We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Craig Hammill. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Craig below.

Alright, Craig thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

Repertory film screenings (showing great movies from all periods from all across the world) are hit and miss even in the best of climates. That’s why so many organizations are (wisely) non-profit. As a for-profit company, Secret Movie Club is constantly working to figure out a sustainable model.

In some ways, the approach is common sense: find ways to deliver consistent quality, community, excellence while at the same time finding ways to keep overhead as low and manageable as possible.

For us, the challenge has often been in the overhead costs (movie theater lease, payroll, film licenses, shipping since we show on 35mm film, etc).

Our guiding North Star is our belief that if we continue to work hard, adapt, learn, we will, slowly, painfully, but ultimately, evolve a model that can sustain in the long term. But we’re still learning, failing, falling down, picking ourselves back up.

Craig, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Secret Movie Club is a community of moviemakers and movielovers. Everyone is invited. We are based in downtown Los Angeles where we have a committed movie theater-the Secret Movie Club Theater. The space is unique in that it also has large common areas along with the theater and concessions area. This allows us to run workshops, film festivals, feature and short movie premieres, filmmaker Q&As, classes, etc to really help build, grow our community.

At the same time, we work hard to screen in great movie palaces and theaters in the Southern California area to help get folks back to the movie theaters.

We also have a 100K+ social media audience (60k+ in Southern California, 40k+ across rest of USA and internationally) we work hard to engage with entertaining, interesting, and nutritious movie centered posts, facts, movies, shorts, interviews.

In many ways, to use the old cliche, we are building the plane as we fly it. We just know our mission is to celebrate great cinema and create an all-welcoming community so folks can watch amazing movies AND make amazing movies.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The classic story for us would be Covid. On March 15, 2020, all movie theaters in Los Angeles had to shut down. We immediately pivoted to digital watch parties April-July 2020 as well as podcasts, increased social media posts/engagement. But that wasn’t paying the bills (or our back rent for the movie theater).

We were EXTREMELY LUCKY to have a neighbor business in DTLA introduce us to ELECTRIC DUSK DRIVE-IN run by Ralph Matamoros. Ralph and I spoke and saw a potential win-win. Ralph provided the drive in equipment and a great location in Glendale, California, Secret Movie Club provided our audience and social media reach. Together we were able to run 1+ years of drive-ins during the Covid Pandemic that helped both EDDI and SMC pay our bills and stay alive.

Partnerships, alliances, etc are key.

How did you build your audience on social media?

It’s actually a bit of a mystery to us. One day you open up social media accounts and are happy to cross the 200 followers mark. Then bit by bit, audience member by audience member, you work to grow engaged audiences that feel they are truly respected and getting value by checking in with you.

Our recipe has been to announce our movie events, offer trivia/articles/links for folks who want to learn more about certain movies/moviemakers, and offer podcasts, tv shows, interviews, etc free of charge to our audience.

I think we all can smell when we’re just being marketed/advertised to. Those kinds of posts are usually the ones you move past-quick. So it’s key to radiate a genuine love of what you do and to offer real entertainment and value.

We also have learned you build your audience one member at a time. So it’s better to look at it as a long term project. Not a mad dash to 1 million followers who aren’t all that engaged.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.secretmovieclub.com/
• Instagram: @secretmovieclub
• Facebook: @secretmovieclub35mm
• Twitter: @secretmovieclub
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretmovieclub413
• THREADS: @secretmovieclub
• EVENTBRITE (TICKETS): https://www.eventbrite.com/o/secret-movie-club-15536251778