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A Utah boy who got his first job working in a movie theater when he was 14 is now the 47-year-old CEO of one of the largest theater chains in the country. He came back home this week to see the latest his company is about to offer movie-goers in Orem.
Alan Stock was into movies from that first ticket stub he collected working as a young teen in a drive-in theater. He went to college, but on the very day he was to leave for graduate school, he changed his mind.
"You know, I'm going to go off and go to graduate school and come back and do what? And I realized at that point in time: I love what I do in theaters. I very much enjoy the entertainment industry. So, I said to myself, ‘Let's stay in it,'" Stock said.
He did, and worked his way to the top of what is now one of the largest theater chains. Cinemark recently bought out Century theaters and is moving to fully digitize all of it's 4,700 screens here and abroad within the next three years.
Its latest creation in Orem: 14 screens, all with non-film digital projectors and a device that enhances light to project new digital 3-D movies on every screen.
For these new-generation theaters, it's more than movies. "Things like opera. We actually beam in the opera to many of our theaters where people can come and watch that as a live event," Stock explained.
Live sporting events, concerts; the list goes on.
It's also a growing trend in theaters to get away from that single concession counter and move to a cafeteria.
So, are Stock's parents, who live in American Fork, disappointed their son didn't become a doctor?
"Because their son is what he is, they can go to free movies. So you can answer that one yourself. They love going to the movies, and they don't have to pay a nickel for it," Stock said. And he's doing what he's always loved to do.
Stock says theaters do well even in rough economic times. People love to escape into the movies, despite tight budgets -- and that was true even in the Great Depression.
E-mail: eyeates@ksl.com
