Inside the Jean Cocteau: Santa Fe’s Most Creative Space

What happens when an iconic Santa Fe cinema, a world-famous fantasy author, and a passionate team of creatives join forces to reimagine what community entertainment looks like?

In this episode of The Real Santa Fe, Bunny Terry sits down with Guillermo Tilley and Al LaFleur of High Garden Entertainment Group to talk about the transformation of the Jean Cocteau Cinema—a beloved local spot originally revitalized by Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin. From drag brunches and themed cocktails (cotton candy margaritas, anyone?) to improv comedy, curated indie films, and a speculative fiction bookstore next door, this isn’t just a theater—it’s a full-on cultural experience.

You’ll hear:

• How the Cocteau was reborn after the pandemic
• Why their events feel like a “360-degree Santa Fe experience”
• What’s coming next (hint: a new bar and live theater!)
• And why locals and visitors alike should swing by for a cocktail, a show, or just a great conversation

🎬🍸📚 Whether you're a book lover, movie buff, trivia master, or just craving community, this is a peek behind the curtain of one of Santa Fe’s most dynamic and creative venues.

Jean Cocteau website: https://www.jeancocteaucinema.com/

Bunny Terry's website

Bunny Terry Instagram

Bunny Terry Facebook

Original Music by: Kene Terry

Transcript

Hi, this is Bunny Terry and I'm so excited today. We have with us some, so first I want to say the coolest thing about this podcast is that I get the chance to sit down and have conversations with people that I might not normally meet in my day-to-day activities. Although this pair works at and manages a place in Santa Fe that I've been to

I can't say hundreds of times, but dozens of times and that I love and that, you know, most of you may be familiar with because of the slightly famous owner, but I am with Guillermo Tilly and Al LaFleur who are part of the High Garden Entertainment Group that runs the Jean Cocteau Theater and

Let me read, I'm just gonna read directly from your website. The Jean Cocteau Cinema is Santa Fe's eclectic movie house, full bar and special events menu operated by our friend, George R.R. Martin, or at least your friend. Any day now, I know he's gonna wanna be my friend. what a cool place. And I started coming, I moved back to, I moved to Santa Fe. I'm a native New Mexican, but I moved to Santa Fe and.

Speaker 2 (01:30.542)
2012 and I lived in the rail yard and I used to go over and sit and hang out in the bar and hope to clink glasses with George. what an amazing, first what an amazing save for him to decide to buy that building, but also to create this place that's just, it's different from any place in, I think in Santa Fe or in New Mexico.

First, I wanna hear about you. I'd like, Guillermo, tell us who you are, a tiny piece of your New Mexico story, and then we'll go to Al, and then I wanna hear all about what you're doing now at the cinema.

Well, first of all, just want to say, it's interesting that you have Al and I on together here, because we sit on the polar opposites of our experience here in New Mexico. I've been in this lovely city now for 27 years. Al just arrived back in July. Yeah. So we have these two really kind of unique perspectives. I've been in Santa Fe 27 years.

Yeah, three and a half months.

Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:39.662)
My favorite city in the world still to this day. And the opportunity to be here and to work at a place like High Garden and to bring the John Cocteau back to, I believe it's rightful place is one of the unique spaces in Santa Fe and probably New Mexico. It's just a thrill. It's the thrill of a life.

Yeah, so yeah, I'm super new. I actually only visited Santa Fe back in December. So I'm going to come up on my one year just even coming here for the first time.

been in LA for 11 years doing marketing and social media and wanted to get out desperately the last few years and tried to find a place that not only had arts and things going on, but was kind of a smaller town close to nature. And here Santa Fe was. And then I kind of hopped on board about a month before I came out, I kind of just saw a listing for this job and it kind of hit all these amazing points.

of like a reason why I wanted to kind of shift into something that gave back to a community with the arts. And I think that's what we're doing here. So kind of hit that personal level, not so much a career goal, but just moving to a city and being able to raise voices in the community was really important to me. And that's luckily exactly what we're doing.

Well, tell me, I know that you were shuttered during the, and maybe with the theater, maybe with cinema, the word is that you were darkened during the pandemic, but you sort of came out of that with a roar. Tell me what happened when you shut down and then you opened back up.

Speaker 1 (04:25.208)
Well, we.

We opened the theater. We actually reopened the theater back in October of 2021. But before we did that, we really needed to rethink who we were going to be coming out of this period that I think most of us refer to as the pandemic. The theater had been shuttered. We weren't playing any films. There were some virtual things going on. But having physical people in the theater, having film making popcorn,

That kind of came to a screaming halt. But the big question I think coming out is, know, we don't know when we're going to get through this completely, when people will be able to gather again. What can we do with this time? And what we've decided to do was to do this massive rethinking.

of the John Cocteau, which included three open to the public conversations that we had related to the John Cocteau and what it meant in this community. Who did you want to see at the Cocteau? What did you want to see at the John Cocteau? And if any role there would be for the theater in terms of the booming at this point film industry in New Mexico. So we went through a series of these conversations and

What we learned was that people, yes, they did want to John Cocteau to come back, but they wanted a very dynamic range of entertainment. Film was great and they always want film to be a part of this theater and I do as well. But I think we realized that we had to diversify.

Speaker 1 (06:02.974)
So we use that period to kind of learn some lessons of the Santa fans, you know, really responded robustly to our calls out, our surveys. And we we learned a lot about the community. And so what we have today, a year later, you know, almost that.

We're doing that. Our offerings are much more diverse, I think, in terms of, you you've got film one day, you have perhaps comedy the next, and then you have a seminar, perhaps, or something along those lines. So we're doing things differently, but we're also responding and reaching out to our community differently as well. And that's one of the big reasons.

that we brought Al on board. We really needed a, we wanted a particular voice in terms of our social media, in terms of our outreach. And we found the perfect candidate who happened to be wanting to move to Santa Fe.

That's always an issue. didn't you find, I mean, I just, think that maybe, you know, people learned, you know, people who weren't previously sitting at home and streaming or watching movie. I mean, they figured out that that's one of the things they could do at home. It's almost like they, once everything opened back up, instead of sitting in front of a screen, they really wanted an interactive experience, right?

Right, right, for sure. You know, we've learned and we have changed as a community, not only locally, but also nationally. So things have shifted tremendously in quite a very short period of time. And so we really came out with this idea, we really need to establish ourselves pretty quickly in terms of who we are and what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (07:51.854)
and then be very, very flexible and adaptable to what's coming down the line next. I mean, if you think about it, just in a couple of short years, you know, the entire industry in terms of film and media has changed radically. so we're doing our best to keep up with that. And if not be kind of the tip of the spear.

That's exciting. So as I said to you last night, I met Brandy who runs the Sunday. What do you call that? What is that event called?

Sunday get down drag brunch.

Yes, so that I think that's just a really good example of something you wouldn't expect to find in a movie theater and yet you're doing that. I mean, it seems like you have slots every week or at least once a month for really interesting community events. I'd love to hear about some of those,

Yeah, so we have a few monthly events that we try and do with members of our community. So like Brandy for instance, most of the proceeds go to different charities for that. So that's a really cool thing that we do with Brandy and a lot of the local drag community in New Mexico in general, not just Santa Fe, obviously. We also have Carlos Medina. He runs a couple of programs with us. We have our All Fierce Comedy. It's kind of like a variety show, I would say. And then we also have Miucles,

Speaker 3 (09:23.362)
Musicale, which pulls in music from New Mexico as a whole. We're trying to pull in different styles. Again, I think one of the things we're learning with these programs, we have our improv comedy with Faculty Lounge and Stage Santa Fe we work with. But we're really trying to pull in kind of pillars of the community to work with to kind of spread the word on the arts and

create kind of these different shows that you can always expect from us. And again, trying to bring more than just film within those programs to.

Tell me, I'm curious, what's faculty lounge improv? What happens there?

All

You take that one over.

Speaker 1 (10:09.034)
Yeah, we started a collaboration with State Santa Fe last year. The idea being they're building kind of an educational venue for people who want to learn improv.

Did you, I'm sorry, Guillermo, did you say stage Santa Fe? Okay.

Yes, Stage Santa Fe, local organization here in town led by Peter Sills. And what they wanted to do is they have, they literally have a body of faculty members who teaches these courses and they do their own improv. They do most of their improv in Albuquerque or had at least in the past.

and they wanted a place to bring improv to Santa Fe. And it's fun. mean, the bottom line is if you really want to go out and just laugh and let it all out because you've just had two and a half years of craziness in your life, it's the perfect, really is the perfect piece to attend. Very talented group.

And they come in and they do improv and it's them doing improv. I want to remind people this is a show so it's not like you're going to show up and somebody's going to go, hey, you and the audience, got to come in and do improv, which I hear people are concerned about.

Speaker 2 (11:26.766)
Thank God.

Yeah. It'd a whole different show.

Yeah, it's a show. It's a lot of fun. And they bring guests from all over the world of improv. We've had Matt Besser and Neil Casey just recently.

So some of the best improv people in the United States, in terms of that world, they come in and they do a show here at the Cocteau. So it's just a part, as Al mentioned earlier, it's a part of this kind of like monthly foundation, if you will, of different acts that we bring in just to keep things consistent. We want it to be here for, if you can't make it in this period because of whatever reason, then come next month.

kind of a deal and then on top of that then we get all kinds of creative.

Speaker 2 (12:16.819)
And you do Geeks Who Drink every Monday night, right? Which is torture for me because I think I'm really amazingly good at trivia and then I find out that I'm actually kind of old. I went, I went not long ago and I was like, wait a second. I don't, I'm sort of missing some pop culture links in there, but.

I don't retain that kind of information.

you

Geeks of drinks, you know, again, it's it's it is the platform that's nationally known, but we do it a bit differently. Our spin is instead of being in the bar environment, you sit in the theater and everything is projected and it's it's very much more interactive. And what you find is because you don't have the typical bar environment around you, I'll get really serious. They get these teams going and there's all this strategy going on. You can still have your favorite cocktail. We still provide that, obviously, but

It's just a little bit different of a twist on it and it's a lot of fun. People who come really enjoy themselves.

Speaker 2 (13:22.414)
Well, let's talk about the bar piece. now I know that you completely redid the interior of the theater. Am I right? And you have, because I went, the last time I sat in the theater, it was in the old seats. Wow. It was like, what's from the seventies at one point, right? That's, mean, that's when the theater was built. Am I right?

Correct.

Speaker 1 (13:48.716)
Yeah, the theater was built back in 1976.

Yeah, and you did a complete revamp and you have a full bar.

Yeah, kind of going back to the piece where we started the conversation about High Garden Hangouts, the one survey question that got more responses than others and probably the most comments was, love the intimate space, we need new seats. You know, it just went on and on and on throughout the surveys. So my commitment to the community was that, okay, we hear you.

we're gonna put new seats in. And so we shut the theater down in March and April of this past year, and we completely renovated the space. So we have very comfortable seats now. We've completely realigned what you experience so that you get better sight lines for watching movies or listening to programming. And it's just a great space.

Now the bar has been here for a while. And so the bar is in its current incarnation, it's not new, but we have what I believe, and I'll just go out on record in saying this, we have one of the best mixologists in the state of New Mexico, Art Theater and Mr. Evan Schultz. And so what we're doing there now is,

Speaker 2 (15:07.649)
I agree.

Speaker 1 (15:16.628)
is creating kind of this new, just a whole new environment, a new bar environment. Everything from our, you making our own,

I mean, we make our own, you know, we'll have a drink that has, you know, dried strawberry dust on it. And he'll not only freeze dry the strawberries, he'll create it into dust and then put it on the cocktail in a pattern. it's just like, pretty much everything you have here isn't just bought off of the shelf. It's truly made by hand. If something's an infused, you know, spirit, it's because we infused it in a house. He really takes everything and, and he doesn't want it to taste like anything else. I think that's the thing is you can go to a bar, can get,

a margarita and it's great, right? But we can't just do that here. He can't just do that here. It's how can we make this different? So when you come here, you have an experience that you can't have anywhere else in Santa Fe. And I think that's what even makes with our program and with the bar, you know, one of the things that we do now, if you come see a program, you're going to have a themed cocktail with it. And that's the only time that you can have that cocktail.

Well, I just saw that you did for your when you showed Killer Clowns, you had a themed Killer Moto margarita. Yeah. Which was pretty I mean, it was gorgeous. I don't know how it tasted. Who had one?

couple. I am the test taster on that. But yeah, I mean, that's an example is we make sure the names themed the drinks themed around it in some way. And again, that had candy floss or cotton candy on the top of it. And that's all needed. Yeah, we have a cotton candy machine.

Speaker 2 (16:51.158)
Yeah.

Four things like that is because where else I mean, I don't think I've ever had a drink that had cotton candy on it before in my life. And again, house made too on top of that. So and it was the best cotton candy. It was raspberry and yeah, so we really try and create this. I think one of our things with programming with the bar with the new seats and everything is to create this 360 experience. So you're not just going to a theater, getting a fountain drink and getting popcorn and sitting down.

It really is, you we try our best to make it an experience that you truly can't get anywhere else, especially when it comes to our programming and our drinks. And we have custom charcuterie too, so I don't know where else you can get that.

Wow. And it's still, mean, if I understand your programming correctly, you're still, I mean, this was an art house. This was an art cinema house. And so art house, I don't even know if I'm using the right term. Sometimes I just make stuff up as I'm going along. But Jean Cocteau was always known as being an art house. And you're still, it looks to me like you're programming. is still very eclectic.

in terms of the movies.

Speaker 3 (18:08.748)
Yes, yeah, think again, we're still letting the, Guillermo was speaking of, you know, doing the surveys and seeing where the Santa fans want us to go with programming or what they want from the cinema. And I think we're still really trying to stay attuned to what are people wanting to see. And again, being such a small town, having, you know, other cinemas around us, what can, again, what can we offer that's different than them? We're not here to compete. We're just here to give people a different experience.

you

Well, it seems like you're here to contribute to the community. That's how it feels to me as an outsider.

Exactly. I think you used in a conversation before the podcast, Bunny used the word in event space. mean, that's really what we've become so much so.

Talk about that piece because I know that I saw on your website where you can now rent the space or somebody can let you curate an event for them. Am I right? Talk about that.

Speaker 1 (19:11.768)
Well, you we keep going back to this conversation and survey we did in last year. And it's a trend in the industry. mean, when we follow the news of what's going on, particularly with small theaters, independent theaters throughout communities in this great country of ours, we're having to shift. We're having to wear many hats. And when we renovated the theater, we set it up so that the entire front end of the theater now

It's no longer one, it's kind of no longer one unified break. It's a very, what would be the word, kind of an interesting setup, but we've got a large space up front that's very, what we call a flex space. So you still have your seating, your stadium type seating, but now we've got this space where we can do everything from mobile furniture that we can configure around the stage, for example, for drag-rudge.

Or we clear it out the way so we have a dance place or a place for a small, say, two or three person performance. We also have a flex stage that we can bring in now that will allow us to grow so we can play an individual who might be singing with a guitar, or it could be a full band now.

So the idea being we can kind of reconfigure this and play with it to suit the need of the particular group if it's a rental or for collaborating on a project. Like we've got some really exciting stuff coming up in December. Tease, tease. That we've got the space to do that.

Yeah. Yeah, but anyone can rent it. We do. We actually just did a wedding reception the other weekend. We had a 13 year old birthday party where we had video games, you know, played on the big screen. Yeah, we really can, again, with our capacity of 76, you know, we can kind of do whatever is needed.

Speaker 3 (21:09.034)
know, staff parties, holiday parties. So it's really, whatever you want to use the space for, we probably can make it happen.

And that was my next question was what Guillermo just alluded to. What's coming up that you want people to get on their calendar right now? Can you tell us or is it a secret?

Well, it's one part I think I wanted to share with and this kind of touches back on Evan, his presence here at John Cocteau for us. We're using the current bar configuration as an experiment and that experiment will lead to a very exciting new bar space that we hope to open in 2023 called Milk of the Poppies.

And we're very actively involved in the design and permitting phase now. And we hope to get that again up and going probably winter of 2023 with an opening somewhere closer to spring. So that's one piece that we're super excited about. know, you will actually have a real bar. we do and Evan does a lot out of this very small space we have now. now we'll have

place where we can actually offer more functionality, more space, and it's going to be truly unique. Nothing is to be like it in Santa Fe.

Speaker 1 (22:33.678)
But our performances are going to shift up as well in terms of, for example, we're going to actually be running a program of play starting in December for two weekends in a row. You can't quite release the title just yet because we're still kind of in the conversation point, but you know, a live play here at the John Cox Consequent Weekends with the group here in New Mexico, you know, from New Mexico, in New Mexico.

These are just some of little things that we're going to be bringing to the table not only this winter but also moving into 2023. So we're only going to become more diverse in terms of our offerings.

So if you have a, I can only assume that, I mean, we have a lot of conventions that come to town. Can a group, you know, if, I don't know, if Apple decides to come to Santa Fe for a weekend, they can rent your space and use it for corporate meetings? Has that happened?

We haven't had anything as of yet, but we do have a profile on unique venues, which is a national and international website for unique venues for conferences and groups and things of that nature. We would love to have that.

Yes.

Speaker 2 (23:51.942)
And I'll show up and interview somebody. Let's do it. Let's promote it. I think we can't talk about the space unless we talk about the books. I mean, you still have that, I assume. I haven't been in there since before the pandemic.

I'll let you tell them the excitingness. Wait, what? Bunny, we do have the books. George actually made the movement to go ahead and create an independent bookstore back in, I think it was November of 2019. And it shut down quite quickly, unfortunately, by the pandemic. We reopened the bookstore actually as a first phase, and that was back in March of 2021.

you

Speaker 1 (24:42.638)
We have Beasley Books, which is, we're hoping will be one of the best speculative fiction bookstores in the country. And we have a fantastic individual, our master of story, Mr. Twig Deluger, who oversees and curates this really unique book story. It's amazing. So if you love books, I gotta tell you, this is a shameless push. You gotta come to Beasley Books.

And as I recall, when I first was hanging out there and would sometimes get to visit with George R. R. Martin in the bar with the books, every once in a while I'd run up on a signed copy of his books. And I saw on your website that you have somebody doing a signing soon. Am I wrong? Am I right?

Yeah, that is correct. It's a full functioning bookstore, independent little bookstore. We do book signings, we do community events, we've got game night. You can get coffee if you want to stay late. Yeah, if you want to stay late in the afternoon, you can also get sake or a curated Japanese beer.

It is a living, breathing entity that we're super proud of and that really stands independently. So you've got this wonderful, cool, funky, eclectic art house theater on one side and you got a bookstore right next door and they lived and breathed together so well. I think the only way.

I mean, I'm kind of a book fiend and I'm like, what more could you want than a bookstore where you could also have a cocktail? Right? I mean, come on.

Speaker 1 (26:26.03)
Bye!

Yeah, they're better than browsing for a book.

Yeah, you know, know, Twig has curated this shop where we still carry, you know, all the signed works of George R. Martin. But we have a lot of other works in there. We do have collectibles in there. We've got a lot of signed copy from various authors, both local, regional, and national. It's just a great place to come.

And I highly recommend if you're down on a Saturday morning at the farmer's market, swing by the shop. Take a look. It's one of those things where I really believe it's going to see for yourself, know for yourself.

I agree. so I just have to ask both of you, is this like the coolest job in the world?

Speaker 3 (27:18.094)
It's my favorite job I've had.

Yeah, this is it is honest. It's an honor and it's a thrill. Yeah, it's work. You know, we all work very, very hard. We're a small team doing a lot of different things. We all wear mini hats in a day. But at the end of the day, what can one say? It might be the best job in Santa Fe. I don't know if I'm getting ahead of myself there,

I don't know. Sometimes I think I have the best job doing these interviews. You guys probably get a check when you're done at the end of the day. So, so I just tell us very quickly. mean, if somebody's listening, maybe somebody's listening who is in town for three or four days, give us a quick rundown of your hours and where they can find you. We'll put links to the website. You know, you're on Instagram, you're on

You

Speaker 2 (28:15.178)
several different platforms. give me, give, if somebody's listening right this minute and they're thinking, well, I'd like to run over there, but what's the story? What, when can they find you? Where can they find you?

We have this joke that we're open, the cinema's open from open to close, those are our hours. But I would say. Yes. I would say typically though you can find us, we like to open our bar around 4 p.m. Obviously we're open Mondays for Geeks Who Drink. We like to, we always say too, you don't have to come and see a show, you can just come and hang out.

Sorry, New Mexico.

Speaker 3 (28:49.87)
Typically any of us will talk your ear off, we'll hang out with you if you're by yourself. You can grab a cocktail, grab a snack and hang out with us at the cinema. The bookstores closed Monday, Tuesday and then opened from 11 to 7 most days and then on the weekends. think those hours are a little bit, they closed a little bit earlier but.

So it's next door on the west side.

Yeah, yeah, so it's just the little corner right here on Montezuma. So if you hop off the train, you can come say hi.

Nice, nice. And we'll put links to your social media and to the website and tell me if there's anything I've missed that you want to be sure people know about Jean Cocteau's cinema.

kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (29:34.956)
I think the big thing is we're here, we're open, and we're going to be here.

Yes.

I just want people to know that at the very beginning when we were talking, when I was saying, how do I introduce you? You know, who do I introduce first? And Guillermo said, there's, you can't see it, but there's a sign that says, check your ego at the door. And I thought that's so, I mean, that's sort of how I felt when I had an encounter with your boss. It's like, this is not a guy who knows he's

Thanks.

Speaker 2 (30:09.166)
has like, like I'm totally fangirling him. He's just, you know, everybody over there seems to be very grounded and interested and having fun. Am I right?

I'm glad it comes off that way because that's how it feels. Again, we're such a small team that it's really hard to make this stuff happen and have an ego in the way of that.

Nice. Well, I'm envious. know you're both, you're having great fun and I'm, coming over for a drink tomorrow afternoon. Okay. right. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. We're gonna, we're gonna pump you up. We're gonna let people know what's going on.

is

Speaker 3 (30:48.48)
It's so much for having us.

This has been fantastic.