investigativevoice.com

By Ben Silvnick

It’s 8 p.m. Thursday night; the sun’s setting over The Senator Theatre and Tom Kiefaber insists he has just one more thing to do. This time, it’s taping up blue painters tape. Next time, it will be scrubbing the aluminum trimming that surrounds the historic theater’s box office.

Kiefaber was preparing furiously for a visit from the Theater Historical Society, which is giving a presentation at the 69-year-old movie house today.

But he also was preparing for something else. He has owned The Senator for 20 years and it’s set to be auctioned in a week-and-a-half. The recent economic downturn piled up too much debt for Kiefaber to handle, and while he doesn’t seem quite ready to let the theater go, he says sprucing it up helps him cope.

“It’s like therapy to me,” he said. “I love this building so much, I just have to put my hands on it."

He hadn’t slept in two days, yet he maintained it’s not an exaggeration when he says The Senator is in peril. An unknown buyer will decide the theater’s fate, but as long he owns it, he appears obsessed about treating it right.

Though he’s been criticized for driving The Senator into the red and rubbing city power players the wrong way, in a 90-minute interview Thursday night Kiefaber told his side of the story, describing his connection to the theater that raised him — he saw his first movie there when he was two — and his mixed feelings about moving on.

The conversation rambled through talk of love, politics and, of course, movies. A condensed version appears here:

I.V.: So the theater is 11 days away from being auctioned. Your theater marquee says the auction is “Russian roulette or a rigged sham.” In your opinion what does the community stand to lose on July 21?

T.K.: The community stands to lose everything, and I say that with a certain hyperbole, but I mean it as well. The outcome could go in a very wide spectrum from disastrous to maybe OK.

What’s the best-case scenario?

The best-case scenario would be to not have the auction, and go back to where we came from here with regards to asking the city and state to come and meet with the community and the ownership and all the historic consultants and help transition the theater to non-profit status. That’s the best thing that can happen…

When you think about it, no tenant is going to pay for what this building needs. This is the fork in the road. We can go one way or another. There are plenty of ways to put some new Band-aids in here, paint a few things, put a hundred grand into something, fix some things up and run. And you might get five years down the road, you might get three years down the road, you might get further. The point is that’s not the solution to the long term. That’s not going to give this building another 70 years.

Do you think the city should be helping the theater achieve non-profit status?

In all fairness to the city, the city has made it clear that they’re broke, and that’s fair. But what happens in many other cases is that the city, state or county will use the funding sources they have to essentially bridge these theaters and stabilize them.

What’s the worst possible outcome of the auction?

The community could lose the Senator Theatre in some fashion. Someone could buy it and sit on it.

It’s an extremely cultural entity. These things were the community centers of their time. This was pretty much the place over the years that people would come and go. They’d get their news here, the news of the day.

Now it’s a different community. We serve a larger population. These theaters serve multiple functions. They have an educational function: We bring kids here they see films and tie it into the curriculum. There’s the fundraising function, groups can use the theater for meetings, for films to be shown, for concerts. There’s a host of things that we’ve done here.

Why do you think people are so nuts about the theater?

Everybody is. The Senator is one of the most renowned and revered theaters in the nation…because of the exterior image for one. It is just so unique and so iconic that it has taken on a life of its own, the logo, the colors, the era it represents… It’s the archetype of a main street movie house … .Whenever all of these things are working together, it’s essentially magic, and that’s what this place is. It’s a magic place.

What does the theater mean to you?

[Long pause] It’s…it’s… a lover.

A lover?

It’s eternal. To me, I’m absolutely head over heels in love with this building.

Why is it particularly significant to you?

My family built it. I grew up close by. This was my neighborhood movie house. I spent an enormous amount of time in this building in life. I don’t remember life without the theater.

And then you bought the theater in 1989?

…What I was trying to do [when I bought the theater] was to keep this theater from going the way of so many…Literally thousands of main street theaters have been either closed by chains, or abandoned or ran into the ground and abandoned, and that would be one of the concerns I have. Once again, it’s coming around again, the place is going to be sold, and it should be.

This place needs to change hands from my ownership. People think that some of my opposition to the auction is that I somehow want to hold onto this place, and that is not the case. I absolutely do not want the place. …I can’t maintain it. I can’t ensure its future prosperity.

What was the best time you ever had at The Senator?

Having been so steeped in this place, everything splits off…One of the times was with my brother… But after that, the concerts we’ve had, the Tibetan monks, being here late at night with some of my friends cranking up the DVDs. There’s a celebratory aspect to just being in this building… Essentially what the Senator is, it’s like a sculpture built like a piece of fine furniture. It’s like being inside a sculpture that’s built with these incredible materials. There’s just something luscious about the whole thing. And sexy.

Sexy?

You either get it or don’t. And that’s my point. I have some kids who say we’re going to look this up. There’s people who fall in love with a log on the road and everything else you can imagine… Some people fall in love with a theater. There’s probably a name for it or something, -philia, or something. Not to take this to an extreme, but when I’m in this building or looking at it from the outside, it’s just breathtaking and it’s sexy to me.

Well, keeping this P.G., from a professional standpoint, what do you think was the best moment the theater had?

The best moment the theater had…There’s a hundred sidewalk blocks out there…I think just in terms of the vibe, the famous, the excitement, I think it was when Muhammad Ali came. It was 19…90…He was here for the film 'Glory'…

[It was] the combination of the subtle and not-so-subtle energy fields in this place, the things that you feel. You can see it when people walk inside this place and look around, there’s something that they feel. They almost twitch or something. There’s aspects to this building that have that vibe to it and then you put Muhammad Ali in here, and then you’re supercharged. There was a certain synergy to that… I’ve had the opportunity to be around some extraordinary beings, but never quite like that. There was something coming out of him from his heart that you could almost warm your hand to, you could feel it.

What other celebrities have you had?

A whole slew of them…When Mickey Rooney came here, it was great…We had Ginger Rogers, Robert Wise... in terms of directors, what a class act he was. We had Karolyn Grimes in here, and Frank Capra’s son for "It’s a Wonderful Life"…Naturally, Edward Norton and John Waters and Barry Levinson, they’re sort of our crew, our hometown crew.

Matthew McConaughey came here for two days. He hung out. He had a drum circle. There’s a guy who’s open at the heart. I’ve never seen a guy chill out a room full of people like that in my life. There was a tenseness [around him], especially with all the women. When he walked into the room, everybody got all tight, and he just had this tooth pick in his mouth and he was like 'Hey everybody,' and just calmed everybody right down. He said, 'I just got here, I’m not going anywhere, and I’m going to meet each and every one of you, so why don’t you just go have a seat and chill out a little bit. We’re going to have a good time.' [Reporter’s note: Kiefaber does a stunning Matt McConaughey impression.]

And he stayed. He came the next day, played a bunch of drums, we got in a good mood and I gave him my drum when he left.

If the theater gets new owners do you think that kind of thing can happen again?

I would hope so. There are people who for whatever reason they think somehow it’s going to be comforting to tell me a number of things, one is ‘i'ts never going to be the same, nobody’s going to do the things that you did.’ And I’m thinking, well I hope not… It’s funny how many people think it comforts me to tell me that everything is going to go to hell — which is exactly the opposite of what I want to hear. It’s not about me. It’s about The Senator.

You have Councilman Bill Henry’s name on the marquee. What do politics have to do with The Senator?

He’s our city council person. And he’s being very disingenuous in the way he’s handling this… I mean what does the marquee say?

Councilman Henry won’t meet with the community about the auction.

And he won’t. Not here in this theater .I think he’s sort of crossed over to the dark side so to speak… Whether it's through ambition, or maybe it was a failure in judgment for him to eschew and identify with the community and identify more with the power structure downtown.

What does the downtown have to do with this North Baltimore theater?

They are actively involved in the acquisition of the theater…

Essentially what we did was, we had a press conference here and we brought the head of the business association, the community association, me, some umbrella organizations, and there was a united call for the city and state reps to understand that there was a very precarious situation here and that I can no longer ensure that the theater would remain in operation. [I said I] could not ensure that I’d be able to take it to the next phase, to the non-profit. So therefore, [I asked the city] to come meet with us and help the community make this transition.

Instead, the city, in the form the Baltimore Development Corporation, that kind of grey area, that quasi-public-private [entity] that goes between development and political interests, essentially launched an overtly…tried successfully to create an impression in the mind of the public that the problem with The Senator Theater was me.

Where you going to be July 21?

I suppose here.

Doing what?

I suppose coping.

How you going to cope?

I have no idea.

* * *

The interview ended at about 10:30 p.m. After we wrapped up, Kiefaber returned to work.


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