August 8, 2022 • 46 mins
Nothing beats seeing a good movie on the big screen. But in the age of online streaming, how do theaters survive and continue to stay relevant? Featuring Jules McLean, Director of Operations for the New Beverly Cinema.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Ephemeral is production of My Heart three D audio for
full exposure. Listen with that phone, open the pod bay doors. Hell.
I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. There's
(00:26):
nothing quite like seeing a good movie on the big screen.
If you've ever watched something like two one Space Odyssey
in a theater, you'll understand how visceral it can be
to experience that level of visual and auditory immersion, and
how different it is from watching at home. Theaters have
always been an important part of the film industry. In
(00:48):
the early nine hundreds, companies like Paramount and Columbia helped
to open the first picture palaces, opulent and decadent houses
for exhibiting Filmis saw a huge boom in movie going
culture as theater chains expanded the accessibility of movies across
the country. But recently, the COVID pandemic and the rise
(01:11):
of streaming services have threatened the existence of movie theaters altogether.
So now where do movie theaters fit into our modern
culture today? Producer Trevor Young walks us through the turbulene
but grand history of movie theaters and visits one special
theater in Los Angeles, which still thrives on independent cinema.
(01:38):
Last year, I had the opportunity to move to Los Angeles.
As you probably know, we're huge film nerds here on
the Ephemeral Team. In l A is a huge film town,
so I was excited to visit all the local theaters
around here. But what I wasn't expecting was just how
opulent and dense with historical meaning all of the mainstay
theaters here really are. Most of them have been around
(02:00):
for decades, some for over a century. They're full of life,
and the people in them carry a genuine love for film,
and especially coming out of COVID, it feels like all
the movie goers that these theaters agree this is a
special event. You know, you can't get from sitting at
home watching, say, a movie like The Long Goodbye with
(02:21):
Elliott Gould. Okay, Eileen, what was Party Augustine doing here
the other night? Here? From my place? I dropped by
to have a word or two with me, and I
was just curious to see who else he wanted to
talk to. A turn out to be you. You can't
get Elliott Gold sitting in the seat across the aisle
from you watching The Long Goodbye. He is literally sitting
(02:41):
three ft from me. I mean, come on, that's one
of my favorite movie going experiences. I'm like, oh my god,
it's Elliot cool. This is Jules McLean, director of operations
at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. The New BEV,
as it's often called Old, is owned by filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.
(03:03):
He bought the historic theater in two thousand seven and
has since devoted the theater to screening revival cinema. Jules
is a personal friend of Quentin and joined the New BEV,
and her job can be a little intense at the
New Beverley. Kind of a jack of all trades, but
I do oversee everything. I communicate with Quentin a lot.
(03:25):
I'm the one person that has an open line of communication. Forum.
We get programming, forum, we bounce ideas off. I'm lucky
that I have a good team in place, because you
would not imagine everything it is to run a theater.
There's booking, there's establishing relationship with filmmakers and distributors, studios,
(03:47):
film collectors because we're a film only house. There's the
day to day stuff of running a business. You need permits,
health permits, you have to like take into consideration pricing
because everything is now skyrocketing navigating through COVID waters. But
Jules says it's all worth it to her. Movie theaters
(04:08):
like the New BEV are the most valuable cultural spaces.
We have two things. One it's an escape for me
and the other thing is the communal aspect. Just this
last Saturday, went and Live and Let Die one of
our matinees. Easy Johnny, Let's get there on one piece,
Johnny Big James Bond fan here. And afterwards, you know,
(04:32):
people are buzzing, stayed in the lobby. People are staying
in the lobby for like a half an hour. Finally
we had to kind of shoot people away because we
had another show coming in. But I remember one of
our regular Sarah, we were talking. She's all like, I've
made a lot of friends standing in line at the
New Beverly. This place is magic. I don't know, you're
not going to get that experience sitting at home on
(04:54):
your couch. You've got to get out. It doesn't matter
if it's at the New Beverly another theater and st
we support independent theaters the most. But even if you
get out and you go to the bigger chain theaters.
Just get out of your house, go to the movie,
see it with an audience. Oh my gosh, Live and
let Die wonderful action pack, but also had this moments
(05:14):
of comedy and just being in a theater, a pack theater,
and sharing laughter with somebody's It really is Sarah's raight
is magical. Jules told me that the New Bets reminded
her of the kind of theater she used to go
to growing up. When I was I'm gonna stay five,
but I think I was actually six. My mom took
me to Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kids in
(05:38):
the Wall Gang Cases holding the Wall Gang. That's me too,
Bank of over Close. Do you do your planning for you?
To do your thinking for you? You You want him to
run things and shut up now news, well not yet
till I get the good part and before y'all be
judge everyone. I really wanted to see Butch Cassidy and
the Sun Dance Kids. She just didn't pick that out
(05:59):
of the blue. The next movie was The Great Gatsby,
and I think I was seven, and I wasn't very
into it. You won't too much. I love you now,
isn't that enough. I can't help what's past. I did
love him once, but I loved you too, and then
we stood in line for like Star Wars, like my
(06:19):
mom rocked, as far as like movies go, and that
just really formed my sensibilities. That's a movie going experience.
I just I mean, decades later, I remember that I
take my nieces to the theater. I mean, I just
hope people continue to go out to the movies. One
unique thing about the New Beverlea is that they only
(06:41):
show film, meaning actual analog reels and no digital film whatsoever.
It's not easy, but we know a lot of collectors,
a lot of the studios, in fact, the majority of
them have opened up their repertory. They do lend out
prints a lot of times. There's costs involve old than
that in the shipping aspect. Sometimes the archives are local
(07:03):
and we can go pick them up. And luckily we
actually went back through all our programming and one of
the reasons Clinton got the theater in the first place
is that he has a very large film print collection.
Over half the titles that we play come from his collection.
So that's a way for him to share it with audiences.
Because actually we had to do that for like tax
(07:24):
purposes too. It's like, oh no, no, no, he really
does play his prints at that theater. But it's not
just an arbitrary choice. The new bev uses real film
for a reason. Seeing actual film, they've done studies, and
I forget if it was Harvard or Yale. But the
brain's reaction to twenty four frames per second, you have
(07:46):
a different emotional connection. Digital very flat, offers a different texture.
Your brain takes it in differently, you have a different
emotional reaction. I mean that's a big part of what's
different now days two because it's all digital projection and
this and that. Which, by the way, I'll still go
to see digital films. I'm not poop pooing them. I
(08:07):
have a choice, darn right. Like I waited forever to
see Nightmare Ali because I know we were going to
show it and I wanted to see it on film.
Oh I see an older man. Oh the boy hates him.
Oh the boy would love to be loved, but he
hates that man. Death. Death, and I wish you to death.
(08:34):
As you can tell, Jules has a deep love for
all things cinema, and she's very attuned to the vast
history of theaters in l A and across the country,
So we thought she'd be the perfect person to help
us learn a little bit more about theaters, or as
they were originally called, picture palaces the nineteen tens the
nineteen twenties, A lot of the older theaters were actually
(08:57):
live performances converted to a movie theater once the talkies
came about. Early film studios like Paramount or Warner Brothers
were deeply involved in the movie palaces. They were, of course,
the only venues for their product. Once they got a
little bit of his success in the studios operated a
lot of them. They just kept getting bigger seating like
(09:19):
undred three thousand downtown Los Angeles, wonderful, like two mile
stretch of just like picture palace after picture palace after
picture palace. One thing most people either forget about or
don't realize is that there was a whole show before
the film. Back then you have the news ads, a
(09:40):
cartoon or short film, television highlights of the news of
yesterday years. That's something you might also see at the
New Beverley. Cartoons were a big draw in the thirties.
Cereals those were a big draw in package cereals and
cartoons and maybe a comedy short, and that's their entertainment
(10:01):
for the weekend. I go on private forums and stuff
like that, and I'm always looking for cool things because
we will play newsreels from the thirties, the forties, the
fifties and Gary Indiana struck Mills, Idle behind picket lines
composed of women. Cartoons were big on cartoons. When Quentin
(10:24):
took it over, he really wanted to kind of mimic
what happened in the past, which was you would play
like a tag, a little like kind of commercial or
something cool for like Coca Cola. Let's all go to
the lobby. Let's all go to the lobby. Let's all
go to the lobby to get ourselves are treat. Then
(10:47):
you would play like a short, you know, Three Stooges shorter,
you know, Bugs Bunny cartoon, and then it's like trailers
and trailers for either up and coming films or trailers
that thematically fit what you're showing that night, and then
you go into the actual feature. And that's what they
did that then it was a different movie going experience.
I know, you get the trailers when you go and
(11:09):
see your first run films and stuff, but you know,
it's not quite the same. One other interesting thing is
that most theaters did not have concessions back then. I
don't know how they survived. I forget what decade concessions
came into, but can you imagine going to the movies
and not having concessions. Now as an exhibitor, I'm like,
(11:29):
ohh gosh, we would not be in business if we
had to close our concessions. I have to have my popcorn.
But by far the most striking feature of the old
picture palaces was the architecture. Stunning, absolutely stunning. I can
tell you that a lot of thought went into them.
You can tell by the little decorations, very ornate, very thematic.
(11:53):
You had two theaters in Los Angeles that had an
Egyptian theme, and they were two different architects. You know,
you see Middle Eastern themes. You just see a lot
of Art Deco themes. I would love to go back
in time and just kind of sit in on some
of the planning and what people thought. But again, studios
rehind a lot of the big picture palaces so they
could throw a lot of money into them, and they
(12:15):
wanted to appeal to a wider class of people. They
did want the theaters to reflect that. I asked Jules
to mention a few examples and to tell us what
her favorites are. Believe it or not, Radio City Music Hall,
which does not show film anymore. I don't think the
Music Box in Chicago. There's you know, a handful that
(12:38):
are still around. In downtown Los Angeles. A secret movie
club is out of the million Dollar Theater in downtown
Los Angeles. And then there's other venues that are open.
We've had premieres of Quentin's films that a couple of
the theaters. I really like the Metrograph in New York.
I love the Bell Court in Nashville. You know. I
(12:58):
was a big fan of the a Rama Dome and
even the arc Like Complex in general because I thought
they had, you know, really nice big theaters. I do
like when I travel, I'd like to see the independent
movie theaters. I'd like to experience them. I'll tell you
a wonderful one is the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Oregon. Amazing, gorgeous,
(13:19):
wonderful programming. I got a little tour and everything. There's
fun little basement hang out, you know, and I get
kind of jealous of theaters like the Hollywood because they
has so much room and can do so much and
the guy that runs in, oh, here's two free drink tickets.
I'm like, oh wow. It's like, yeah, we're gonna get
drink tickets at the New Beverley. We don't even serve
(13:40):
alcohol and stuff. So I did a little little jealous,
But I mean, theaters are just wonderful and they're in
every town and it's hey, their magic. Jules says that
back in the day going to the movie theater was
a big deal throughout the country. I think they were packed.
That was your night out. You're getting dressed up to
(14:02):
go to these places. Now part of it, Yeah, you
want to be seen dressed up, drive a car there.
Maybe it was the equivalent to when we go to
maybe to the Pantageous in Los Angeles to go see
Hamilton's or something, or if you go to Broadway you
would have more like the Douglas Fairbanks action, you know, buccaneers.
I also think a lot of the comedies you have
(14:23):
the Harold Lloyd's Maxin and comedies, and I think a
lot of like shorter films that I just they're lost now,
even if they were found, is there an audience worm?
I don't know so. Because the studios largely funded the
movie palaces back then, the theaters were a lot more
strict about what they could or couldn't play. I know,
(14:45):
there wasn't a lot of like cross pollen nations. So
if it was, you know, a Warner Brothers theater, they
only played Warner pictures. There are studios that didn't have theaters,
and I think it was a tougher time for them
to get in into some of them established studio owned.
But I mean that broke up and I think that
(15:06):
was probably good. There's certainly were I mean, studios were
cranking it out in the heydays, forties, fifties. Absolutely, if
they made money, they were going to produce them. Some
not so great that you can say that for today's
films too. The New Beverly did not yet exist by
this point, so it's not technically a picture palace, but
(15:27):
its history is interesting nonetheless. Yeah, New Beverly is built
in twenty nine, so it was originally I believe a
candy store. Then somebody sold wine out of it, and
it eventually became Slapsie Maxi's, which was a live club
a nineteen fifty it became a movie theater and there's
(15:48):
been one ever since. But it's had so many iterations
in so many different names, it's kind of crazy. It
was even split into a twin theater called the Riviera Capri. Crazy.
I can't imagine it now because I still think it's
a little small. It was the Arrows, the Rivierica pried
that Beverley, the New Yorker. It's an adult theater, as
(16:11):
we all know, kind of referenced in Once upon a
Time in Hollywood, what's going on at the Dirty Movie Place?
People are having open here dirty movies have from news.
Yeah they're fun, which is really cool. If you watched
Once upon a Time in Hollywood at the New Beverley,
you got that in joke. Been home to a lot
of different theaters and made many people happy. She says.
(16:35):
Theaters like this started to become more common in the fifties.
Instead of the grand picture palaces, now we were getting
more small, single screen theaters. They popped up because people
are moving to the suburbs. You know, you can build
a giant picture palace their neighborhood theaters. So I think
they served their neighborhoods. But soon big companies would take
(16:58):
notice of the success of movie theaters and they would
create the franchises we know today chains that all but
doomed the independent theaters of the last century. These days
(17:20):
the most common movie theaters are the chains, AMC, Cinemark,
Regal and so on. But before these, in the early days,
the studios themselves were the franchises. They were up during
the picture palaces. You had your rolls and your warners
and stuff, so you saw them. But when the studios
were told that they couldn't be exhibitors, there were opportunities
(17:43):
for corporations, probably sixties that they really started getting going.
Seventies probably their heydays seventies and eighties, and then the
slide began. Unfortunately, theater chains radically shifted the movie business
in the eighties. Now you have these big buildings with
a dozen or more screens showing every available movie, usually
(18:05):
more than once a day. While Jules prefers the older
art house single screen theaters, she understands why these types
of theaters became popular. There's your economic aspect as an exhibitor,
where you're not saddled if a movie bombs you open
it in your big three hundred seat theater and it bombs.
You move it over to the fifty theater and you
(18:28):
can put something in where you will make money. As
far as the movie going experience, it's just like now,
it's a lot of options. I want to go see
the two ten show of so and so, but I
missed it. But look at two thirty, I can make this,
so it's not a complete wash. I don't have to
get back in my car. I don't have to kill
two hours to the next showing. As a teenager or
(18:50):
as a young college person, multiplexes were great because you
could see uh, two or three movies a day and
only pay once. But Jule says we lost a lot
of value when we transitioned away from the neighborhood theaters.
There's more things like textually, if you go to the Vista,
you have the manager that has worked there for decades, Victor,
(19:13):
and he'll greet you and you have interactions and you
can you know it's your neighborhood theater. I live in
that neighborhood, so I always run into friends there. But
you don't have that kind of interaction at an AMC.
And it's so big and you don't like stand in
a lobby and talk about the film afterwards. You don't
like meet people and say, hey, let's go get coffee
(19:35):
over here and talk about the film. You go, you
see the movie. It's great, you know what you're getting,
and you go home. Go someplace like New Beverley, you
know the vista, the arrow, Low Spels three. This is
a different experience. It's more of a movie going experience.
I don't know if I can put my finger quite
(19:57):
on it, but it just isn't a little bit more
st earl at an AMC, shall we say. Of course,
the biggest impact of the chain theaters was the eventual
closure of indie theaters. For the older single screen theaters
and picture palaces, companies like AMC signaled near certain death.
I don't know how a single screen theater makes it.
(20:20):
I have zero idea. We've come close to closing several times,
despite Quentin Tarantino being the overall owner. That doesn't mean
he has to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
You know, the American cinema tech is that the Low
Spiels three. I don't know if they have all three screens,
but I think they have like two of them. At
(20:41):
least that gives you an opportunity to make your programming
a little bit and unlike diverse or something, but you
can fall back onto something and gives you a little
bit more flexibility where if we put a dog in there,
it's bad for us, you know, it's can't really overcome that.
Now we have to try to think like, okay, what
(21:02):
can we do to make up like we're losing five
thou dollars by showing this one movie, you know, Friday, Saturday,
Sunday and just twelve people here. But this is bad.
It doesn't matter. We still have to pay the studios
their licensing fee. Now we're paying employees not to serve
you popcorn or sell you tickets or monitor the show.
(21:24):
I do not know how single screen theaters exist well.
Jules is thankful that the new BEV is surviving. She
says running a single screen theater is both complicated and
difficult in ways that chain theaters don't have to worry about.
Well be corporations. Obviously, you can like move your money
around at this theater location. B you don't take a loss,
(21:46):
and it's different. No place to hide for the single
screen theater. I'll tell you that. Much like in two
thousand fourteen when we took over the new Beverley to
pick up our trash, it was like a dred and
eighty six dollars now five and thirty four dollars. Yes,
we do have to raise our ticket prices occasionally, and
(22:06):
it's everything. It's clockwork. There's a certain vendor that sends
a notice at the beginning of the year, a big vendor,
we need to raise their prices three. I'm like, oh
my gosh, but I don't pass that along to our patrons.
I know other theaters don't do that either. Part of
the movie going experiences feeling like you're not being gouged.
(22:29):
I go to a lot of theaters and I take
pictures of their concession things, and I'm like, how in
the world is this big theater? I will leave out
a name charging four seventy five for a small bottle
of water. It's like wow. The next big blow to
small theaters was television. I think it was pretty damning
(22:54):
to theater going well. I mean, all of a sudden,
it was almost like a novelty, almost like Wow, you
got this little screen and you can just like you
can watch the how do you do they show? Oh
my gosh, you can like you can bring your meal
and put it on a tray and you can watch
from your home home. I don't think it was anything
(23:14):
with economics, but I think it was just like, Wow,
we've got like a screen in our home. Now it's
a little litiger than the movie screen, but there's always
something on and oh wow, they're showing a John Wayne movie. Wow.
And theaters had to overcome that, and they did, and
then came streaming things like Netflix and Hulu. I asked
(23:37):
Jules how the New Beverley survived the streaming era. Definitely,
attendance took a hit at the New Beverley. We didn't
come intil two thousand fourteen. But the dynamics of movie
exhibition have changed. But I think at least we've reached
a point now where it's harmonious. Jule says streaming is
(23:58):
probably her least favorite way to watch a movie. She
says that at theaters there's a kind of community you
just don't get by flipping through Amazon Prime. It's so
nice when people come to the New Beverly, Like I'll
tell you that the family matinee. We were playing Disney's
The Barefoot Executive. I'm not interested in yet theories on ratings,
(24:18):
and I'm certainly are not interested in doing a show
called Abraham Lincoln's Doctor's Dog, whatever that is. And it
was directed by Robert Butler. He brought his grandchildren. Now
the grandchildren get to see it on the big screen.
They get to see the audience laughing. They get to
see people coming up to their grandfather Robert Butler afterwards
(24:40):
and saying, oh man, that was so cool, and that's
so cool that you came out taking pictures by the
one sheets and everything like. You don't get that experience
at home. And that's actually one of the things I'm
most proud about the new Beverly is that that we
offer people that experience and you don't have to be
Robert Butler and his family to recognize if you were
(25:02):
at that screening how important that is and how special
that is. Like I was just working the box office
and it's like, that's pretty darn cool. You're not going
to get that watching the movie on Netflix. But clearly
streaming isn't going anywhere. So this begs the question can
theaters and streaming services live harmoniously. I don't know if
(25:25):
I ever see that they exist equally harmoniously. I think
you're saying that now. I mean, we have a wonderful
relationship with say Netflix. Netflix took over the Egyptian Theater,
so they will be showing their films there. There's a
merger of theater and streaming, and I remember Netflix at
(25:47):
one point was very resistant, but they saw the potential,
they saw a wider audience. They saw that Hey, Academy Awards,
you know, we get some of our films nominated, We
win some Obscars. Pretty darn cool. Luckily, there has been
a movement in recent years to preserve the history rich
spaces like picture palaces and single screen theaters. Quentin Tarantino,
(26:11):
of course saved the New Beverly from extinction, as well
as the Vista Theater, also in Los Angeles. But finally,
other filmmakers are also starting to step up. There's certainly
the Paul Thomas Anderson's and the Christofferent Nolan's. I don't
think they have a foundation or do anything, but just
by you know, making film and insisting that you know
(26:32):
it gets at theatrical run. That's important. Playing Paul Thomas
Anderson's licorice pizza was amazing. Do you know who I am? Yeah?
Do you know who my girlfriend is? Ubisien arb strate
sand sand like sands, like the ocean, like sand, straight
sand sand. He brings his children to the New Beverly,
(26:56):
to the family matinees amazing. That little bit of support
he pays. There's some people are like, Okay, I get him,
freem like, oh no, why do you work here? Because
that's the perk of working here. Otherwise, please support us,
your friend of Quentin's. No, he wants you to pay.
He wants you to support theaters. But in order to survive,
(27:20):
small theaters need to be creative, and the New Beverly
is a great example. We took over the New Beverley,
there wasn't much of a social media presence, but that
was something identified very quickly and that we needed somebody,
and my social media manager, Phil Blanketship, came on board,
and I think that has helped immensely. We would not
(27:42):
be where we're at today without a social media presence,
and honestly, a lot of it starts with community too.
You can cultivate a good film community. We have regulars
and so do other theaters because I go to them
that will stand in line for like two or three
hours before the show just to get their favorite seat
or just to catch up with their friends. And you
(28:04):
gotta make it a movie going experience, going back to
affordable concessions, affordable ticket prices, good value for your screen.
I love that Quentin put in pre shows. Now folks
are like, oh, what cartoon are you showing? Or what shorter?
I like to write down the trailers, but what was
the second trailer that you played? You get people excited
(28:28):
to see the movie and and you know that it's quality.
Like we remodeled in two thousand eighteen, and when we
did that, we did some very simple upgrades. Speakers in
the bathroom. I have never seen people go gaga over
speakers in the bathroom, but you look at our social
media and like taut speakers in the bathroom. Yeah, it's
(28:48):
a no brainer. Gotta go get up he's restroom. You're
missing the visual aspect, but you can still kind of
hear what's going on, so you feel like you haven't
missed everything. I mean, just have to keep looking at
different ways to get people engaged. Jewel says that over time,
the new Beverly became a trusted venue for cinephiles all
(29:10):
across southern California. What's really cool is when we took
over in two thousand and fourteen, Quentin did the majority
of the programming, and we just developed an audience, like
a trust between Quentin the programmer and the audience, Like
you might not have heard this film, but I'm not
(29:30):
going to play it if it's not good. You're going
to get something out of that film. I love seeing
black and white movies at the New Beverly. I think
the New Beverley was built to play black and white movies,
and I just love that we continue to find black
and white movies to play that maybe we haven't shown before,
(29:51):
and that audiences are willing to take a chance on.
As you can imagine, the COVID pandemic had a huge
impact on theaters, especially on small theaters like the New BEV.
But once they were able to pull through, it became
obvious that people were craving the in person movie going experience.
For better or worse, the pandemic reminded us that's sitting
(30:13):
at home isn't always the ideal way to watch a movie.
At the end of the day. We're all human and
we need human interaction. You can only sit at home
with in front of your TV or computer screen for
so long. Movie theater lets you have that interaction, even
if you're not friends with somebody. I remember when I
went to the Arc Light and I saw Girls Trip.
(30:34):
It was me and one other person. We were dying
in that film, laughing out loud. And then afterwards, you know,
talk to a few minutes, were like, oh, that was crazy,
and he said like, I'm so glad you're in the
theater and I wasn't the only one laughing alone, and like,
I know, it was so cool to hear you laughing
(30:55):
and just having that experience. It wasn't the full theater
everybody laughing out, but we had that moment. That moment
I still remember years later. You think, I get that
experience at home maybe if you have your friends over
and you're watching a movie, and great, it's a good
time and stuff, but it's no, it's not the same
as going out. It's not the same as interacting interacting
(31:16):
with strangers where you have this one common thing together.
And I'll go back to that story of the New
Bever regular Sarah. It's like she's made friends there. We've
all made friends at the New Beverly. We're going to
take a quick break, but when we come back, we're
going to take a tour of the New Beverly and
we'll see, or rather here the ins and outs of
(31:38):
running analog film on a projector. Jules McLean, director of
operations for the New Beverly Cinema, was kind enough to
offer me a tour of the theater. We walked through
the lobby, the auditorium, and I got the special experience
(32:00):
seeing the projection room. So we're in the lobby of
the New Beverly Cinema right now. And when Quentin took
over the business part of the cinema, we made a
few changes but kept a lot of stuff intact. One
of the big things that really made the lobby what
it is today, not that it's it's a tiny lobby,
(32:22):
but there was a small wall partition by the women's room,
and we were probably a week away from opening and
finishing construction, and Quentin came in and he's all, like,
do we really need this wall? And luckily the contractor
happened to be right there too. He's all, it's not
a load bearing wall and we can get rid of it.
The next day we got rid of it, um and
(32:44):
it just a opened up the lobby. But really what
Quentin wanted to do with the wall being gone it
it opened up wall space. So we can now have
large oversized frames that we put French two panels in,
an Italian UM oversized posters in and that's that's actually
(33:04):
two of the biggest things that I like that Quentin
did was not only removing the partition, but saying, hey,
I want oversized frames in and I want the frames
changed out every you know, three or four days or
whatever we do to to advertise a movie. He has
a lovely UM poster collection, so we utilize a lot
(33:25):
of that and over the years we've amassed a nice
collection UM. So it's nice and people love taking pictures
in front of it and stuff like that. So what else.
It's the original box office. We still have the original
ticket tape puncher that the Torgans had and uh, you know,
we have gone to an online type of ticketing service. However,
(33:50):
we still kind of punch out the old tickets and
you know, they almost look like carnival tickets, but they
seeing you Beverly on them, and it's kind of cool.
I always like seeing you know, people like post them.
You pictures of them on social media and by the
marquis and stuff. And you know the concession stand. It's
small but mighty. Uh, we pack a lot in there.
(34:11):
Great ideas is that when we showed Um Oakcha the
Netflix film, we um because it's very you know, animal rights,
we brought in vegan dogs for that and we called
them dogs. They sold so well we've kept them to
this day. So again, always looking for interesting things. And
I love the posters, just the one sheet posters. Some
(34:32):
of the artwork on the posters gorgeous. They don't make
them like they used to. Is very true. I mean,
look at that gold Finger poster keep saying I love it.
One thing we did when Once upon a Time in
Hollywood opened is we decked out the lobby and a
lot of the props, which you will still see to
this day. We didn't take them down. Make Love not
(34:52):
War signs over there, clo drives above the women's room,
and on the box office. We had only candy that
would have been sold in nineteen sixty nine, only bottled
Solda that would have been sold in nineteen sixty nine.
We did like fun stuff like candy, cigarettes and everything.
We had walk in music that was you know, very
(35:15):
specific to you know K h J that was playing
in the film, but it was actually, you know, an
on air broadcast. So now we're in the auditorium of
the new Beverly we see two in two thousand eighteen.
We had to completely gut everything. What was nice about
(35:35):
the remodel was that we were able to do some
really small things that I think just made the theater
even more special. People don't know what we did because
you can't see it, but we did new curtains, but
we kept the same color scheme. So we have big
blue panel of curtains right here and on the side curtains,
(35:57):
and then we have a little strip of red. Well
that was reversed. It was big panels of red, little
strips of um blue. But underneath it, now we have
acoustic material, so it really makes the sound oh special.
Another thing that helped us because we had to like
tear down the roof. Now we have acoustic paneling in
(36:17):
the roof. Honestly, I'm going to brag here, it's some
of the best sound in Los Angeles. I was watching
I'll use Quentin's movie again because it's his theater once
upon a time in Hollywood, and my manager Brian Quinn,
had the same experience. We both saw the film other places,
but during the Musso and Frank scene, like you could hear,
(36:37):
you know, the tables talk and everything so much so
that both of us at one point or another turned
around and looked like, who's talking in the theater? Oh, no,
one's talking. That's the that's the background noise of Musso
and Frank's. Oh our sound is good. You don't get
that at every theater, because I've watched Quentin's movie at
other theaters and I did not have that experience. Hands so,
(37:01):
the seats, you know, they're not the greatest seats in
the world. They're not the worst seats in the world.
I don't know if we'll ever change then maybe, but
I just feel that we would lose some seating capacity
if we we went to some newer seats, and we
certainly wouldn't go into any seats that recline or anything
like that. That's not us. That's for another theater. Things
(37:22):
that Quinton did is he wanted again oversized posters as
you exit so you can see we've got two of them.
We have one Nebraska Gym, which is a fake movie
in Quentin's film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and
then we have Richard Gears Breathless. We can go upstairs
to the booze coming up. Gentlemen. Well you're in sacred
(37:49):
territory now here. It is in all its glory to you. Right.
We have a wall of trailers, thirty millimeter trailers we
use in our pre shows. The first feature always has
a cartoon or a short, and then followed by trailers
the either thematic that they tie into the feature you're
about to see or their up and coming. They also
(38:12):
have like intermission tags or adverts from England. I mean
we've got thousand of them. But you'll see that in
the show too. It's like, oh Dr Pepper and Martian
snap Bar whatever, you know, just a little bumper and
then it'll go into the cartoon or the trailers. And
we have our Simplex XL projectors. They're dual projectors. We
(38:35):
have no platter system. At the New Beverly. When Quentin
took over and put me in charge, they kept telling
me like we had a periscope system, so the light
would hit a mirror and then hit another mirror and
then be shot onto the screen. It wasn't a crisp image.
So I'm like, there's got to be away. So I
pulled Quentin's personal projectionist, Jeff no Wicky. He got his
(38:59):
friend over here who used to work for Fox, and
you've got to chop off the base. You can chop
off the base and then you'll have a straight shot
to the screen and lo and behold the image improved
it was. I guess it's a little hard for the
projectionist because they have to stoop down. That's why you
see the chairs very low, but it is absolutely worth it. David,
(39:25):
this is our chief projectionist, David Chan, So if they'll
explain a little bit how that works much better than
I could. Yeah, we start off with the reel up here,
and then we thread down towards the take up as
it passes through different rollers. You'll notice straightaway that the
potentially the first section it'll pass through is the Dolby
Digital reader. The SRD track would be read through this component,
(39:50):
but if it's an older print and only has one
channel or standard stereo sound, we would bypass that entirely,
and it would just go down through here and to
the gates where obviously light passes through and into the lens.
Then it goes down further to the sound head. What's
notable about that, and when I think most people are
surprised to learn, is that if you're looking at a
frame of film on thirty five, the sound for that
(40:12):
frame is twenty frames ahead of it. So, for example,
you have an image that's starting here. If you were
to run film and have it pause, if you were
to catch that instance, the sound for that image is
already passing through twenty frames later down here into the
sound head. It continues from there to these other two
rollers and then down into take up. We use two
(40:32):
thousand foot reels, which means that we can really like
truly handle prints in the safest way. I'm gonna actually
remove this anyways, but we can unscrew this, and then
we have a multitude of lenses. You can see here
this is our one three seven lens, which is common
for older Hollywood aspect ratio or our cartoons that were
able to run for our pre shows. We could do scope,
(40:53):
we could do one five, we could do the European
one six it opens it up so we can play
a good variety of movies and shorts. What kind of
preparation do you have to do with these friends in
order to get them ready to play in the projective?
I mean, if they're in good shape, you probably just
need you know, an hour hour and a half of inspection.
But if we're getting something from Quentin's collection that hasn't
(41:14):
played in twenty years, you could be very brittle now,
so you have to like reinforce splices. I know films
that have taken eight hours to repair just so we
can get it through the projectors. Typically, though if it's
not in great shape, it might take about four hours,
which is very labor intensive, trust me, not at all
(41:34):
cost effective. So it takes a lot to run a
film only house. I don't know how many films that
we run a year, but it's what do you think,
David's at least eight hundred, right, yeah, because I hope
for three months in a row. Now you're averaging about
forty features a month, which means in your warehouse has
(41:56):
to have like how many canicers of film well over five.
The joke is the final shot of Raiders of the
Lost arm We actually have a print traffic manager because
it gets so busy, and we're lucky that we're in
Los Angeles that we can actually physically go to a
lot of the places and pick up the film. We
(42:19):
keep copies of all our pre shows. There's print reports
for every print that's been inspected. Now we do store
a lot of that online and dropbox, but we keep
everything so we're a repertory cinema, so chances are it
could get played again, it might be the same print.
At least having the print report might cut down on
some of the work. Um and you invention, it might
(42:42):
be possible to do like a breach demo. If that's
not too much fun, do you think you could just
spread something up so we can get sound bites of
the Sure, yeah, it'd be great. Scope lens and there
changing the focus to scope up. It's ready to be threaded.
(43:02):
When we start today with giving the projectors a nice cleaning.
When we initially start off with a threat to a
point that's eleven feet before the first frame of image.
In this case, there's a drunk driving p s A
that precedes the coming attractions. Tag usually have at least
(43:25):
eighteen sheets of head leaders so we'll have enough to
put onto the take up reel without worrying about any shortage. Perfect.
So I guess I can fire up the lamp houses
and then it'll be ready for a showtime. There you go.
(43:48):
Thanks freaking good light. Yet floor a tag pert coming
down the five? Well, look who's here? When the action
(44:08):
is too rough for one man? Send for Savano's seven.
First of all, it's no ordinary cleanup job. Once we
take out one of those bananas, we gotta wipe out
the rest of them in thirty minutes. We're gonna get
(44:33):
this thing done. We're gonna get it done quick. Savano's seven.
The playmate, the black belt, the dragster, the comic, the professor,
the cowboy. Seven. Death is their way of life. Seven
(45:00):
m looked and sounded good. No problem. Can I say
one thing, um, Obviously, if you come to Los Angeles,
would love everybody to visit the New Beverly and stuff.
But Los Angeles in particular has the Broadway theater district
(45:20):
that just has beautiful picture palaces from like the Orpheum,
the Los Angeles, the Million Dollar Theater, which is home
to some of the secret Movie Club screenings. It's just
wonderful and and the Grand Central Market is down there.
You can make a whole day of it. Even if
you don't go on the tour. It's just nice walking
(45:41):
up and down Broadway starting at third, kind of going
all the way down to ninth and just seeing the
rich history. And there's some amazing stuff here and in
other parts of the country. And applaud everybody that's kind
of keeping the movie theaters alive. This episode of Ephemeral
was written and produced by Trevor Young, with producers Max
(46:03):
and Alex Williams. Jules McLean is the director of Operations
at the New Beverly Cinema and David Chen is the
lead projectionist at the New bed Big. Thanks to Quentin
Tarantino for the behind the scenes passed into his theater
and for all the work he does to preserve film culture.
We'd love to hear from you about your favorite theaters.
(46:25):
Is there a special or historic theater in your city?
What do you love about the movie going experience? Let
us know on social media. We're at Ephemeral Show and
for more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite show,
Ephemeral is production of My Heart three D audio for
full exposure. Listen with that phone, open the pod bay doors. Hell.
I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. There's
(00:26):
nothing quite like seeing a good movie on the big screen.
If you've ever watched something like two one Space Odyssey
in a theater, you'll understand how visceral it can be
to experience that level of visual and auditory immersion, and
how different it is from watching at home. Theaters have
always been an important part of the film industry. In
(00:48):
the early nine hundreds, companies like Paramount and Columbia helped
to open the first picture palaces, opulent and decadent houses
for exhibiting Filmis saw a huge boom in movie going
culture as theater chains expanded the accessibility of movies across
the country. But recently, the COVID pandemic and the rise
(01:11):
of streaming services have threatened the existence of movie theaters altogether.
So now where do movie theaters fit into our modern
culture today? Producer Trevor Young walks us through the turbulene
but grand history of movie theaters and visits one special
theater in Los Angeles, which still thrives on independent cinema.
(01:38):
Last year, I had the opportunity to move to Los Angeles.
As you probably know, we're huge film nerds here on
the Ephemeral Team. In l A is a huge film town,
so I was excited to visit all the local theaters
around here. But what I wasn't expecting was just how
opulent and dense with historical meaning all of the mainstay
theaters here really are. Most of them have been around
(02:00):
for decades, some for over a century. They're full of life,
and the people in them carry a genuine love for film,
and especially coming out of COVID, it feels like all
the movie goers that these theaters agree this is a
special event. You know, you can't get from sitting at
home watching, say, a movie like The Long Goodbye with
(02:21):
Elliott Gould. Okay, Eileen, what was Party Augustine doing here
the other night? Here? From my place? I dropped by
to have a word or two with me, and I
was just curious to see who else he wanted to
talk to. A turn out to be you. You can't
get Elliott Gold sitting in the seat across the aisle
from you watching The Long Goodbye. He is literally sitting
(02:41):
three ft from me. I mean, come on, that's one
of my favorite movie going experiences. I'm like, oh my god,
it's Elliot cool. This is Jules McLean, director of operations
at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. The New BEV,
as it's often called Old, is owned by filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.
(03:03):
He bought the historic theater in two thousand seven and
has since devoted the theater to screening revival cinema. Jules
is a personal friend of Quentin and joined the New BEV,
and her job can be a little intense at the
New Beverley. Kind of a jack of all trades, but
I do oversee everything. I communicate with Quentin a lot.
(03:25):
I'm the one person that has an open line of communication. Forum.
We get programming, forum, we bounce ideas off. I'm lucky
that I have a good team in place, because you
would not imagine everything it is to run a theater.
There's booking, there's establishing relationship with filmmakers and distributors, studios,
(03:47):
film collectors because we're a film only house. There's the
day to day stuff of running a business. You need permits,
health permits, you have to like take into consideration pricing
because everything is now skyrocketing navigating through COVID waters. But
Jules says it's all worth it to her. Movie theaters
(04:08):
like the New BEV are the most valuable cultural spaces.
We have two things. One it's an escape for me
and the other thing is the communal aspect. Just this
last Saturday, went and Live and Let Die one of
our matinees. Easy Johnny, Let's get there on one piece,
Johnny Big James Bond fan here. And afterwards, you know,
(04:32):
people are buzzing, stayed in the lobby. People are staying
in the lobby for like a half an hour. Finally
we had to kind of shoot people away because we
had another show coming in. But I remember one of
our regular Sarah, we were talking. She's all like, I've
made a lot of friends standing in line at the
New Beverly. This place is magic. I don't know, you're
not going to get that experience sitting at home on
(04:54):
your couch. You've got to get out. It doesn't matter
if it's at the New Beverly another theater and st
we support independent theaters the most. But even if you
get out and you go to the bigger chain theaters.
Just get out of your house, go to the movie,
see it with an audience. Oh my gosh, Live and
let Die wonderful action pack, but also had this moments
(05:14):
of comedy and just being in a theater, a pack theater,
and sharing laughter with somebody's It really is Sarah's raight
is magical. Jules told me that the New Bets reminded
her of the kind of theater she used to go
to growing up. When I was I'm gonna stay five,
but I think I was actually six. My mom took
me to Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kids in
(05:38):
the Wall Gang Cases holding the Wall Gang. That's me too,
Bank of over Close. Do you do your planning for you?
To do your thinking for you? You You want him to
run things and shut up now news, well not yet
till I get the good part and before y'all be
judge everyone. I really wanted to see Butch Cassidy and
the Sun Dance Kids. She just didn't pick that out
(05:59):
of the blue. The next movie was The Great Gatsby,
and I think I was seven, and I wasn't very
into it. You won't too much. I love you now,
isn't that enough. I can't help what's past. I did
love him once, but I loved you too, and then
we stood in line for like Star Wars, like my
(06:19):
mom rocked, as far as like movies go, and that
just really formed my sensibilities. That's a movie going experience.
I just I mean, decades later, I remember that I
take my nieces to the theater. I mean, I just
hope people continue to go out to the movies. One
unique thing about the New Beverlea is that they only
(06:41):
show film, meaning actual analog reels and no digital film whatsoever.
It's not easy, but we know a lot of collectors,
a lot of the studios, in fact, the majority of
them have opened up their repertory. They do lend out
prints a lot of times. There's costs involve old than
that in the shipping aspect. Sometimes the archives are local
(07:03):
and we can go pick them up. And luckily we
actually went back through all our programming and one of
the reasons Clinton got the theater in the first place
is that he has a very large film print collection.
Over half the titles that we play come from his collection.
So that's a way for him to share it with audiences.
Because actually we had to do that for like tax
(07:24):
purposes too. It's like, oh no, no, no, he really
does play his prints at that theater. But it's not
just an arbitrary choice. The new bev uses real film
for a reason. Seeing actual film, they've done studies, and
I forget if it was Harvard or Yale. But the
brain's reaction to twenty four frames per second, you have
(07:46):
a different emotional connection. Digital very flat, offers a different texture.
Your brain takes it in differently, you have a different
emotional reaction. I mean that's a big part of what's
different now days two because it's all digital projection and
this and that. Which, by the way, I'll still go
to see digital films. I'm not poop pooing them. I
(08:07):
have a choice, darn right. Like I waited forever to
see Nightmare Ali because I know we were going to
show it and I wanted to see it on film.
Oh I see an older man. Oh the boy hates him.
Oh the boy would love to be loved, but he
hates that man. Death. Death, and I wish you to death.
(08:34):
As you can tell, Jules has a deep love for
all things cinema, and she's very attuned to the vast
history of theaters in l A and across the country,
So we thought she'd be the perfect person to help
us learn a little bit more about theaters, or as
they were originally called, picture palaces the nineteen tens the
nineteen twenties, A lot of the older theaters were actually
(08:57):
live performances converted to a movie theater once the talkies
came about. Early film studios like Paramount or Warner Brothers
were deeply involved in the movie palaces. They were, of course,
the only venues for their product. Once they got a
little bit of his success in the studios operated a
lot of them. They just kept getting bigger seating like
(09:19):
undred three thousand downtown Los Angeles, wonderful, like two mile
stretch of just like picture palace after picture palace after
picture palace. One thing most people either forget about or
don't realize is that there was a whole show before
the film. Back then you have the news ads, a
(09:40):
cartoon or short film, television highlights of the news of
yesterday years. That's something you might also see at the
New Beverley. Cartoons were a big draw in the thirties.
Cereals those were a big draw in package cereals and
cartoons and maybe a comedy short, and that's their entertainment
(10:01):
for the weekend. I go on private forums and stuff
like that, and I'm always looking for cool things because
we will play newsreels from the thirties, the forties, the
fifties and Gary Indiana struck Mills, Idle behind picket lines
composed of women. Cartoons were big on cartoons. When Quentin
(10:24):
took it over, he really wanted to kind of mimic
what happened in the past, which was you would play
like a tag, a little like kind of commercial or
something cool for like Coca Cola. Let's all go to
the lobby. Let's all go to the lobby. Let's all
go to the lobby to get ourselves are treat. Then
(10:47):
you would play like a short, you know, Three Stooges shorter,
you know, Bugs Bunny cartoon, and then it's like trailers
and trailers for either up and coming films or trailers
that thematically fit what you're showing that night, and then
you go into the actual feature. And that's what they
did that then it was a different movie going experience.
I know, you get the trailers when you go and
(11:09):
see your first run films and stuff, but you know,
it's not quite the same. One other interesting thing is
that most theaters did not have concessions back then. I
don't know how they survived. I forget what decade concessions
came into, but can you imagine going to the movies
and not having concessions. Now as an exhibitor, I'm like,
(11:29):
ohh gosh, we would not be in business if we
had to close our concessions. I have to have my popcorn.
But by far the most striking feature of the old
picture palaces was the architecture. Stunning, absolutely stunning. I can
tell you that a lot of thought went into them.
You can tell by the little decorations, very ornate, very thematic.
(11:53):
You had two theaters in Los Angeles that had an
Egyptian theme, and they were two different architects. You know,
you see Middle Eastern themes. You just see a lot
of Art Deco themes. I would love to go back
in time and just kind of sit in on some
of the planning and what people thought. But again, studios
rehind a lot of the big picture palaces so they
could throw a lot of money into them, and they
(12:15):
wanted to appeal to a wider class of people. They
did want the theaters to reflect that. I asked Jules
to mention a few examples and to tell us what
her favorites are. Believe it or not, Radio City Music Hall,
which does not show film anymore. I don't think the
Music Box in Chicago. There's you know, a handful that
(12:38):
are still around. In downtown Los Angeles. A secret movie
club is out of the million Dollar Theater in downtown
Los Angeles. And then there's other venues that are open.
We've had premieres of Quentin's films that a couple of
the theaters. I really like the Metrograph in New York.
I love the Bell Court in Nashville. You know. I
(12:58):
was a big fan of the a Rama Dome and
even the arc Like Complex in general because I thought
they had, you know, really nice big theaters. I do
like when I travel, I'd like to see the independent
movie theaters. I'd like to experience them. I'll tell you
a wonderful one is the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Oregon. Amazing, gorgeous,
(13:19):
wonderful programming. I got a little tour and everything. There's
fun little basement hang out, you know, and I get
kind of jealous of theaters like the Hollywood because they
has so much room and can do so much and
the guy that runs in, oh, here's two free drink tickets.
I'm like, oh wow. It's like, yeah, we're gonna get
drink tickets at the New Beverley. We don't even serve
(13:40):
alcohol and stuff. So I did a little little jealous,
But I mean, theaters are just wonderful and they're in
every town and it's hey, their magic. Jules says that
back in the day going to the movie theater was
a big deal throughout the country. I think they were packed.
That was your night out. You're getting dressed up to
(14:02):
go to these places. Now part of it, Yeah, you
want to be seen dressed up, drive a car there.
Maybe it was the equivalent to when we go to
maybe to the Pantageous in Los Angeles to go see
Hamilton's or something, or if you go to Broadway you
would have more like the Douglas Fairbanks action, you know, buccaneers.
I also think a lot of the comedies you have
(14:23):
the Harold Lloyd's Maxin and comedies, and I think a
lot of like shorter films that I just they're lost now,
even if they were found, is there an audience worm?
I don't know so. Because the studios largely funded the
movie palaces back then, the theaters were a lot more
strict about what they could or couldn't play. I know,
(14:45):
there wasn't a lot of like cross pollen nations. So
if it was, you know, a Warner Brothers theater, they
only played Warner pictures. There are studios that didn't have theaters,
and I think it was a tougher time for them
to get in into some of them established studio owned.
But I mean that broke up and I think that
(15:06):
was probably good. There's certainly were I mean, studios were
cranking it out in the heydays, forties, fifties. Absolutely, if
they made money, they were going to produce them. Some
not so great that you can say that for today's
films too. The New Beverly did not yet exist by
this point, so it's not technically a picture palace, but
(15:27):
its history is interesting nonetheless. Yeah, New Beverly is built
in twenty nine, so it was originally I believe a
candy store. Then somebody sold wine out of it, and
it eventually became Slapsie Maxi's, which was a live club
a nineteen fifty it became a movie theater and there's
(15:48):
been one ever since. But it's had so many iterations
in so many different names, it's kind of crazy. It
was even split into a twin theater called the Riviera Capri. Crazy.
I can't imagine it now because I still think it's
a little small. It was the Arrows, the Rivierica pried
that Beverley, the New Yorker. It's an adult theater, as
(16:11):
we all know, kind of referenced in Once upon a
Time in Hollywood, what's going on at the Dirty Movie Place?
People are having open here dirty movies have from news.
Yeah they're fun, which is really cool. If you watched
Once upon a Time in Hollywood at the New Beverley,
you got that in joke. Been home to a lot
of different theaters and made many people happy. She says.
(16:35):
Theaters like this started to become more common in the fifties.
Instead of the grand picture palaces, now we were getting
more small, single screen theaters. They popped up because people
are moving to the suburbs. You know, you can build
a giant picture palace their neighborhood theaters. So I think
they served their neighborhoods. But soon big companies would take
(16:58):
notice of the success of movie theaters and they would
create the franchises we know today chains that all but
doomed the independent theaters of the last century. These days
(17:20):
the most common movie theaters are the chains, AMC, Cinemark,
Regal and so on. But before these, in the early days,
the studios themselves were the franchises. They were up during
the picture palaces. You had your rolls and your warners
and stuff, so you saw them. But when the studios
were told that they couldn't be exhibitors, there were opportunities
(17:43):
for corporations, probably sixties that they really started getting going.
Seventies probably their heydays seventies and eighties, and then the
slide began. Unfortunately, theater chains radically shifted the movie business
in the eighties. Now you have these big buildings with
a dozen or more screens showing every available movie, usually
(18:05):
more than once a day. While Jules prefers the older
art house single screen theaters, she understands why these types
of theaters became popular. There's your economic aspect as an exhibitor,
where you're not saddled if a movie bombs you open
it in your big three hundred seat theater and it bombs.
You move it over to the fifty theater and you
(18:28):
can put something in where you will make money. As
far as the movie going experience, it's just like now,
it's a lot of options. I want to go see
the two ten show of so and so, but I
missed it. But look at two thirty, I can make this,
so it's not a complete wash. I don't have to
get back in my car. I don't have to kill
two hours to the next showing. As a teenager or
(18:50):
as a young college person, multiplexes were great because you
could see uh, two or three movies a day and
only pay once. But Jule says we lost a lot
of value when we transitioned away from the neighborhood theaters.
There's more things like textually, if you go to the Vista,
you have the manager that has worked there for decades, Victor,
(19:13):
and he'll greet you and you have interactions and you
can you know it's your neighborhood theater. I live in
that neighborhood, so I always run into friends there. But
you don't have that kind of interaction at an AMC.
And it's so big and you don't like stand in
a lobby and talk about the film afterwards. You don't
like meet people and say, hey, let's go get coffee
(19:35):
over here and talk about the film. You go, you
see the movie. It's great, you know what you're getting,
and you go home. Go someplace like New Beverley, you
know the vista, the arrow, Low Spels three. This is
a different experience. It's more of a movie going experience.
I don't know if I can put my finger quite
(19:57):
on it, but it just isn't a little bit more
st earl at an AMC, shall we say. Of course,
the biggest impact of the chain theaters was the eventual
closure of indie theaters. For the older single screen theaters
and picture palaces, companies like AMC signaled near certain death.
I don't know how a single screen theater makes it.
(20:20):
I have zero idea. We've come close to closing several times,
despite Quentin Tarantino being the overall owner. That doesn't mean
he has to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
You know, the American cinema tech is that the Low
Spiels three. I don't know if they have all three screens,
but I think they have like two of them. At
(20:41):
least that gives you an opportunity to make your programming
a little bit and unlike diverse or something, but you
can fall back onto something and gives you a little
bit more flexibility where if we put a dog in there,
it's bad for us, you know, it's can't really overcome that.
Now we have to try to think like, okay, what
(21:02):
can we do to make up like we're losing five
thou dollars by showing this one movie, you know, Friday, Saturday,
Sunday and just twelve people here. But this is bad.
It doesn't matter. We still have to pay the studios
their licensing fee. Now we're paying employees not to serve
you popcorn or sell you tickets or monitor the show.
(21:24):
I do not know how single screen theaters exist well.
Jules is thankful that the new BEV is surviving. She
says running a single screen theater is both complicated and
difficult in ways that chain theaters don't have to worry about.
Well be corporations. Obviously, you can like move your money
around at this theater location. B you don't take a loss,
(21:46):
and it's different. No place to hide for the single
screen theater. I'll tell you that. Much like in two
thousand fourteen when we took over the new Beverley to
pick up our trash, it was like a dred and
eighty six dollars now five and thirty four dollars. Yes,
we do have to raise our ticket prices occasionally, and
(22:06):
it's everything. It's clockwork. There's a certain vendor that sends
a notice at the beginning of the year, a big vendor,
we need to raise their prices three. I'm like, oh
my gosh, but I don't pass that along to our patrons.
I know other theaters don't do that either. Part of
the movie going experiences feeling like you're not being gouged.
(22:29):
I go to a lot of theaters and I take
pictures of their concession things, and I'm like, how in
the world is this big theater? I will leave out
a name charging four seventy five for a small bottle
of water. It's like wow. The next big blow to
small theaters was television. I think it was pretty damning
(22:54):
to theater going well. I mean, all of a sudden,
it was almost like a novelty, almost like Wow, you
got this little screen and you can just like you
can watch the how do you do they show? Oh
my gosh, you can like you can bring your meal
and put it on a tray and you can watch
from your home home. I don't think it was anything
(23:14):
with economics, but I think it was just like, Wow,
we've got like a screen in our home. Now it's
a little litiger than the movie screen, but there's always
something on and oh wow, they're showing a John Wayne movie. Wow.
And theaters had to overcome that, and they did, and
then came streaming things like Netflix and Hulu. I asked
(23:37):
Jules how the New Beverley survived the streaming era. Definitely,
attendance took a hit at the New Beverley. We didn't
come intil two thousand fourteen. But the dynamics of movie
exhibition have changed. But I think at least we've reached
a point now where it's harmonious. Jule says streaming is
(23:58):
probably her least favorite way to watch a movie. She
says that at theaters there's a kind of community you
just don't get by flipping through Amazon Prime. It's so
nice when people come to the New Beverly, Like I'll
tell you that the family matinee. We were playing Disney's
The Barefoot Executive. I'm not interested in yet theories on ratings,
(24:18):
and I'm certainly are not interested in doing a show
called Abraham Lincoln's Doctor's Dog, whatever that is. And it
was directed by Robert Butler. He brought his grandchildren. Now
the grandchildren get to see it on the big screen.
They get to see the audience laughing. They get to
see people coming up to their grandfather Robert Butler afterwards
(24:40):
and saying, oh man, that was so cool, and that's
so cool that you came out taking pictures by the
one sheets and everything like. You don't get that experience
at home. And that's actually one of the things I'm
most proud about the new Beverly is that that we
offer people that experience and you don't have to be
Robert Butler and his family to recognize if you were
(25:02):
at that screening how important that is and how special
that is. Like I was just working the box office
and it's like, that's pretty darn cool. You're not going
to get that watching the movie on Netflix. But clearly
streaming isn't going anywhere. So this begs the question can
theaters and streaming services live harmoniously. I don't know if
(25:25):
I ever see that they exist equally harmoniously. I think
you're saying that now. I mean, we have a wonderful
relationship with say Netflix. Netflix took over the Egyptian Theater,
so they will be showing their films there. There's a
merger of theater and streaming, and I remember Netflix at
(25:47):
one point was very resistant, but they saw the potential,
they saw a wider audience. They saw that Hey, Academy Awards,
you know, we get some of our films nominated, We
win some Obscars. Pretty darn cool. Luckily, there has been
a movement in recent years to preserve the history rich
spaces like picture palaces and single screen theaters. Quentin Tarantino,
(26:11):
of course saved the New Beverly from extinction, as well
as the Vista Theater, also in Los Angeles. But finally,
other filmmakers are also starting to step up. There's certainly
the Paul Thomas Anderson's and the Christofferent Nolan's. I don't
think they have a foundation or do anything, but just
by you know, making film and insisting that you know
(26:32):
it gets at theatrical run. That's important. Playing Paul Thomas
Anderson's licorice pizza was amazing. Do you know who I am? Yeah?
Do you know who my girlfriend is? Ubisien arb strate
sand sand like sands, like the ocean, like sand, straight
sand sand. He brings his children to the New Beverly,
(26:56):
to the family matinees amazing. That little bit of support
he pays. There's some people are like, Okay, I get him,
freem like, oh no, why do you work here? Because
that's the perk of working here. Otherwise, please support us,
your friend of Quentin's. No, he wants you to pay.
He wants you to support theaters. But in order to survive,
(27:20):
small theaters need to be creative, and the New Beverly
is a great example. We took over the New Beverley,
there wasn't much of a social media presence, but that
was something identified very quickly and that we needed somebody,
and my social media manager, Phil Blanketship, came on board,
and I think that has helped immensely. We would not
(27:42):
be where we're at today without a social media presence,
and honestly, a lot of it starts with community too.
You can cultivate a good film community. We have regulars
and so do other theaters because I go to them
that will stand in line for like two or three
hours before the show just to get their favorite seat
or just to catch up with their friends. And you
(28:04):
gotta make it a movie going experience, going back to
affordable concessions, affordable ticket prices, good value for your screen.
I love that Quentin put in pre shows. Now folks
are like, oh, what cartoon are you showing? Or what shorter?
I like to write down the trailers, but what was
the second trailer that you played? You get people excited
(28:28):
to see the movie and and you know that it's quality.
Like we remodeled in two thousand eighteen, and when we
did that, we did some very simple upgrades. Speakers in
the bathroom. I have never seen people go gaga over
speakers in the bathroom, but you look at our social
media and like taut speakers in the bathroom. Yeah, it's
(28:48):
a no brainer. Gotta go get up he's restroom. You're
missing the visual aspect, but you can still kind of
hear what's going on, so you feel like you haven't
missed everything. I mean, just have to keep looking at
different ways to get people engaged. Jewel says that over time,
the new Beverly became a trusted venue for cinephiles all
(29:10):
across southern California. What's really cool is when we took
over in two thousand and fourteen, Quentin did the majority
of the programming, and we just developed an audience, like
a trust between Quentin the programmer and the audience, Like
you might not have heard this film, but I'm not
(29:30):
going to play it if it's not good. You're going
to get something out of that film. I love seeing
black and white movies at the New Beverly. I think
the New Beverley was built to play black and white movies,
and I just love that we continue to find black
and white movies to play that maybe we haven't shown before,
(29:51):
and that audiences are willing to take a chance on.
As you can imagine, the COVID pandemic had a huge
impact on theaters, especially on small theaters like the New BEV.
But once they were able to pull through, it became
obvious that people were craving the in person movie going experience.
For better or worse, the pandemic reminded us that's sitting
(30:13):
at home isn't always the ideal way to watch a movie.
At the end of the day. We're all human and
we need human interaction. You can only sit at home
with in front of your TV or computer screen for
so long. Movie theater lets you have that interaction, even
if you're not friends with somebody. I remember when I
went to the Arc Light and I saw Girls Trip.
(30:34):
It was me and one other person. We were dying
in that film, laughing out loud. And then afterwards, you know,
talk to a few minutes, were like, oh, that was crazy,
and he said like, I'm so glad you're in the
theater and I wasn't the only one laughing alone, and like,
I know, it was so cool to hear you laughing
(30:55):
and just having that experience. It wasn't the full theater
everybody laughing out, but we had that moment. That moment
I still remember years later. You think, I get that
experience at home maybe if you have your friends over
and you're watching a movie, and great, it's a good
time and stuff, but it's no, it's not the same
as going out. It's not the same as interacting interacting
(31:16):
with strangers where you have this one common thing together.
And I'll go back to that story of the New
Bever regular Sarah. It's like she's made friends there. We've
all made friends at the New Beverly. We're going to
take a quick break, but when we come back, we're
going to take a tour of the New Beverly and
we'll see, or rather here the ins and outs of
(31:38):
running analog film on a projector. Jules McLean, director of
operations for the New Beverly Cinema, was kind enough to
offer me a tour of the theater. We walked through
the lobby, the auditorium, and I got the special experience
(32:00):
seeing the projection room. So we're in the lobby of
the New Beverly Cinema right now. And when Quentin took
over the business part of the cinema, we made a
few changes but kept a lot of stuff intact. One
of the big things that really made the lobby what
it is today, not that it's it's a tiny lobby,
(32:22):
but there was a small wall partition by the women's room,
and we were probably a week away from opening and
finishing construction, and Quentin came in and he's all, like,
do we really need this wall? And luckily the contractor
happened to be right there too. He's all, it's not
a load bearing wall and we can get rid of it.
The next day we got rid of it, um and
(32:44):
it just a opened up the lobby. But really what
Quentin wanted to do with the wall being gone it
it opened up wall space. So we can now have
large oversized frames that we put French two panels in,
an Italian UM oversized posters in and that's that's actually
(33:04):
two of the biggest things that I like that Quentin
did was not only removing the partition, but saying, hey,
I want oversized frames in and I want the frames
changed out every you know, three or four days or
whatever we do to to advertise a movie. He has
a lovely UM poster collection, so we utilize a lot
(33:25):
of that and over the years we've amassed a nice
collection UM. So it's nice and people love taking pictures
in front of it and stuff like that. So what else.
It's the original box office. We still have the original
ticket tape puncher that the Torgans had and uh, you know,
we have gone to an online type of ticketing service. However,
(33:50):
we still kind of punch out the old tickets and
you know, they almost look like carnival tickets, but they
seeing you Beverly on them, and it's kind of cool.
I always like seeing you know, people like post them.
You pictures of them on social media and by the
marquis and stuff. And you know the concession stand. It's
small but mighty. Uh, we pack a lot in there.
(34:11):
Great ideas is that when we showed Um Oakcha the
Netflix film, we um because it's very you know, animal rights,
we brought in vegan dogs for that and we called
them dogs. They sold so well we've kept them to
this day. So again, always looking for interesting things. And
I love the posters, just the one sheet posters. Some
(34:32):
of the artwork on the posters gorgeous. They don't make
them like they used to. Is very true. I mean,
look at that gold Finger poster keep saying I love it.
One thing we did when Once upon a Time in
Hollywood opened is we decked out the lobby and a
lot of the props, which you will still see to
this day. We didn't take them down. Make Love not
(34:52):
War signs over there, clo drives above the women's room,
and on the box office. We had only candy that
would have been sold in nineteen sixty nine, only bottled
Solda that would have been sold in nineteen sixty nine.
We did like fun stuff like candy, cigarettes and everything.
We had walk in music that was you know, very
(35:15):
specific to you know K h J that was playing
in the film, but it was actually, you know, an
on air broadcast. So now we're in the auditorium of
the new Beverly we see two in two thousand eighteen.
We had to completely gut everything. What was nice about
(35:35):
the remodel was that we were able to do some
really small things that I think just made the theater
even more special. People don't know what we did because
you can't see it, but we did new curtains, but
we kept the same color scheme. So we have big
blue panel of curtains right here and on the side curtains,
(35:57):
and then we have a little strip of red. Well
that was reversed. It was big panels of red, little
strips of um blue. But underneath it, now we have
acoustic material, so it really makes the sound oh special.
Another thing that helped us because we had to like
tear down the roof. Now we have acoustic paneling in
(36:17):
the roof. Honestly, I'm going to brag here, it's some
of the best sound in Los Angeles. I was watching
I'll use Quentin's movie again because it's his theater once
upon a time in Hollywood, and my manager Brian Quinn,
had the same experience. We both saw the film other places,
but during the Musso and Frank scene, like you could hear,
(36:37):
you know, the tables talk and everything so much so
that both of us at one point or another turned
around and looked like, who's talking in the theater? Oh, no,
one's talking. That's the that's the background noise of Musso
and Frank's. Oh our sound is good. You don't get
that at every theater, because I've watched Quentin's movie at
other theaters and I did not have that experience. Hands so,
(37:01):
the seats, you know, they're not the greatest seats in
the world. They're not the worst seats in the world.
I don't know if we'll ever change then maybe, but
I just feel that we would lose some seating capacity
if we we went to some newer seats, and we
certainly wouldn't go into any seats that recline or anything
like that. That's not us. That's for another theater. Things
(37:22):
that Quinton did is he wanted again oversized posters as
you exit so you can see we've got two of them.
We have one Nebraska Gym, which is a fake movie
in Quentin's film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and
then we have Richard Gears Breathless. We can go upstairs
to the booze coming up. Gentlemen. Well you're in sacred
(37:49):
territory now here. It is in all its glory to you. Right.
We have a wall of trailers, thirty millimeter trailers we
use in our pre shows. The first feature always has
a cartoon or a short, and then followed by trailers
the either thematic that they tie into the feature you're
about to see or their up and coming. They also
(38:12):
have like intermission tags or adverts from England. I mean
we've got thousand of them. But you'll see that in
the show too. It's like, oh Dr Pepper and Martian
snap Bar whatever, you know, just a little bumper and
then it'll go into the cartoon or the trailers. And
we have our Simplex XL projectors. They're dual projectors. We
(38:35):
have no platter system. At the New Beverly. When Quentin
took over and put me in charge, they kept telling
me like we had a periscope system, so the light
would hit a mirror and then hit another mirror and
then be shot onto the screen. It wasn't a crisp image.
So I'm like, there's got to be away. So I
pulled Quentin's personal projectionist, Jeff no Wicky. He got his
(38:59):
friend over here who used to work for Fox, and
you've got to chop off the base. You can chop
off the base and then you'll have a straight shot
to the screen and lo and behold the image improved
it was. I guess it's a little hard for the
projectionist because they have to stoop down. That's why you
see the chairs very low, but it is absolutely worth it. David,
(39:25):
this is our chief projectionist, David Chan, So if they'll
explain a little bit how that works much better than
I could. Yeah, we start off with the reel up here,
and then we thread down towards the take up as
it passes through different rollers. You'll notice straightaway that the
potentially the first section it'll pass through is the Dolby
Digital reader. The SRD track would be read through this component,
(39:50):
but if it's an older print and only has one
channel or standard stereo sound, we would bypass that entirely,
and it would just go down through here and to
the gates where obviously light passes through and into the lens.
Then it goes down further to the sound head. What's
notable about that, and when I think most people are
surprised to learn, is that if you're looking at a
frame of film on thirty five, the sound for that
(40:12):
frame is twenty frames ahead of it. So, for example,
you have an image that's starting here. If you were
to run film and have it pause, if you were
to catch that instance, the sound for that image is
already passing through twenty frames later down here into the
sound head. It continues from there to these other two
rollers and then down into take up. We use two
(40:32):
thousand foot reels, which means that we can really like
truly handle prints in the safest way. I'm gonna actually
remove this anyways, but we can unscrew this, and then
we have a multitude of lenses. You can see here
this is our one three seven lens, which is common
for older Hollywood aspect ratio or our cartoons that were
able to run for our pre shows. We could do scope,
(40:53):
we could do one five, we could do the European
one six it opens it up so we can play
a good variety of movies and shorts. What kind of
preparation do you have to do with these friends in
order to get them ready to play in the projective?
I mean, if they're in good shape, you probably just
need you know, an hour hour and a half of inspection.
But if we're getting something from Quentin's collection that hasn't
(41:14):
played in twenty years, you could be very brittle now,
so you have to like reinforce splices. I know films
that have taken eight hours to repair just so we
can get it through the projectors. Typically, though if it's
not in great shape, it might take about four hours,
which is very labor intensive, trust me, not at all
(41:34):
cost effective. So it takes a lot to run a
film only house. I don't know how many films that
we run a year, but it's what do you think,
David's at least eight hundred, right, yeah, because I hope
for three months in a row. Now you're averaging about
forty features a month, which means in your warehouse has
(41:56):
to have like how many canicers of film well over five.
The joke is the final shot of Raiders of the
Lost arm We actually have a print traffic manager because
it gets so busy, and we're lucky that we're in
Los Angeles that we can actually physically go to a
lot of the places and pick up the film. We
(42:19):
keep copies of all our pre shows. There's print reports
for every print that's been inspected. Now we do store
a lot of that online and dropbox, but we keep
everything so we're a repertory cinema, so chances are it
could get played again, it might be the same print.
At least having the print report might cut down on
some of the work. Um and you invention, it might
(42:42):
be possible to do like a breach demo. If that's
not too much fun, do you think you could just
spread something up so we can get sound bites of
the Sure, yeah, it'd be great. Scope lens and there
changing the focus to scope up. It's ready to be threaded.
(43:02):
When we start today with giving the projectors a nice cleaning.
When we initially start off with a threat to a
point that's eleven feet before the first frame of image.
In this case, there's a drunk driving p s A
that precedes the coming attractions. Tag usually have at least
(43:25):
eighteen sheets of head leaders so we'll have enough to
put onto the take up reel without worrying about any shortage. Perfect.
So I guess I can fire up the lamp houses
and then it'll be ready for a showtime. There you go.
(43:48):
Thanks freaking good light. Yet floor a tag pert coming
down the five? Well, look who's here? When the action
(44:08):
is too rough for one man? Send for Savano's seven.
First of all, it's no ordinary cleanup job. Once we
take out one of those bananas, we gotta wipe out
the rest of them in thirty minutes. We're gonna get
(44:33):
this thing done. We're gonna get it done quick. Savano's seven.
The playmate, the black belt, the dragster, the comic, the professor,
the cowboy. Seven. Death is their way of life. Seven
(45:00):
m looked and sounded good. No problem. Can I say
one thing, um, Obviously, if you come to Los Angeles,
would love everybody to visit the New Beverly and stuff.
But Los Angeles in particular has the Broadway theater district
(45:20):
that just has beautiful picture palaces from like the Orpheum,
the Los Angeles, the Million Dollar Theater, which is home
to some of the secret Movie Club screenings. It's just
wonderful and and the Grand Central Market is down there.
You can make a whole day of it. Even if
you don't go on the tour. It's just nice walking
(45:41):
up and down Broadway starting at third, kind of going
all the way down to ninth and just seeing the
rich history. And there's some amazing stuff here and in
other parts of the country. And applaud everybody that's kind
of keeping the movie theaters alive. This episode of Ephemeral
was written and produced by Trevor Young, with producers Max
(46:03):
and Alex Williams. Jules McLean is the director of Operations
at the New Beverly Cinema and David Chen is the
lead projectionist at the New bed Big. Thanks to Quentin
Tarantino for the behind the scenes passed into his theater
and for all the work he does to preserve film culture.
We'd love to hear from you about your favorite theaters.
(46:25):
Is there a special or historic theater in your city?
What do you love about the movie going experience? Let
us know on social media. We're at Ephemeral Show and
for more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite show,
Ephemeral News
Host
Alex Williams
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.