The cinephile who takes your tickets at the New Beverly Cinema also makes the pre-show announcement. I’m paraphrasing, but it’s basically, ‘yo, don’t be a jerk. Turn your damn phones off. No really. Like put them away. Good. And don’t take them out. Once those lights go off, keep them in your pocket. A long-time Regular recently looked at his phone and now he’s banned for life. So please, I don’t want that to be your fate, put them away.”
I looked around to the three hundred or so other movie nerds packed into the theater on a rainy Tuesday night to take in a double feature of Children of Men and Snowpiercer. Both presented in 35 mm as they were originally intended to be experienced. These were my people. Being in a packed theater that isn’t ensconced in a mall makes Los Angeles feel a small town. Filled with friends and not strangers. Movies do that. Especially good ones.
There’s been a lot of talk over the years that movie theaters are like churches, but I’ll leave that debate to the French who have made it their ancestral right to remind us of that fact. Since they invented cinema, they are more qualified to convert and proselytize.
But when I say the movies are sacred to me, I don’t mean the suburban multiplex with the fifty dollar popcorn and sofa chair fuckery. I mean, the independent theater with the shitty seats. The one that curates its previews and double features and builds a season, unencumbered by the Hollywood publicity machine fed by Saudi and mainland Chinese interests.
I’m talking about places like New Beverly. That resurrect the cool, the bizarre, or the overlooked masterpieces, or movies so bad they’re good. Every city has at least one theater like this. And if they don’t, why are you living there? Get out. And get out now. And move somewhere that within a twenty mile radius there is a place you can check out the Muppet Movie and Gimme Shelter and eat five dollar popcorn.
Taking in one of my all time favorite films, Children Of Men, in a packed theater on a weeknight by myself I was reminded again what a singular and transcendental experience movie-going is.
I love doing live theater, but I often hate going to it. Especially these days. To often I feel smacked with issues at the cost of entertainment and force fed all the stuff that nut-job conservatives hate about us pinkos. The theater somewhere along the line started preaching and tried to keep up with what film does and lost its intent. And now no one wants to go and everywhere theaters shutter. As a playwright who has spent the better part of my life making work for that theater I can speak on it with authority. And when I need to check my sanity, I confirm with colleagues who make a living in new work around the country and they all agree, it’s impossible. It had always been difficult, but lately it is impossible.
So I retreat to my original refuge; the independent movie house. My best friend Greg and my older brother Marty both worked at River Oaks Theater in Cal City, Il. Which meant I could always sneak in the back door to see whatever we could. A privilege I often took full advantage of. I grew up in the 80s and 90s when Hollywood made more than Super hero dribble. So there was reason to come and be converted. It was my home away from home. A place I could be alone with strangers and sit in the dark. Plus, they had air conditioning. Real air conditioning.
There’s just something about a movie in a theater that does something nothing else does. It transports like Nicole Kidman creepily tells us from behind her wall of Botox in that one commercial. She’s right. And so is Tom Cruise with his equally weird incantations. Maybe it’s the only thing they still agree on. If that’s not a rally cry for a universal religion that surmounts all obstacles, even Hollywood divorce, then what is?
One reason why TV will never be film, I think, is because TV is based on delayed transcendence, keeping things in the air, so people will tune in for more. It is an open loop. Whereas movies are by definition, a closed loop. They have, what Aristotle says, a beginning, a middle and an end.
And - I might add - they are often set to be an ideal length of time so we can go on an adventure, grapple with a difficult question, face fears, or remember the power of love and what humanity is capable of - and do it and still be home in time for bed. On a rainy Tuesday night in Los Angeles. Except Marty Scorsese. He somehow thinks himself immune and feels we all should be kidnapped in the theater for four hours and then during that prolonged agony we relent and call him a genius. By attrition.
After Children Of Men (which was two hours long), the lobby was packed with strangers engaged in talk about why that film remains vitaly important. And I watched and listened to it all.
The collective audience surrendered disbelief and now were chatty, rewarded for their faith. You could feel the intimacy of strangers.
It reminded me that what we slave away at alone in the privacy of our work to craft these stories from the ground up, is worth it. Even if we rarely achieve the lofty heights, or get sytmied by agents assistants or finance types, we keep aiming. Because story, told through cinema is the torch bearer and continuance, the anscestral inheritance of what we did in caves when the dire wolf was at the door. Stories told by the flicker of a light in darkness by our shaman. Our elders. Those who had seen or done a few things. And we listen to Hitchcock, Gerwig, or Brooks, the same way.
I spotted an old friend from a playwright group I was a part of back before the world ended. He was with his teenaged son and the boy’s friends. It was their first time seeing the movie. And we’re blown away with the gobsmock face. I asked them what they loved about it.
The drama. It was so real. Like everything. It didn’t feel like a movie.
It didn’t feel like a movie. Well, what is a film supposed to feel like?
I chose not to talk about the balance of unities that went into creating that experience so as not to cheapen it and just listened. But their first time joy filled me up.
When I got home, I cracked open an outline to a screenplay I had been tinkering with and it may be related or not, but the mysteries of its construction suddenly whispered their order. I could feel the movement. And it brought me joy like no other to craft the little invisible lines that go into making magic. I felt in on a secret. It makes up for a fraught life. The work. It really does.
Some people say that movies don’t change the world, that we don’t cure cancer. And it’s in moments like this that I ask myself, maybe we don’t, but we do help people feel. Laugh. And revisit what is possible again. And maybe that doesn’t cure cancer or solve world hunger, but it does heal.
Don’t believe me?
What helps a family come together and share something common during Christmas? I don’t know about yours, but Die Hard, Lord of The Rings, or The Big Lebowski will. What do you do when you have a cold and are in bed? Watch Fish Called Wanda. What did we do when the world shut down for the better part of two years? Besides watch British Baking Show and Top Chef — watch Contagion and then 12 Monkeys. Or maybe something that Bill Murray was in. Or Million Dollar Baby. Or Unforgiven. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. This is Spinal Tap. Casablanca. The Fifth Element. The Professional. Or Some Like It Hot. When’s the last time you watched Some Like it Hot?
There was a moment when our non-plussed uber movie dork asked the audience a question before turning the lights off inside the theater that Quentin Tarantino saved from the wrecking ball (The New Beverly). “How many people are seeing Children of Men here tonight for the first time?” Some hands went up. And we cheered.
I guess that’s why I love the movies. I hope that makes sense. If it doesn’t? Like I said. I’m not French.
If you enjoyed, PLEASE consider becoming a PAID SUBSCRIBER. Your Five bucks a month help me get closer toward my goal of being self-sustaining through writing and sharing with my community, and also funds the time I need to build longer works and keeps me from having to contort my authenticity and waste so much time chasing grants that never seem to be pan out. Yadda yadda. Gratefuls
from tacos 1986 - down block from New Beverly.