San Francisco Movie Bears

CINEMARK/CENTURY
BOYCOTT

We sent the following letter to Cinemark Corporation on 11/19/2008

To:          Cinemark Corporation

Lee Mitchell, Chairman

Cinemark

3900 Dallas Pkwy - Suite 500

Plano, TX, 75093-7871

(972) 665-1000

lmitchell@cinemark.com

From:    San Francisco MovieBears

                Drew Galleni & Dave Hayes, Coordinators

Re:         Boycott of Cinemark Theater Chains, including Century, CinéArts, and Tinseltown

Mr. Mitchell,

We, the San Francisco MovieBears, are a gay social network in San Francisco with 1,300 members located across the San Francisco Bay Area.  On a weekly basis, 50 – 300 of our members attend a new-release movie together.   During the past two years, we’ve seen roughly a third of our films at the Century Theater in the San Francisco Shopping Centre.  To see these films at your theater, we have purchased over $17,000 in discount movie passes from Cinemark since January 2007.  We estimate that our members have spent a comparable amount of money at the concessions of the theater during that time.  We have, until now, greatly enjoyed the services of your theater both in terms of its comfort, sound and picture quality, and the service supplied by your employees.

Unfortunately, on November 13^th, we learned that Alan W. Stock, the CEO of your corporation, had donated $9,999 to “ProtectMarriage.Com – Yes On 8, A Project of California Renewal”.   After discussion within our group, we decided to commence an immediate boycott of your theaters because of your company’s selection of a leader who opposes equal rights for all.  We promptly rescheduled, and changed the venues of our upcoming movies to exclude your company.  That same day, we also contacted MovieBear groups in 11 other major US cities calling for them to participate in the boycott.  All of them have agreed to participate, and they are spreading the word about this boycott nationally.

News of Mr. Stock’s donation to Yes-On-8 and the resulting boycott must have quickly reached your company, because we were forwarded the following message from a Mr. James Meredith in your corporate office on the following day:

Statement from Cinemark:

"(Dallas, November 14, 2008) – Cinemark did not make any financial contribution to either side on the Proposition 8 vote in California nor does Cinemark have an opinion on this issue.  It would be inappropriate to influence our employees’ position on personal issues outside the work environment, especially on political, social or religious activities.  Cinemark is dedicated to providing high quality entertainment for all of our customers.   As an equal opportunity employer, we do not discriminate based on race, creed, religion or sexual preference.  Any individual act or contribution is just that, individual acts of personal expression and do not reflect company positions or policy."

Your company’s statement in no way changes our position about this boycott.  Here’s why:

The CEO of any company is its leader, its captain, its public face and - sometimes - its figurehead.  As such, we know of no major national corporation that serves the general public that would EVER appoint a person who was admittedly anti-Semitic, misogynistic, racist or otherwise bigoted.  Such a person would create a negative public image for the corporation, and harm its business.

Based on our research, we know that Mr. Stock has been an executive within Cinemark leadership for almost 20 years, and that in 2001 / 2002 he was awarded a theater industry philanthropy prize which mentioned his charitable involvements through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).  With such a long tenure in your company, and such a recognized affiliation in the Mormon Church, his political opinions must have been well known to you and other corporate executives within Cinemark before you selected him as your CEO in 2006.

By choosing Mr. Stock as your corporate leader, you not only condone his ideas, but you support them by having him as your figurehead.  You – the Cinemark Corporation – have chosen someone who is homophobic, and who contributed to the passage of homophobic legislation, as your leader; you have made your bed, and now you have to lie in it.

We refuse to be apologetic to any individual or corporation who condones the removal of rights and the marginalization of people based on their sexual orientation as Mr. Stock has done.  We also refuse to give them our money.   If the Cinemark Corporation, lead by Mr. Stock, wants to encourage homophobia and hatred in the state of California – or any state for that matter – then you can pay for it fiscally across the United States by losing the business of people like us who find that homophobia offensive.  We are not going to give money to those who support the removal of our rights.

We find it absurdly hypocritical that Cinemark has chosen to distribute “Milk”, a biographical film about the nation’s first openly gay elected official, while having a homophobe as your CEO.   Fortunately, this hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed, and – quite apart from any action of our own – a growing boycott called “No Milk for Cinemark” is helping to fuel the general boycott of your theater chain.  We hope you appreciate the irony in that.  Cinemark can make claims that it is an “equal opportunity employer” and distribute a movie about a famous gay politician, but as long you have a homophobe as your leader, people are not going to believe you, or do business with you.

As long as you continue to have Mr. Stock as your CEO, and thereby support his homophobic views, we will continue to promote a boycott of your theaters.  We hope that this letter, and our explanation for the reasons of the boycott, will help you to reconsider how you select any future corporate leaders of your company.

Other than that, we suggest to you that an appropriate redress for Mr. Stock’s actions would be for him to make a public apology for his contribution, and for he and the Cinemark Corporation to make a comparable contribution to the Human Rights Campaign in California.

Sincerely,

San Francisco MovieBears

Drew Galleni & Dave Hayes, Coordinators

The following theatres in the Bay Area are owned by Cinemark.

Please do NOT patronize these theatres.

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