May/June 2006

Movie Stars

The Naro Theater’s Tench Phillips and Thom Vourlas create a community for independent films.

By Michael Jon Khandelwal

Thom Vourlas and Tench Phillips became life-long friends in eighth grade geometry class. When they reached their late 20s, their friendship turned into a partnership when they decided to run an art house film theater in Norfolk. In 1977, the pair re-opened Robert Levine’s NARO Expanded Cinema movie theater on Colley Avenue in Ghent, and now, nearly 29 years later, the theater they nurtured is an area icon that brings independent and foreign films to eager Hampton Roads audiences.

Tench, 55, moved to Norfolk at age six but now makes his home in Virginia Beach with his wife, Angela. Thom, 56, was born in Norfolk General and didn’t stray far—he lives in Ghent with his wife, Jo Ann.

Among framed pages of past NARO schedules and large stills from classic films, their office, next door to the theater, is a place where the phone never stops ringing. They put their jobs on hold recently, though, to spend time talking at length about life, luck and the independent movie business.

How do you envision the NARO’s role in the Hampton Roads community?
Thom Vourlas: We’re an entertainment center that sometimes gets a little political. I don’t know if people think we’re biased in a certain way, but I’m sure some do.
Tench Phillips: Not only are we showing independent films, we are also independent media in the sea of large media corporations. In Good Night, and Good Luck, Edward R. Murrow predicts what is happening now in media. Some of the movies we play are films not seen anywhere else. You won’t see them on the 200 cable and satellite channels because they’re too critical of the corporate establishment and its influence over government. I think we’ve helped create an audience for films and topics that would normally not be seen or discussed.
Thom: We’re another voice.

What’s a typical day for each of you?
Thom: I live closer, so I get here first and do a quick walk through to see what’s needed. I come up to the office and make calls to the distributors to let them know how we did the night before. I do all the book work—I got my degree in accounting. About the time I’m ready to go to lunch, Tench comes in. At night, we take tickets. But a lot of the time, we talk to distributors to get films or figure out different film series. With our Film Forums, if you can talk about the movie and have a discussion, then it becomes more than just a movie.
Tench: My role has been conceptualizing. For the past few years, the theater has been in transition. Film exhibition, especially for independent films, is not healthy. In order for us to stay viable, we have to shift with the times. We bought a digital video projector last year to supplement our 35mm film projector. We’ve created forums like the Film Forum, Talking Cinema, the Green Screen Film Festival and Light in the Dark: A Festival for Peace. Email has allowed me to create a network in Hampton Roads. Now we can have good speakers and good events. I just hope people will keep coming to cinema. It’s not just a film, it’s also live and creates community and spurs activism.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Thom: Running the NARO. I think both of us would say this is our only achievement. We’re probably here for life.
Tench: It’s all my eggs in one basket. On bad days, I feel like we’re not making enough money, and it’s too much of a risk. On good days, I’ll wake up feeling like I’m the luckiest guy in the world to be able to have a forum for expression by showing powerful movies by committed filmmakers. Without the NARO, I would be a basket case, because since I’ve become so political over the years, I would have to repress my feelings about the way society has gone since the 60s. Both Thom and I and our friends grew up in the 60s and 70s. What happened to all of us? All these white males that now run corporations and government? They created a world that, to me, is going in the wrong direction. If I didn’t have the outlet the NARO has provided, I wouldn’t be happy. When we started in 1977, we didn’t know how long we’d be in business. Our first lease was for only three years. We were careful. We worried that new technologies and cable TV would take over the cinema experience.
Thom: They have taken it over.
Tench: That’s true. We don’t have nearly as much attendance as we once did, but because of higher ticket prices, we’re having our best years as far as total gross. But our attendance is nowhere near what it was in the late 80s.
Thom: We’re probably making about half of what we were in the late 80s.
Tench: What’s capitalism? Grow, get bigger, consolidate, do better. We haven’t had the opportunity of having those goals to work with. We don’t get to grow, and we’re only one screen. You take the good with the bad. If we didn’t have long networks of relationships with big media corporations, if we weren’t in Norfolk as the only art screen in a rather conservative city—if we didn’t have all that going for us, we would not be in business.
Thom: This area is just big enough to support a place like this. Any smaller or larger and it wouldn’t work.

If you could do anything else, what would it be?
Tench: I think you reach an age and realize you only have so much time left. All those dreams I had when I was younger—of retiring early, of moving out West—I don’t have any expectations in life anymore.
Thom: I wanted to be a DJ back in the old days. I still have that DJ mentality. I get so much music every year, and at the end of the year I put it together and make multiple copies and give them to people. I’m really making them for myself, though. That’s my vice.