up? Probably not. If you're at the end of your lease, you may not want to figure out how to make these investments to be competitive in the world. And so when you own it, you have no landlord to negotiate with and so you can move very quickly. So from a strategic perspective, owning the real estate has been really helpful. That flexibility.

Yeah, we believe it's important. It gives us, first of all, we have such a significant interest in it, an ownership interest, so it helps. We believe it's important to be diversified and if we think it's important that since we're running the company and our interests are aligned with the other owners, having a significant ownership stake, okay, well then if you want us to do that then we need to be able to have some diversification. And so that's the trade-off to having our stake and being aligned so much with the shareholders. And so in doing that, having these two different businesses has been very helpful. And they are very different. There's similarities, they count on the public going out and being hospitality based and service-based and we employ a lot of people in all the businesses. But they also are different. The theaters really it's what kind of movies do we have and how many movies do we have. And hotels are really how's the economy going. If the economy is good, hotels are good. If the economy slows, the hotel slows. So yeah, kind of see the mix of it there.

Last great movie I saw. Can I cheat? Can I please? I don't necessarily keep a list so much, but I can look back. I mean, I see so many. The one that's sticking out of my mind, I really enjoyed Superman actually. But I want to sort of see what was I, what did I see in the last month or so. I've been a little behind. Oh, I liked 'Caught Stealing' with Austin Butler. I enjoyed that movie. Was it great? I'm not trying to say it was great, but it was very good. Does your wife have to get convinced by the standing weekly date night or she knew what she was getting into? No, she knew what she was getting into. Have you seen the new DiCaprio movie, the PTA one? No, that was supposed to be tonight, but it will probably be next and I will see that one. What else did I like? You know what I liked? I liked Jurassic World. I really enjoyed that in terms of recent movies. It's funny people like Jurassic World. Really? Yeah. By the way, every one of those movies is exactly the same. And I looked at my wife at the first the guy who the one character who of course I said, 'Oh, he'll be, he's not going to make it to the movie.' The bad guy and the corporate bad guy. Sure enough, he got eaten. People getting eaten by dinosaurs. Warriors don't fare very well in the Jurassic World universe.

You know, it's funny. I just saw we did a trailer with William H. Macy that I did with my, I'm doing some with talent lately. And I saw the trailer for 'Running Man' which Glen Powell, I don't know how good 'Running Man' is, but Glen Powell he's that charismatic kind of guy you see now. And Sydney Sweeney, she's great. And you've got Margot Robbie, she's a modern star. Those are the ones who catch my eye and I think are fantastic.

You know, well, all the ones that are going to be huge are the ones that I'm very excited to see. What I always love are the surprises. That's the thing that I look the most forward to is what movie do I not know about that I'm going to see or I'm going to hear about and say, 'Oh, you got to see that. That's a great movie.' Sort of like we're all hearing about this movie, the battle movie, the one battle after another. That movie has a lot of pedigree in it and you got Leonardo DiCaprio in it, so it should be great. But it's like, oh yeah, that turned out that's supposed to be great movie and it's getting great reviews. Okay, I want to see that. Whatever that surprise is going to be and there will be one at Christmas time. I know that. And then I'll go see that.

It'd be cool. Look, what I know is this, and I've said this during the pandemic, and I believe this to this day, humans really want to be together. They do. They may, but they are by nature we are creatures that are meant to be with other human beings. Whether it's going to concerts or going to ball games or going to the movies, people are going to want to be together. Or going to conferences at hotels. That idea that you can't, you can't look at a lot of people are at conferences because they're looking for jobs, you're not going to do that on a giant Zoom call. That just isn't going to happen and that's irreplaceable. That idea of being with other people is irreplaceable. And I think that whatever form this business has down the line, 90 years from now, 180, because we're still assuming we're all still humans and we haven't just been replaced by AI bots, we will, Terminator does not come true. That as long as we're still all human beings, there will be a business in people being together.