Sacred Spaces – Film Theaters as Church and Commerce

posted by Eric Wheeler

Please welcome a brand-new TFT Contributor: Eric Wheeler. Eric’s been a fan of the show for some time and we were lucky to have him as an intern at last year’s Nashville Film Festival. Am sure you’ll enjoy his post on that sacred space we call cinema! Jett.

I’ve always subscribed to the belief that you don’t read critics because you necessarily agree with them, but because they consistently offer you opinions, insights, analysis – or even long-ingrained prejudices – you don’t find anywhere else.

Critics such as Armond White, Glenn Kenny, Vadim Rizov or Jonathan Rosenbaum do this on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. Another critic whose rantings range from the despicable to the inspired is Jeffrey Welles, of Hollywood-Elsewhere semi-fame. Although he spends a lot of his time either breathlessly tracking every twist and turn – real or imagined – of the Oscar race, or bemoaning the aging, bloated bodies of his fellow Americans – he occasionally offers up ideas that are as elegantly simple as they are emotionally resonant. The finest of these is the conception of the ‘movie theater as church.’ Although I had never expressed it in so many words myself, it felt like an idea I had long ago succumbed to. Growing up in rural Rutherford County, NC, in the shadow of the Appalachian Mountains, I had regular access to exactly one 4-screen multiplex, now known as the Retro Cinema 4. Although I have since come to realize it is the absolute worst theater I had ever attended in my life – and my some margin, too – it is also a place I feel not only nostalgia for, but a certain reverence towards as well.

Although it tended to play only the broadest, most-crowd pleasing fare available – which is understandable to a certain degree – it provided me with indelible moments, afternoons and evenings that have shaped my soul (or whatever you want to call that combination of intellect, memory and emotion). Because of its haphazard, somewhat random programming, the films I revered as a child and teenager were not necessarily the same as those of my big city brethren. At various times of my life I have believed that Spy Game (Tony Scott; 2001), The Mummy (Stephen Sommers; 1999), The Jungle Book (Stephen Sommers, again!; 1994), Terminator 3 (Jonathan Mostow; 2003) or any of the Star Wars Special Edition re-releases (George Lucas; 1997) were the greatest, or at least, the coolest and therefore the most important, movies ever made. This is not a situation I regret. It’s one that I cherish (even if it entailed a great deal of ‘make-up work’ to catch up with the hundred years or so of cinema I had missed by the time I was born).

Watching movies in Los Angeles is a different beast altogether. Of course, it’s not quite the cinephile’s paradise that is New York City, with its MOMA, Film Forum, the somewhat misleadingly named Brooklyn Academy of Music, Film Society of Lincoln Center and countless others which provide a daily dose of classic, foreign, silent and independent films as well as showcase works rarely seen outside film festivals. Incidentally, the New York Film Festival is perhaps the largest and most prestigious showcase outside the Cannes-Venice-Berlin holy triumvirate.

The reigning world capital of film production, Los Angeles, can hardly boast such credentials. In fact, on the surface, the world of film-going in the Southland would seem solely composed of stadium-sized AMC multiplexes and the occasional, vastly overpriced and vertically integrated one-screen (such as Disney’s El Capitan Theater on Hollywood Blvd.) As with all things Los Angeles-based (side-note: one can never again refer to the film colony as “LA” after watching Thom Andersen’s copyright-defying masterpiece “Los Angeles Plays Itself”), the good stuff is always hiding just beneath the gleaming, grungy surface. First-run theaters run the gamut from the historic-beautiful Grauman’s Chinese Theater (on Hollywood Blvd.) to the indie-extravagant ArcLight (on Sunset Blvd.) to a combination of the two (the Arclight’s Cinerama Dome). Rounding out alternate first-run all-stars would be the NuArt (on Santa Monica Blvd., right off the 405 freeway), the one-screen wonder that is the Vista (located at a clusterfuck of an intersection in the Los Feliz neighborhood) and the indie film landmark Laemmle 5 (located just east of the Sunset Strip). Having sampled each of these fine establishments multiple times I can tell you they are always worth a visit, despite the varying quality of the films being shown.

But, if it’s the quality of the film being shown that means the most to your entertainment dollar, the local repertory houses are your soundest investment. From the daily double-bill of the New Beverly Cinema (located logically enough on Beverly Blvd.) to the weekend screening series at the American Cinematheque (located at both the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Blvd. and the Aero Theater on Montana Ave. in Santa Monica) to the relatively fresh-faced Cinefamily (formerly Silent Movie Theater, still on Fairfax Ave.), you can’t fail to find something of interest. Whether it’s a restored print of a classic film you’ve never seen, a director or screenwriter speaking in person or just an irresistibly rare 35mm screening of film that’s ‘impossible’ to see, these places have got you covered. And there is, as you may suspect, so much more.

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For the inaugural entry of this column, I’ve decided to juxtapose the 1972 and 2011 incarnations of The Mechanic. And not just as ‘films’ but as ‘film going experiences.’ This means I’ll not only be contrasting Jason Statham’s threateningly bald skull to Charles Bronson’s inexplicably youthful mop-top, but also the conflicting directorial styles, the contemperanous film culture and the considerable distinctions of seeing a brand-new movie in a slick, first-run megaplex versus seeing a cult-classic in a beaten-up but beloved hovel of cinema. Or, at least, I’ll try.

I saw the original Mechanic at the New Beverly Cinema, as part of its two-day Charles Bronson double-header (the B-film was Walter Hill’s directorial debut, Hard Times). Upon purchasing my two-film ticket for a meager seven dollars I was handed a pass for a free, promotional screening of the Mechanic remake at an AMC multiplex the following week. Even though this was a very welcome surprise, I decided to pass on the opportunity and see the film opening weekend at Grauman’s Chinese (or so I planned…)

The New Bev is a tiny, family-run theater. It’s lived multiple lives as a reputable first-run single screen, a porno theater during economically difficult times in the 1970s, and it now stands as the only daily repertory house in Los Angeles County. Known for its fun and eclectic programming (a Robert Altman doubleheader on February 19^th was followed by a midnight screening of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), it’s a casual oasis of cinephilia that admirably lacks pretension. The Billy Wilder Screening Room at UCLA’s Hammer Theater, this is not. It also has the cheapest and, to my positive-associations-imprinted mind, the best tasting popcorn in the city. The only real downside to visiting this fine establishment is trying to use one of its two (one for each gender) bathrooms during a particularly busy night (such as the recent, sold-out WRIGHT STUFF II or Quentin Taratino’s on-going MARCH MADNESS series).

So: small, friendly, broken-in, attentive to the margins of filmic history. Words I would never use to describe the Mann’s Chinese 6 Theaters. The actual presentation inside the theater is surprisingly stellar (really, blacks as rich and primary colors as bold as at the Arclight – I still recall the vividness of Tak Fujimoto’s cinematography for the otherwise forgettable Devil). While this is not, in itself, particularly unique, exceptional film projection is always welcome. The tumult surrounding Mann’s Chinese 6 Theaters, however, is somewhat unique. It’s tucked away inside the gargantuan Hollywood and Highland renovation project that includes everything from a Gap to a Hard Rock Café (which should really be a Planet Hollywood, in my opinion) to the Kodak Theater, the new-ish home of the Academy Awards. Incidentally, the architecture of the multi-block complex is modeled on D.W. Griffith’s famously leviathan film set for “Intolerance.” As one walks down Hollywood Blvd. you can gaze up at the names of Best Picture winners adorning the towering columns of the complex. That is, you can gaze up while navigating through a haze of slow-moving tourists, petulant locals and one of the largest collections of celebrity impersonators in the world. However, not everyone gets to be an icon like Spider-Man or an instantly recognizable extra like a Tatooine-based Stormtrooper (you know, the ones with the light-brown shoulder pad). One of the stranger sights during my many voyages up and down that venal, venerated boulevard was that of a small child posing with a black Zorro and a man in a generic alien mask with a cheap flashing laser gun. Black Zorro and Anonymous Alien, that classic duo!

Even more sensational(istic) is Grauman’s Chinese, that historic theater with the surprisingly small hand-and-foot prints of Cary Grant, John Wayne, Eddie Murphy, Sophia Loren and many, many others. My original masterplan was to watch the Mechanic remake in this 2200-seat landmark. I had naturally assumed that this particular film would be playing in this particular location because Grauman’s has a habit, in addition to hosting glamorous film premieres, of playing the cheapest, most violent, most low-rent genre ‘trash’ available. The first film I ever saw there was 2008’s hilariously violent Punisher: War Zone. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez supposedly used to frequent the place on weekends that horror films would open there. In fact, they might have been there while I was watching The Mechanic next door, since I had completely forgotten about the Anthony Hopkins vehicle The Rite, which opened the same day. Yikes. ANOTHER film about ANOTHER exorcism. The world doesn’t need it. But the world doesn’t exactly need a remake of The Mechanic either. Still, I’m glad it exists. Hell, I’m even glad The Rite exists, sight unseen, because it’s another film about sacred spaces, starring sacred monsters.

To be continued next week in…SACRED MONSTERS – BRONSON VS. STATHAM!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 10:07 pm. It is filed under Blog, Cinemas We Love, Los Angeles and tagged with american cinematheque, charles bronson, cinefamily, el capitan theater, graumans chinese, jason statham, mechanic, new beverly cinema, nuart theater, on location. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.