Speaker 1: Ephemeral is a production of iHeart three D audio for full.
Speaker 2: Exposure, listen with that phones, open the pod bay doors. Hell,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Speaker 3: There's nothing quite like seeing a good movie on the
Speaker 3: big screen. If you've ever watched something like two thousand
Speaker 3: and one A Space Odyssey in a theater, you'll understand
Speaker 3: how visceral it can be to experience that level of
Speaker 3: visual and auditory immersion, and how different it is from
Speaker 3: watching at home. Theaters have always been an important part
Speaker 3: of the film industry. In the early nineteen hundreds, companies
Speaker 3: like Paramount and Columbia help to open the first picture palaces,
Speaker 3: opulent and decadent houses for exhibiting film. Eight saw a
Speaker 3: huge boom in movie going culture as theater chains expanded
Speaker 3: the accessibility of movies across the country. But recently, the
Speaker 3: COVID pandemic and the rise of streaming services have threatened
Speaker 3: the existence of movie theaters altogether. So now where do
Speaker 3: movie theaters fit into our modern culture today? Producer Trevor
Speaker 3: Young walks us through the turbulene but grand history of
Speaker 3: movie theaters and visits one special theater in Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: which still thrives on independent cinema.
Speaker 4: Last year I had the opportunity to move to Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: As you probably know, we're huge film nerds here on
Speaker 4: the Ephemeral Team, and LA is a huge film town.
Speaker 4: So I was excited to visit all the local theaters
Speaker 4: around here. But what I wasn't expecting was just how
Speaker 4: opulent and dense with historical meaning all of the mainstay
Speaker 4: theaters here really are. Most of them have been around
Speaker 4: for decades, some for over a century. They're full of life,
Speaker 4: and the people in them carry a genuine love for film,
Speaker 4: and especially coming out of COVID, it feels like all
Speaker 4: the moviegoers that these theaters agree this is a special event.
Speaker 1: You know what you can't get from sitting at home watching, say,
Speaker 1: a movie like The Long Goodbye with Elliott Gould.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think, what was Marty Augusty doing here the
Speaker 2: other night? How did you know him here from my place?
Speaker 2: So dropped by to have a word or two with me,
Speaker 2: and I was just curious to see who else he
Speaker 2: wanted to talk to. A turn out to be you.
Speaker 1: You can't get Elliot Gould sitting in the seat across
Speaker 1: the aisle from you watching The Long Goodbye. He is
Speaker 1: literally sitting three feet from me. I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: that's one of my favorite movie going experiences.
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh my god, it's Elliot cool.
Speaker 4: This is Jules McLean, director of operations at the New
Speaker 4: Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. The New BEV, as it's
Speaker 4: often called, is owned by filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. He bought
Speaker 4: the historic theater in two thousand and seven and has
Speaker 4: since devoted the theater to screening revival cinema. Jules is
Speaker 4: a personal friend of Quentin and join the NUBEV in
Speaker 4: twenty fourteen, and her job can be a little intense at.
Speaker 5: The New Beverly.
Speaker 1: Kind of a jack of all trades, but I do
Speaker 1: oversee everything. I communicate with Quentin a lot. I'm the
Speaker 1: one person that has an open line of communication forum.
Speaker 1: We get programming for him, We bounce ideas off. I'm
Speaker 1: lucky that I have a good team in place, because
Speaker 1: you would not imagine everything it is to run a theater.
Speaker 1: There's booking, there's establishing relationship with filmmakers and distributors, studios,
Speaker 1: film collectors. Because we're a film only house. There's the
Speaker 1: day to day stuff of running a business. You need permits,
Speaker 1: health permits. You have to like take into consideration pricing
Speaker 1: because everything is now skyrocketing navigating through COVID waters.
Speaker 4: But Jules says it's all worth it to her. Movie
Speaker 4: theaters like the New BEV are the most valuable cultural spaces.
Speaker 5: We have two things.
Speaker 1: One it's an escape for me, and the other thing
Speaker 1: is the communal aspect. Just this last Saturday, went and
Speaker 1: saw Live and let dive one of our matinees.
Speaker 2: Easy, Charlie, let's get there on one piece, Charlie.
Speaker 5: Big James Bond fan here.
Speaker 1: And afterwards, you know, people are buzzing, stayed in the lobby.
Speaker 1: I mean people are staying in the lobby for like
Speaker 1: a half an hour. Finally I had just kind of
Speaker 1: shoot people away because we had another show coming in.
Speaker 5: But I remember one of our regulars, Sarah, we were talking.
Speaker 1: She's all like, I've made a lot of friends standing
Speaker 1: in line at the New Beverly.
Speaker 5: This place is magic. I don't know, you're not going to.
Speaker 1: Get that experience sitting at home on your couch.
Speaker 5: You got to get out.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if it's at the New Beverly another theater,
Speaker 1: and so we support independent theaters the most. But even
Speaker 1: if you get out and you go to the bigger
Speaker 1: chain theaters, just get out of your house, go to
Speaker 1: the movie, see it with an audience. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: Live and Let Die, wonderful action pack, but also had
Speaker 1: this moments of comedy and just being in a theater,
Speaker 1: a pack theater, and sharing laughter with somebody's it really
Speaker 1: is Sarah's raight is magical.
Speaker 4: Jules told me that the new Bets reminded her of
Speaker 4: the kind of theaters she used to go to growing up.
Speaker 1: When I was I'm going to stay five, but I
Speaker 1: think I was actually six, my mom took me to
Speaker 1: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids. But Cassidy's Hole in
Speaker 1: the Wall Gangcasi's Hole in the Wall Gang, that's me,
Speaker 1: the whole bank of over close to twenty fives.
Speaker 2: What hard you do your planning for you? You want
Speaker 2: them to do your thinking for you. You want him
Speaker 2: to run things.
Speaker 1: You can shut up now, news or not yet till
Speaker 1: I get the good part. Butch and before y'all be
Speaker 1: judge everyone. I really wanted to see Butch Cassidy and
Speaker 1: the Sundance Kids. She just didn't pick that out of
Speaker 1: the blue. The next movie was The Great Gatsby, and
Speaker 1: I think I was seven, and I wasn't very into it.
Speaker 1: You want too much?
Speaker 5: I love you now?
Speaker 1: Isn't that enough?
Speaker 5: I can't help what's passed.
Speaker 3: I did love him once, but I loved you too.
Speaker 1: And then we stood in line for like Star Wars,
Speaker 1: like my mom rocked as far as like movies go,
Speaker 1: and that just really formed my sensibilities. That's a movie
Speaker 1: going experience. I just, I mean, decades later, I remember
Speaker 1: that I take my nieces to the theater. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just I hope people continue to go out to
Speaker 1: the movies.
Speaker 4: One unique thing about the New Beverly is that they
Speaker 4: only show film, meaning actual analog reels and no digital
Speaker 4: film whatsoever.
Speaker 1: It's not easy, but we know a lot of collectors,
Speaker 1: a lot of the studios, in fact, the majority of
Speaker 1: them have opened up their repertory. They do lend out
Speaker 1: prints a lot of times. There's costs and volve in
Speaker 1: the shipping aspect. Sometimes the archives are local and we
Speaker 1: can go pick them up. And luckily we actually went
Speaker 1: back through all our programming and one of the reasons
Speaker 1: Quinton got the theater in the first place is that
Speaker 1: he has a very large film print collection. Over half
Speaker 1: the titles that we play come from his collection. So
Speaker 1: that's a way for him to share it with audiences.
Speaker 1: Because actually we had to do that for tax purposes too.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh no, no, no, he really does play
Speaker 1: his prints at that theater.
Speaker 4: But it's not just an arbitrary choice. The new bev
Speaker 4: uses real film for a reason.
Speaker 1: Seeing actual film, they've done studies and I forget if
Speaker 1: it was Harvard or Yale. But the brain's reaction to
Speaker 1: twenty four frames per second, you have a different emotional connection.
Speaker 1: Digital very flat thirty five offers a different texture. Your
Speaker 1: brain takes it in differently, you have a different emotional reaction.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a big part of what's different now
Speaker 1: days two because it's all digital projection and this and that, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I'll still go to see digital films.
Speaker 1: I'm not pooh pooing them if I have a choice,
Speaker 1: darn right. Like I waited forever to see Nightmare Alley
Speaker 1: because I know we were going to show it and
Speaker 1: I wanted to see it on film.
Speaker 6: Oh I see an older man. Oh the boy hates cinema.
Speaker 3: Oh, the boy would love to be loved, but he
Speaker 3: hates that man. Death.
Speaker 1: Death. I'm no wish to death.
Speaker 4: As you can tell, Jules has a deep love for
Speaker 4: all things cinema, and she's very attuned to the vast
Speaker 4: history of theaters in LA and across the country. So
Speaker 4: we thought she'd be the perfect person to help us
Speaker 4: learn a little bit more about theaters, or as they
Speaker 4: were originally called, picture palaces.
Speaker 1: The nineteen tens the nineteen twenties. A lot of the
Speaker 1: older theaters were actually live performances converted to a movie
Speaker 1: theater once the talkies came about.
Speaker 4: Early film studios like Paramount or Warner Brothers were deeply
Speaker 4: involved in the movie palaces. They were, of course, the
Speaker 4: only venues for their product.
Speaker 1: Once they got a little bit of this success in
Speaker 1: the studios operated a lot of them. They just kept
Speaker 1: getting bigger, seating like twenty five hundred three thousand downtown
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, wonderful like two mile stretch of just like
Speaker 1: picture palace after picture palace after picture palace.
Speaker 4: One thing most people either forget about or don't realize,
Speaker 4: is that there was a whole show before the film
Speaker 4: back then you'd have the news ads, a cartoon or short.
Speaker 1: Film, television highlights of the news of yester year.
Speaker 4: That's something you might also see at the New Beverley.
Speaker 1: Cartoons were a big draw in the thirties. Cereals those
Speaker 1: were a big draw. You'd package cereals and cartoons and
Speaker 1: maybe a comedy shortened.
Speaker 5: That's their entertainment for the weekend.
Speaker 1: I go on private forums and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: I'm always looking for cool things because we will play
Speaker 1: newsreels from the thirties, the forties, the fifties.
Speaker 2: In Gary, Indiana, struck mills or idol behind picket lines
Speaker 2: composed of women.
Speaker 1: Cartoons were big on cartoons. When Quentin took it over,
Speaker 1: he really wanted to kind of mimic what happened in
Speaker 1: the past, which was you would play like a tag,
Speaker 1: a little like kind of commercial or something cool for
Speaker 1: like Coca Cola.
Speaker 7: Let's all go to the lobby. Let's all go to
Speaker 7: the lobby.
Speaker 2: Let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat.
Speaker 1: Then you would play like a short, you know, Three
Speaker 1: Stooges short or you know, bugs Bunny cartoon, and then
Speaker 1: it's like trailers and trailers for either up and coming
Speaker 1: films or trailers that thematically fit what you're showing that night,
Speaker 1: and then you go into the actual feature and that's
Speaker 1: what they did that then it was a different movie
Speaker 1: going experience. I know, you get the trailers when you
Speaker 1: go and see your first run films and stuff, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's not quite the same.
Speaker 4: One other interesting thing is that most theaters did not
Speaker 4: have concessions back then.
Speaker 1: I don't know how they survived. I forget what decade
Speaker 1: concessions came into, but can you imagine going to the
Speaker 1: movies and not having concessions. Now as an exhibitor, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: oh gosh, we would not be in business if we
Speaker 1: had to close our concessions.
Speaker 5: I have to have my popcorn.
Speaker 4: But by far the most striking feature of the old
Speaker 4: picture palaces was the architecture.
Speaker 1: Stunning, absolutely stunning. I can tell you that a lot
Speaker 1: of thought went into them. You can tell by the
Speaker 1: little decorations, very ornate, very thematic. You had two theaters
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles that had an Egyptian theme and they
Speaker 1: were two different architects.
Speaker 5: You know, you see.
Speaker 1: Middle Eastern themes. You just see a lot of art
Speaker 1: deco themes. I would love to go back in time
Speaker 1: and just kind of sit in on some of the
Speaker 1: planning and what people thought. But again, studios behind a
Speaker 1: lot of the big picture palaces, so they could throw
Speaker 1: a lot of money into them, and they wanted to
Speaker 1: appeal to a wider class of people. They did want
Speaker 1: the theaters to reflect that.
Speaker 4: I asked Jules to mention a few examples and to
Speaker 4: tell us what her favorites are.
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, Radio City Music Hall, which does
Speaker 1: not show film anymore. I don't think the Music Box
Speaker 1: in Chicago. There's a handful that a still around in
Speaker 1: downtown Los Angeles. A secret movie club is out of
Speaker 1: the million Dollar Theater in downtown Los Angeles. And then
Speaker 1: there's other venues that are open. We've had premieres of
Speaker 1: Quinton's films at a couple of the theaters. I really
Speaker 1: like the Metrograph in New York. I love the Bellcourt
Speaker 1: in Nashville. You know, I was a big fan of
Speaker 1: the Ramadome and even the arc Light Complex in general
Speaker 1: because I thought they had, you know, really nice big theaters.
Speaker 1: I do like when I travel, i'd like to see
Speaker 1: the independent movie theaters. I like to experience them. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you a wonderful one is the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Oregon. Amazing, gorgeous,
Speaker 1: wonderful programming. I got a little tour and everything. There's
Speaker 1: fun little basement hangout, you know. And I get kind
Speaker 1: of jealous of theaters like the Hollywood because they have
Speaker 1: so much room and can do so much and the
Speaker 1: guy that runs it, oh, here's two free drink tickets.
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh wow.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, we don't get drink tickets at the
Speaker 1: New Beverly. We don't even starve alcohol and stuff. So
Speaker 1: I did a little jealous, But I mean, theaters are
Speaker 1: just wonderful one. They're in every town and it's yay,
Speaker 1: they're magic.
Speaker 4: Jules says that back in the day going to the
Speaker 4: movie theater was a big.
Speaker 1: Deal throughout the country. I think they were packed. That
Speaker 1: was your night out. You're getting dressed up to go
Speaker 1: to these places. Now part of it, Yeah, you want
Speaker 1: to be seen dressed up, drive your car there. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was the equivalent to when we go to maybe
Speaker 1: to the Pantagious in Los Angeles to go see Hamilton
Speaker 1: or something, or if you go to Broadway you would
Speaker 1: have more like the Douglas Fairbanks action, you know, buccaneers.
Speaker 1: I also think a lot of the comedies you have
Speaker 1: the Harold Lloyd's MaxEnt and comedies, and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of like shorter films that are just they're lost
Speaker 1: now even if they were found.
Speaker 5: Is there an audience form, I don't know so.
Speaker 4: Because the studios largely funded the movie palaces back then,
Speaker 4: the theaters were a lot more strict about what they
Speaker 4: could or couldn't play.
Speaker 1: I know, there wasn't a lot of like cross pollinations.
Speaker 1: So if it was, you know, a Warner Brothers theater,
Speaker 1: they only played Warner pictures. There were studios that didn't
Speaker 1: have theaters, and I think it was a tougher time
Speaker 1: for them to get in into some of the established
Speaker 1: studio owned But I mean that broke up, and I
Speaker 1: think that was probably good. There certainly were, I mean
Speaker 1: studios are cranking it out in the heydays, forties fifties. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: if they made money, they were going to produce some
Speaker 1: some not so great that you can say that for
Speaker 1: today's films too.
Speaker 4: The New Beverly did not yet exist by this point,
Speaker 4: so it's not technically a picture Palace, but its history
Speaker 4: is interesting nonetheless.
Speaker 1: Yeah, New Beverly's built in twenty nine, so it was originally,
Speaker 1: I believe, a candy store. Then somebody sold wine out
Speaker 1: of it, and it eventually became Slapsy Maxis, which was
Speaker 1: a live club. In nineteen fifty, it became a movie theater.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's been one ever since. But it's had
Speaker 1: so many iterations and so many different names, it's kind
Speaker 1: of crazy. It was even split into a twin theater
Speaker 1: called the Riviera Capri Crazy.
Speaker 5: I can't imagine it now because I still think it's
Speaker 5: a little small. It was the.
Speaker 1: Arrows, the Riviera Caprids, the Beverly, the New Yorker. It's
Speaker 1: an adult theater, as we all know, kind of referenced
Speaker 1: in Once upon a Time in Hollywood, What's.
Speaker 7: Going on at the Dirty Movie Place?
Speaker 5: Well, they're having a premiere. Dirty movies have premieres.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're fun.
Speaker 5: Which is really cool.
Speaker 1: If you watched Once upon a Time in Hollywood at
Speaker 1: the New Beverly, you got.
Speaker 5: That d joke.
Speaker 1: Been home to a lot of different theaters and made
Speaker 1: many people happy.
Speaker 4: She says. Theaters like this started to become more common
Speaker 4: in the fifties instead of the grand picture palaces, now
Speaker 4: we were getting more small, single screen theaters.
Speaker 1: They popped up because people are moving to the suburbs.
Speaker 1: You know, you can build a giant picture palace their
Speaker 1: neighborhood theaters, so I think they served their neighborhoods.
Speaker 4: But soon big companies would take notice of the success
Speaker 4: of movie theaters and they would create the franchises we
Speaker 4: know today chains that all but doomed the independent theaters
Speaker 4: of the last century. These days the most common movie
Speaker 4: theaters are the chains, amc, Cinemak, Regal and so on.
Speaker 4: But before these, in the early days, the studios themselves
Speaker 4: were the franchises.
Speaker 5: They were up.
Speaker 1: During the picture palaces, you had your lolls and your
Speaker 1: warners and stuff, so you saw them. But when the
Speaker 1: studios were told that they couldn't be exhibitors, there were
Speaker 1: opportunities for corporations. Probably sixties they really started getting going.
Speaker 1: Seventies probably their heydays, seventies and eighties.
Speaker 5: Then the slide began.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, theater chains radically shifted the movie business in the eighties.
Speaker 4: Now you have these big buildings with a dozen or
Speaker 4: more screens showing every available movie, usually more than once
Speaker 4: a day. While Jules prefers the older art house single
Speaker 4: screen theaters, she understands why these types of theaters became popular.
Speaker 1: There's your economic aspect as an exhibitor, where you're not saddled.
Speaker 5: If a movie bombs.
Speaker 1: You open it in your big three hundred seat theater,
Speaker 1: and at bombs you move it over to the fifty
Speaker 1: seater and you can put something in where you will
Speaker 1: make money. As far as the movie going experience, it's
Speaker 1: just like now, it's a lot of options. I want
Speaker 1: to go see the two ten show of so and so,
Speaker 1: but I missed it. But look at two thirty, I
Speaker 1: can make this so it's not a complete wash. I
Speaker 1: don't have to get back in my car. I don't
Speaker 1: have to kill two hours to the next showing. As
Speaker 1: a teenager or as a young college person, multiplexes were
Speaker 1: great because you could see two or three movies a
Speaker 1: day and only pay once.
Speaker 4: But Juele says we lost a lot of value when
Speaker 4: we transitioned away from the neighborhood theaters.
Speaker 1: There more things like textually, if you go to the Vista,
Speaker 1: you have the manager that has worked there for decades, Victor,
Speaker 1: and he'll greet you and you have interactions and you
Speaker 1: can you know, it's your neighborhood theater. I live in
Speaker 1: that neighborhood, so I always run into friends there. But
Speaker 1: you don't have that kind of interaction at an AMC.
Speaker 1: And it's so big, and you don't like stand in
Speaker 1: a lobby and talk about the film afterwards. You don't
Speaker 1: like meet people and say, hey, let's go get coffee
Speaker 1: over here and talk about the film. You go, you
Speaker 1: see the movie. It's great, you know what you're getting,
Speaker 1: and you go home. Go someplace like New Beverly, you
Speaker 1: know the vista, the Arrow Los Biless three. It's a
Speaker 1: different experience. It's more of a movie going experience. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I can put my finger quite on it,
Speaker 1: but it just isn't a little bit more at an AMC,
Speaker 1: shall we say.
Speaker 4: Of course, the biggest impact of the chain theaters was
Speaker 4: the eventual closure of indie theaters. For the older single
Speaker 4: screen theaters and picture palaces, companies like AMC signaled near
Speaker 4: certain death.
Speaker 1: I don't know how a single screen theater makes it.
Speaker 1: I have zero idea. We've come close to closing several times,
Speaker 1: despite Quentin Tarantino being the overall owner. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: he has to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Speaker 1: You know, the American cinema tech is at the low
Speaker 1: SPI list three. I don't know if they have all
Speaker 1: three screens, but I think they have like two of them.
Speaker 5: At least. That gives you an.
Speaker 1: Opportunity to make your programming a little bit. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm like diverse or something, but you can fall back
Speaker 1: onto something and gives you a little bit more flexibility.
Speaker 5: Where if we put.
Speaker 1: A dog in there, it's bad for us, you know,
Speaker 1: can't really overcome that. Now we have to try to
Speaker 1: think like, okay, what can we do to make up
Speaker 1: like we're losing five thousand dollars by showing this one movie?
Speaker 1: You know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and there's twelve people here.
Speaker 5: This is bad. Doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: We still have to pay the studios their licensing fee.
Speaker 1: Now we're paying employees not to serve you popcorn, or
Speaker 1: sell you tickets or monitor the show. I do not
Speaker 1: know how single screen theaters exist.
Speaker 4: Well. Jules is thankful that the new BEV is surviving.
Speaker 4: She says running a single screen theater is both complicated
Speaker 4: and difficult in ways that chain theaters don't have to
Speaker 4: worry about.
Speaker 5: Well B corporations.
Speaker 1: Obviously, you can like move your money around at this
Speaker 1: theater location. B you don't take a loss, and it's different.
Speaker 1: No place to hide for the single screen theater, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you that. Much like in twenty fourteen, when we
Speaker 1: took over the new Beverly to pick up our trash,
Speaker 1: it was like one hundred and eighty six dollars. Now, oh,
Speaker 1: five hundred and thirty four dollars. Yes, we do have
Speaker 1: to raise our ticket prices occasionally, and it's everything.
Speaker 5: It's clockwork.
Speaker 1: There's a certain vendor that sends a notice at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the year, a big vendor, we need to
Speaker 1: raise our prices three to five percent. I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, but I don't pass that along to our patrons.
Speaker 1: I know other theaters don't do that either. Part of
Speaker 1: the movie going experience is feeling like you're not being gouged.
Speaker 1: I go to a lot of theaters and I take
Speaker 1: pictures of their concession things, and I'm like, how in
Speaker 1: the world is this big theater? I will leave out
Speaker 1: a name charging four seventy five for a small bottle
Speaker 1: of water is like wow.
Speaker 4: The next big blow to small theaters was television.
Speaker 5: I think it was pretty damning to theater going well.
Speaker 1: I mean, all of a sudden, it was almost like
Speaker 1: a novelty, almost like wow, you got this little screen
Speaker 1: and you can just like you can watch the Howdy
Speaker 1: Duty Show. Oh my gosh, you can like you can
Speaker 1: bring your meal and put it on a tray and
Speaker 1: you can.
Speaker 5: Watch from your home home.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was anything with economics, but I
Speaker 1: think it was just like, Wow, we've got.
Speaker 5: Like a screen in our home. Now.
Speaker 1: It's a little better than the movie screen, but there's
Speaker 1: always something on and oh.
Speaker 5: Wow, they're showing a John Wayne movie. Wow. And theaters
Speaker 5: had to overcome that, and they did.
Speaker 4: And then came streaming things like Netflix and Hulu. I
Speaker 4: asked Jules how the New Beverly survived the streaming era.
Speaker 1: Definitely, attendance took a hit at the New Beverly. We
Speaker 1: didn't come in until twenty fourteen. But the dynamics of
Speaker 1: movie exhibition have changed. But I think at least we've
Speaker 1: reached a point now where it's harmonious.
Speaker 4: Jewels says streaming is probably her least favorite way to
Speaker 4: watch movie. She says that at theaters there's a kind
Speaker 4: of community you just don't get by flipping through Amazon Prime.
Speaker 1: It's so nice when people come to the New Beverly,
Speaker 1: Like I'll tell you that the family matinee, we were
Speaker 1: playing Disney's The Barefoot Executive.
Speaker 8: I'm not interested in your theories on ratings, and I'm
Speaker 8: certainly not interested in doing a show called Abraham Lincoln's
Speaker 8: Doctor's Dog, whatever that is.
Speaker 1: And it was directed by Robert Butler. He brought his grandchildren.
Speaker 1: Now the grandchildren get to see it on the big screen.
Speaker 5: They get to see the audience laughing. They get to.
Speaker 1: See people coming up to their grandfather Robert Butler afterward
Speaker 1: and say, oh man, that was so cool, and that's
Speaker 1: so cool that you came out taking pictures by the
Speaker 1: one sheets and everything like.
Speaker 5: You don't get that experience at home.
Speaker 1: And that's actually one of the things I'm most proud
Speaker 1: about the New Beverly is that that we offer people
Speaker 1: that experience and you don't have to be Robert Butler
Speaker 1: and his family to so recognize, if you were at
Speaker 1: that screening, how important that is and how special that is.
Speaker 1: Like I was just work in the box office, and
Speaker 1: it's like, that's pretty darn cool. You're not going to
Speaker 1: get that watching the movie on Netflix.
Speaker 4: But clearly streaming isn't going anywhere. So this begs the
Speaker 4: question can theaters and streaming services live harmoniously.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I ever see that they exist
Speaker 1: equally harmoniously. I think you're seeing that now. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have a wonderful relationship with say Netflix. Netflix took
Speaker 1: over the Egyptian Theater, so they will be showing their
Speaker 1: films there. There's a merger of theater and streaming, and
Speaker 1: I remember Netflix at one point was very resistant, but
Speaker 1: they saw the potential, they saw a wider audience. They
Speaker 1: saw that Hey, Academy Awards, you know, we get some
Speaker 1: of our films nominated, win some Oscars.
Speaker 5: Pretty darn cool.
Speaker 4: Luckily, there has been a movement in recent years to
Speaker 4: preserve the history of rich spaces like picture palaces and
Speaker 4: single screen theaters. Quentin Tarantino, of course, saved the New
Speaker 4: Beverly from extinction, as well as the Vista Theater, also
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles. But finally, other filmmakers are also starting
Speaker 4: to step up.
Speaker 1: There's certainly the Paul Thomas Anderson's and the christ Different Nolan's.
Speaker 1: I don't think they have a foundation or do anything,
Speaker 1: but just by you know, making film and insisting that
Speaker 1: you know, it gets a theatrical run. That's important. Playing
Speaker 1: Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza was amazing.
Speaker 6: Do you know who I am?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Do you know who my girlfriend is? Ubishi send barbustres
Speaker 5: sand sand sand, You're like sands, like the ocean, like
Speaker 5: harbisi sand. No striy sand sand.
Speaker 1: He brings his children to the New Beverly, to the
Speaker 1: family matinees amazing. That little bit of support he pays.
Speaker 1: There's some people that are like, oh, oh, can I
Speaker 1: get him free? I'm like, no, Like why do.
Speaker 5: You work here?
Speaker 1: Because that's the perk of working here. Otherwise, please support us,
Speaker 1: your friend of Quentin's. No, he wants you to pay.
Speaker 1: He wants you to support theaters.
Speaker 4: But in order to survive, small theaters need to be creative,
Speaker 4: and the New Beverly is a great example.
Speaker 5: We took over the New Beverly.
Speaker 1: It wasn't much of a social media presence, but that
Speaker 1: was something identified very quickly in that we needed somebody
Speaker 1: and my social media manager film Lankenship came on board,
Speaker 1: and I think that has helped immensely. We would not
Speaker 1: be where we're at today without a social media presence.
Speaker 1: And honestly, a lot of it starts with community too.
Speaker 1: You can cultivate a good film community. We have regulars
Speaker 1: and so do other theaters because I go to them
Speaker 1: that will stand in line for like two or three
Speaker 1: hours before the show just to get their favorite seat
Speaker 1: or just to catch up with their friends. And you
Speaker 1: kind of make it a movie going experience, going back
Speaker 1: to affordable concessions, affordable ticket prices, good value for your screen.
Speaker 1: I love that Quinton put in pre shows. Now folks
Speaker 1: are like, oh, oh, what cartoon are you shine?
Speaker 5: Or what shorter? I like to write down the trailers,
Speaker 5: but what was the second trailer that you played?
Speaker 1: You get people excited to see the movie and you
Speaker 1: know that it's quality. Like we remodeled in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and when we did that, we did.
Speaker 5: Some very simple upgrades. Speakers in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: I have never seen people go gaga over speakers in
Speaker 1: the bathroom, but you look at our social media and
Speaker 1: like they put speakers in the bathroom. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: no brainer. Gotta go get up, use the restroom. You're
Speaker 1: missing the visual aspect, but you can still kind of
Speaker 1: hear what's going on, so you feel like you haven't
Speaker 1: missed everything. I just have to keep looking at different
Speaker 1: ways to get people engaged.
Speaker 4: Jules says that over time, the New Beverly became a
Speaker 4: trusted venue for cinophiles all across southern California.
Speaker 1: What's really cool is when we took over in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: you know, Quinton did the majority of the programming, and
Speaker 1: we just developed an audience, like a trust between Quinton
Speaker 1: the programmer and the audience, Like you might not have
Speaker 1: heard this film, but I'm not going to play it
Speaker 1: if it's not good. You're going to get something out
Speaker 1: of that film. I love seeing black and white movies
Speaker 1: at the New Beverly. I think the New Beverly was
Speaker 1: built to play black and white movies, and I just
Speaker 1: love that we continue to find black and white movies
Speaker 1: to play that maybe we haven't shown before, and that
Speaker 1: audiences are willing to take a chance on.
Speaker 4: As you can imagine, the COVID pandemic had a huge
Speaker 4: impact on theaters, especially on small theaters like the New BEV.
Speaker 4: But Once they were able to pull through, it became
Speaker 4: obvious that people were craving the in person movie going experience.
Speaker 4: For better or worse. The pandemic reminded us that's sitting
Speaker 4: at home isn't always the ideal way to watch a movie.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, We're all human and
Speaker 1: we need human interaction. You can only sit at home
Speaker 1: in front of your TV or computer screen for so long.
Speaker 1: The movie theater lets you have that interaction, even if
Speaker 1: you're not friends with somebody. I remember when I went
Speaker 1: to the arc Light and I saw Girls Trip. It
Speaker 1: was me and one other person. We were dying in
Speaker 1: that film, laughing out loud. And then afterwards, you know,
Speaker 1: talked to a few minutes, but you're like, oh, that
Speaker 1: was crazy, and he's like, I'm so glad you're in
Speaker 1: the theater and I wasn't the only one laughing alone.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I know, it was so cool to hear
Speaker 1: you laughing and just having that experience. It wasn't the
Speaker 1: full theater everybody laughing out wow, but we had that moment.
Speaker 1: That moment I still remember years later. You know, if
Speaker 1: I get that experience at home, maybe if you have
Speaker 1: your friends over and you're watching a movie in great
Speaker 1: it's a good time and stuff. But I know it's
Speaker 1: not the same as going out. It's not the same
Speaker 1: as interacting, interacting with strangers where you have this one
Speaker 1: common thing together.
Speaker 5: And I'll go back to that story of the New
Speaker 5: BEV regular Sarah. It's like she's made friends there. We've
Speaker 5: all made friends at the New Beverly.
Speaker 4: We're going to take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 4: come back, we're going to take a tour of the
Speaker 4: New Beverly and we'll see, or rather hear, the ins
Speaker 4: and outs of running analog film on a projector. Jules McLean,
Speaker 4: director of operations for the New Beverly Cinema, was kind
Speaker 4: enough to offer me a tour of the theater. We
Speaker 4: walked through the lobby, the auditorium, and I got the
Speaker 4: special experience seeing the projection room.
Speaker 1: So we're in the lobby of the New Beverly Cinema
Speaker 1: right now. And when Quentin took over the business part
Speaker 1: of the cinema, we made a few changes but kept
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff intact. One of the big things
Speaker 1: that really made the lobby what it is today, not
Speaker 1: that it's a tiny lobby, but there was a small
Speaker 1: wall partition by the women's room, and we were probably
Speaker 1: a week away from opening and finishing construction, and Quenton
Speaker 1: came in and he's.
Speaker 5: All like, do we really need this wall?
Speaker 1: And luckily the contractor happened to be right there too.
Speaker 5: It's not a load bearing wall and we can get
Speaker 5: rid of it.
Speaker 1: The next day we got rid of it and it
Speaker 1: just a opened up the lobby. But really, what Quinton
Speaker 1: wanted to do with the wall being gone, it opened
Speaker 1: up wall space, so we can now have large oversized
Speaker 1: frames that we put French two panels in, an Italian
Speaker 1: oversized posters in, and that's That's actually two of the
Speaker 1: biggest things that I like that Quinton did was not
Speaker 1: only removing the partition, but saying, hey, I want oversized
Speaker 1: frames in, and I want the frames changed out every
Speaker 1: you know, three or four days or whatever we do
Speaker 1: to advertise a movie.
Speaker 5: He has a lovely.
Speaker 1: Poster collection, so we utilize a lot of that, and
Speaker 1: over the years we've amassed a nice collection. So it's
Speaker 1: nice and people love taking pictures in front of it.
Speaker 5: And stuff like that.
Speaker 7: So what else.
Speaker 3: It's the original box office.
Speaker 1: We still have the original ticket tape, puncher that the
Speaker 1: Torgans had and uh, you know, we have gone to
Speaker 1: an online type of ticketing service. However we still kind
Speaker 1: of punch out the old tickets and you know they
Speaker 1: almost look like carnival tickets. But they seeing you beverly
Speaker 1: on them and it's kind of cool.
Speaker 5: I always like.
Speaker 1: Seeing you know, people like post them, you know, pictures
Speaker 1: of them on social media and by the marquee and stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know the concession stand, it's small, but mighty,
Speaker 1: we pack a lot in there. Great ideas is that
Speaker 1: when we showed Oakcha, the Netflix film, we because it's
Speaker 1: very you know, animal rights, we brought in vegan dogs
Speaker 1: for that and we called them Oakja Dogs.
Speaker 5: They sold so well we've kept.
Speaker 1: Them to this day. So again, always looking for interesting things.
Speaker 1: I love the posters, just the one sheet posters. Some
Speaker 1: of the artwork on the posters is gorgeous. They don't
Speaker 1: make them like they used to, is very true. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at that Goldfinger poster, kids says, I love it.
Speaker 1: One thing we did when Once upon a Time in
Speaker 1: Hollywood opened is we decked out the lobby and a
Speaker 1: lot of the props which you will still see to
Speaker 1: this day. We didn't take them down. Make Love Not
Speaker 1: War signs over there. CLO Drive is above the women's room,
Speaker 1: and on the box office, we had only candy that
Speaker 1: would have been sold in nineteen sixty nine, only bottled
Speaker 1: soda that would have been sold in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: We did like fun stuff like candy, cigarettes and everything.
Speaker 1: We had walk in music that was you know, very
Speaker 1: specific to you know KHJ that was playing in the film,
Speaker 1: but it was actually, you know, an on air broadcast.
Speaker 1: So now we're in the auditorium of the new Beverly
Speaker 1: we seat two hundred and twenty five. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: we had to completely gut everything. What was nice about
Speaker 1: the remodel was that we were able to do some
Speaker 1: really small things that I think just made the theater
Speaker 1: even more special. People don't know what we did because
Speaker 1: you can't see it, but we did new curtains, but
Speaker 1: we kept the same color scheme. So we have big
Speaker 1: blue panel of curtains right here and on the side curtains,
Speaker 1: and then we have a little strip of red.
Speaker 5: Well that was reversed.
Speaker 1: It was big panels of red, little strips of blue.
Speaker 5: But underneath it now we have.
Speaker 1: Acoustic material, so it really makes the sound oh special.
Speaker 1: Another thing that helped us because we had to like
Speaker 1: tear down the roof. Now we have acoustic paneling in
Speaker 1: the roof. Honestly, I'm on to brag here, it's some
Speaker 1: of the best sound in Los Angeles. I was watching
Speaker 1: I'll use Quintin's movie again because it's this theater once
Speaker 1: upon a Time in Hollywood, and my manager Brian Quinn,
Speaker 1: had the same experience. We both saw the film other places,
Speaker 1: but during the Musso and Frank scene, like you could hear,
Speaker 1: you know, the tables talk and everything, so much so
Speaker 1: that both of us at one point or another turned
Speaker 1: around and looked.
Speaker 5: Like, who's talking in the theater? Oh, No, one's talking.
Speaker 5: That's the background noise of Musso and Franks. Oh, our
Speaker 5: sound is good. You don't get that at every theater.
Speaker 1: Because I've watched Quintin's movie at other theaters and I
Speaker 1: did not have that experience.
Speaker 5: So the seats, you know, they're not the greatest seats
Speaker 5: in the world, they're not the worst seats in the world.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we'll ever change them, maybe, but
Speaker 1: I just feel that we would lose some seating capacity
Speaker 1: if we went to some newer seats, and we certainly
Speaker 1: wouldn't go into any seats that recline or anything like that.
Speaker 5: That's not us. That's for another theater.
Speaker 1: Things that Quinton did is he wanted again oversized posters
Speaker 1: as you exit, so you can see we've got two
Speaker 1: of them. We have one Nebraska Gym, which is a
Speaker 1: fake movie in Quinton's film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and then we have Richard Gears Breathless.
Speaker 5: We can go upstairs to the booth.
Speaker 1: Coming up, gentlemen. Well, you're in sacred territory now here
Speaker 1: it is in all its glory.
Speaker 5: To your right.
Speaker 1: We have a wall of trailers, thirty five millimeter trailers
Speaker 1: we use in our pre shows. The first feature always
Speaker 1: has a cartoon or a short, and then followed by trailers.
Speaker 1: They're either thematic that they tie into the future you're
Speaker 1: about to see, or they're up and coming. They also
Speaker 1: have like intermission tags or adverts from England. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've got a thousand of them.
Speaker 5: But you'll see that in the show too.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, Doctor Pepper and Martian Snapbar whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: just a little bumper and then it'll go into the
Speaker 1: cartoon or the trailers. We have our Simplex XL projectors.
Speaker 1: They're dual projectors. We have no platter system. At the
Speaker 1: New Beverly when Quentin took over and put me in charge,
Speaker 1: they kept telling me like we had a periscope system,
Speaker 1: so the light would hit a mirror and then hit
Speaker 1: another mirror and then be shot onto the screen. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a crisp image. So I'm like, there's got to
Speaker 1: be a way. So I pulled Quentin's personal projectionist, Jeff Nowicki.
Speaker 1: He got his friend over here who used to work
Speaker 1: for Fox.
Speaker 5: And you got to chop off the bass.
Speaker 1: You can chop off the base and then you'll have
Speaker 1: a straight shot to the screen and lo and behold.
Speaker 5: The image improved. It was.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a little hard for the projectionist because
Speaker 1: they have to stoop down. That's why you see the
Speaker 1: chair is very low, but it.
Speaker 5: Is absolutely worth it.
Speaker 1: David. This is our chief projectionist, David Chan. So if
Speaker 1: you'll explain a little bit how that works much better
Speaker 1: than I could.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we start off with the reel up here, and
Speaker 8: then we thread down towards the take up as it
Speaker 8: passes through different rollers. You'll notice straight away that the
Speaker 8: potentially the first section it'll pass through is the a
Speaker 8: Dolby digital reader. The SRD track would be read through
Speaker 8: this component. But if it's an older print and only
Speaker 8: has one channel or standard stereo sound, we would bypass
Speaker 8: that entirely and it would just go down through here
Speaker 8: and to the gates where obviously light passes through and
Speaker 8: into the lens. Then it goes down further to the soundhead.
Speaker 8: What's notable about that, and when I think most people
Speaker 8: are surprised to learn, is that if you're looking at
Speaker 8: a frame of film on thirty five milimeter, the sound
Speaker 8: for that frame is twenty frames ahead of it. So,
Speaker 8: for example, you have an image that's starting here. If
Speaker 8: you were to run film and have it pause, if
Speaker 8: you were to catch that instance, the sound for that
Speaker 8: image is already passing through twenty frames later down here
Speaker 8: into the soundhead. It continues from there to these other
Speaker 8: two rollers and then down into take up. We use
Speaker 8: two thousand foot reels, which means that we can really
Speaker 8: truly handle prints in the safest way. I'm going to
Speaker 8: actually remove this anyways, but we can unscrew this and
Speaker 8: then we have a multitude of lenses you can see
Speaker 8: here this is our one three seven lens, which is
Speaker 8: common for older Hollywood aspect ratio or for cartoons that
Speaker 8: we're able to run. For our pre shows, we could
Speaker 8: do scope, we could do one eight five, we could
Speaker 8: do the European one sixty six. It opens it up
Speaker 8: so we can play a good variety of movies and shorts.
Speaker 6: What kind of preparation do you have to do with
Speaker 6: these trends in order to get them ready to play
Speaker 6: in the projective?
Speaker 1: I mean, if they're in good shape, you probably just need,
Speaker 1: you know, an hour and a half of inspection. But
Speaker 1: if we're getting something from Quentin's collection that hasn't played
Speaker 1: in twenty years, you could be very brittle now, so
Speaker 1: you have to like reinforce splices. I know films that
Speaker 1: have taken eight hours to repair just so we can
Speaker 1: get it through the projectors. Typically, though if it's not
Speaker 1: in great shape, it might take about four hours, which
Speaker 1: is very labor intensive, trust me, not at all cost effective.
Speaker 5: So it takes a lot.
Speaker 1: To run a film only house. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many films that we've run a year, but it's what
Speaker 1: do you think, David, It's least eight hundred.
Speaker 6: Right, yeah, because I know for like three months in
Speaker 6: a row.
Speaker 7: Now we're averaging about forty features a month, man.
Speaker 6: Which means in your warehouse it must have like how
Speaker 6: many canisters.
Speaker 5: A film, like well over five thousand.
Speaker 6: The joke is the final shot of Raiders of the
Speaker 6: Lost art endless amount of film.
Speaker 1: We actually have a print traffic manager because it gets
Speaker 1: so busy and we're lucky that we're in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: that we can actually physically go to a lot of
Speaker 1: the places and pick up the film. We keep copies
Speaker 1: of all our pre shows. There's print reports for every
Speaker 1: print that's been inspected, and then we do store a
Speaker 1: lot of that online and drop box, but we keep everything.
Speaker 1: So we're a repertory cinema, so chances are it could
Speaker 1: get played again, it might be the same print. At
Speaker 1: least having the print report might cut down on some
Speaker 1: of the work.
Speaker 6: And your indition.
Speaker 7: It might be possible to do like a brief demo
Speaker 7: if that's not too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you think you could just thread something up
Speaker 1: so we can get sound bites of the sure?
Speaker 2: I guess I could throw on a pre show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Scope lens in there, changing the focus to scope.
Speaker 7: It's ready to be threaded.
Speaker 6: That we start today with giving the projectors a nice cleaning.
Speaker 6: Will we initially start off a thread to a point
Speaker 6: that's eleven feet before the first frame of image. In
Speaker 6: this case, there's a drunk driving PSA that precedes the
Speaker 6: coming attractions.
Speaker 7: Tag usually have at least eighteen feet of chad leaders,
Speaker 7: so we'll have enough to put onto the take up
Speaker 7: reel without worrying about any shortage. Perfect.
Speaker 6: So I guess I can fire up the lamp houses
Speaker 6: and then it'll be ready for showtime. Fire up the
Speaker 6: lamp house.
Speaker 4: LEAs there you go, you being sing good.
Speaker 8: Light your damn people.
Speaker 4: Get four of.
Speaker 6: The tag the for coming down the pike.
Speaker 1: Well, look who's here?
Speaker 2: When the action is too rough for one man? Send
Speaker 2: for Savano's seven. First of all, it's no ordinary cleanup job.
Speaker 1: Once we take out one of those bananas, we've got
Speaker 1: to wipe out the rest of them in thirty minutes.
Speaker 2: If we're gonna get this thing done, we're gonna get
Speaker 2: it done quick. Salvano's seven's the playmate, the black belt,
Speaker 2: the dregster, the comic, the professor, the cowboy, seven. Death
Speaker 2: is their way of life.
Speaker 4: Seven it looked and sounded good.
Speaker 8: No problem if you said no superpols.
Speaker 1: Can I say one thing, obviously if you come to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, would love everybody to visit the New Beverly
Speaker 1: and stuff. But Los Angeles in particular has the Broadway
Speaker 1: theater district that just has beautiful picture palaces from like
Speaker 1: the Orpheum the Los Angeles, the Million Dollar Theater, which
Speaker 1: is home to some of the Secret Movie Club screenings.
Speaker 1: It's just wonderful, and the Grand Central Market is down there.
Speaker 1: You can make a whole day of it. Even if
Speaker 1: you don't go on the tour. It's just nice walking
Speaker 1: up and down Broadways starting at third kind of going
Speaker 1: all the way down to ninth and just seeing the
Speaker 1: rich history and there's some amazing stuff here and in
Speaker 1: other parts of the country. And applaud everybody that's kind
Speaker 1: of keeping the movie theaters alive.
Speaker 3: This episode of Ephemeral was written and produced by Trevor Young,
Speaker 3: with producers Max and Alex Williams. Jules MacLean is the
Speaker 3: director of Operations at the New Beverly Cinema and David
Speaker 3: Chen is the lead projectionist at the New Bad, Big
Speaker 3: thanks to Quentin Tarantino for the behind the scenes pass
Speaker 3: into his theater and for all the work he does
Speaker 3: to preserve film culture. We'd love to hear from you about.
Speaker 2: Your favorite theaters.
Speaker 3: Is there a special or historic theater in your city?
Speaker 3: What do you love about the movie going experience? Let
Speaker 3: us know on social media. We're at ephemeral show and
Speaker 3: for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.