Film Tampa Bay Presents: Cocoon at the Tampa Theatre

Film Tampa Bay Presents is a quarterly series designed to showcase Tampa Bay-area films, filmmakers, actors and locations through FREE community screenings at Tampa Theatre. Next month, the series welcomes guests to watch with new eyes the 1985 Ron Howard classic Cocoon.

Cocoon is the heartwarming story of a group of Sunshine State retirees whose rest home happens to be right next door to a “fountain of youth.” But not the old-fashioned tall tale sort of fountain of youth — this is a run-down house in whose pool space aliens are storing their rock-like cocoons, charging them with mysterious life-energy for the ride home. When the residents of the retirement community start trespassing and swimming in the pool, they feel their youth and vitality returning. But what will happen when they discover the aliens… or the aliens discover them?

A meditation on aging and finding meaning in the sunset of one’s life (and the gentlest and most mild-mannered alien invasion story we can think of), Cocoon is also a murderer’s row of A-list character actors who were in their golden years in the 1980s: Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Don Ameche (who won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his performance), and the much-younger-than-you-think Wilford Brimley star alongside Steve Guttenberg and Brian Dennehy. But most important of all, it was filmed right across the bay in St. Petersburg! Be on the lookout for locations like the Shuffleboard Club, the Coliseum and the Snell Arcade.

Patrons are invited to stick around after the screening for an audience Q&A moderated by Film Commissioner Tyler Martinolich with Jordan Klein, Sr., an Academy-Award-winning underwater camera operator, and his son Jordy Klein, an aerial and aquatic cinematographer, both of whom worked on the film.

Doors open at 2:00pm, and the first 150 patrons to enter will receive FREE popcorn and soda. Admission is FREE, but reservations are required.