Our Little Historic Theater

If you were a San Antonio native or from up North, Floresville would look like a little nowhere town in South Texas...at least, that's what people would think up until recently. Before, however, Floresville was a small farming community with spread out plots of land for ranches, homesteads, and small businesses. There wasn't really a whole lot goin on, still isn't that much goin on, but it's picked up a bit. So it was and always has been a pretty small community that has a pretty steady population and expanding business, so why would anybody film a movie there?



In the middle of the down town district of Floresville directly across from the courthouse is the small but popular Arcadia Theater. Now, I've had the privilege to actually work at this historic theater, which is cool because I learned a lot about it's past. I learned of the theater's role in the early years of segregation in the 1920's and about it's historic re-opening in the late 90's, but there is one role that not many theaters can lay claim to: A big-screen appearance.

It's a pretty farfetched idea, but some time ago there was a major motion picture filmed in the main screen room of our little theater! The movie was called "The Big Brawl" and it starred one of Hollywood's premiere action stars, Jackie Chan. The movie was partly filmed in Floresville, mainly in the theater, in 1980 and was directed by Robert Clouse, who also filmed "Enter The Dragon." A neat fact about the theater and the movie is that there's a scene where a knife is forced into the wooden stage area right in front of the screen, and that knife mark is still there to this day!

Besides having this small piece of pop culture history in our little theater, it's not the first. In 1974, Steven Spielberg (yes! Spielberg was in my town!) directed the movie "The Sugarland Express" in Floresville. The movie starred one of the biggest stars of the time, Goldie Hawn. It was pretty exciting to see that Floresville was picked as a location for a movie, but a commercial? That happened a few years back. Whataburger had a commercial a while back that was filmed in front of the same theater that "The Big Brawl" was filmed! This was kind of weird, though, because we didn't even get a Whataburger until last month!