they saved the plaza

I don’t know Jonathan and Gayle Rej, but I’m glad they live in Atlanta. Motivated by passion, not profit, they’re owed considerable thanks for saving the city’s oldest continuously operating movie house.

It hasn’t been easy. Indie films no one else in Atlanta will show, and that the Rejs thought would be their sweet spot, have too often bombed. Events – kiddie matinees, splatter flicks – have been hits.The result, said Jonathan: “We’re making enough to keep going. It’s good I have a production job. We wouldn’t be living off this.”

Yet despite the monthly roller coaster, the daily headaches, the lost vacations, the Rejs say they’re glad they saved, as Dubler put it, “one of those rare relics in Atlanta, which is a place that prides itself on obliterating the past.”

The least cinephiles can do is help them break even by supporting the Plaza, real grass compared to the AstroTurf sameness of the multiplex.