CineSavant Column
Hello! An ode to changing Hollywood…
Whoa, talk about personal history being erased. As the era of photochemical film passed years ago, I’m just coming to accept that every place I ever worked in ‘Hollywood’ is drastically altered, if not expunged. Giant labs are now storage facilities and a hundred small businesses catering to film production have vanished, from little sound companies that specialized in temp mixes, to storefront labs that developed ‘dirty dupe’ B&W copies from which we edited TV spots and trailers. I’d visit editor friend Steven Nielson in little cutting rooms all over town, wherever cheap rent could be found, running into freelance special effects wizards and actors-turned producers like James Hong.
But I didn’t expect all the movie palaces to go away. I never really got to see the cathedral-like downtown theaters in operation, as most of them folded in the 1960s. But in the ’70s we still had Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Westwood, which was THE place to see new movies, the place for celebs to be seen, AND the happy haunt of 30,000 UCLA students. Those of us without cars could walk down for a bite, snoop around several big bookstores, and take in the very latest first-run movie, at the then-steep ticket price of Three Dollars. The first Westwood show I personally saw was Catch-22, the summer before I started school.
I had student jobs in Westwood, first on a parking lot (what a bunch of crooks!) and then at Westwood’s brand-new National Theater, where I thoroughly abused the free movie tickets perk. I got to take my out-of-town girlfriend (bless her) to hot-title attractions like The Godfather and Deliverance, not to mention FILMEX at the Grauman’s Chinese, to see a miraculous Technicolor print of Vertigo on an enormous screen.
The papers have reported that the ‘flagship’ theaters The Village and The Bruin have shuttered. (Top Image) ↑ They were considered top venues. I don’t remember too many terrific memories at The Bruin, the theater Sharon Tate visits in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I do remember seeing Days of Heaven there, in 70mm, I believe. But The Westwood, the one with the tall tower, is packed with memories — a preview of the De Laurentiis King Kong with Rocco Gioffre (ugh), Wilder’s Avanti! with Steve Sharon, watching Jon Davison pace the lobby during a preview screening of Starship Troopers, and a wonderfully memorable screening of The Thin Red Line with my teenaged son. Great stuff all around.
They say that a consortium of film directors will try to keep The Village going, but the question is, can any single-screen theater stay open without a good flow of exclusive product people are willing to Go Out to see brand new, without waiting? I was once a theater rat, running from museums to school to The Vagabond and The Encore. At my present age I now have an excuse to stick closer to home. But the rest of the culture now has so many other interests and entertainments to pursue. Movies are no longer the universal Thing To Do that everybody keeps up with. Who knows what will be?
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson