While theaters are struggling, many independent cinemas in Los Angeles are finding audiences

LOS ANGELES – On a hot summer evening, Miles Villalon stood in line outside the New Beverly Cinema hours before showtime.

The 36-year-old already had tickets to the 1976 Watergate double feature “All the President’s Men” and 1999’s “Dick.” But Villalon braved Los Angeles’ notorious rush hour traffic and secured a front row seat at the historic Quentin Theater Tarantino.

This level of commitment is routine for the Starbucks barista and aspiring filmmaker, who typically sees up to six films a week in theaters, almost exclusively at independent theaters in and around Los Angeles.

“I always say it feels like church,” he said. “When I go to AMC, I just sit there. And I can’t really experience that sense of community that we have here, where we all just worship at the celluloid altar.”

Streaming – and a pandemic – have radically changed cinema consumption, but Villalon is part of a growing number of mostly younger people contributing to a renaissance of L.A.’s independent theater scene. The city’s ongoing, if limited, role as a film industry mecca still shapes its residents and their entertainment preferences, often with new appreciation post-pandemic.

A revival in the City of Angels

Part of what makes the city unique is its abundance of historic theaters, saved amid threatened closures or revived in recent years by theaters with ties to the film industry. Experts see a pattern of success for a certain type of theater experience in Los Angeles.

Kate Markham, chief executive of Art House Convergence, a coalition of independent cinema operators, said a key factor was the people who run these cinemas.

“They know their audience or potential audience and curate programs and an environment in which they can have an exceptional experience,” she wrote in an email.

Tarantino pioneered this trend when he purchased the New Beverly in 2007. After Netflix purchased and restored the nearby Egyptian Theater, which first opened as a silent film house in 1922, the company reopened it to the public in November in collaboration with the nonprofit American Cinematheque. It’s now a bustling meeting place, regularly hosting high-profile celebrities premiering their projects as well as film fans willing to endure hour-long marathons, such as the recent screening of four Paul Thomas Anderson films.

Further east is Vidiots. Vidiots, which existed as a video store in Santa Monica before closing in 2017, reopened citywide five years later with a 271-seat theater, a bar and new trailers.

“It’s literally my favorite place outside of my own comfortable home,” said filmmaker and actor Mark Duplass, who is backing “Vidiots” along with dozens of other well-known names, including Aubrey Plaza and Lily Collins.

What attracts people?

What draws people to independent theaters can vary, from older programming to upscale food and drink offerings to lower prices. But many agree that there is a community aspect in particular that chains cannot compete with.

“The larger places obviously have premium formats and the like. But I think there is much less community connection,” said Dr. Michael Hook, who attended a matinee of “Seven Samurai” at Vidiots with a colleague from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “You’re not just hanging around with people who also decided to watch a three-hour Japanese film from the 1950s.”

While the pandemic was a blow from which the box office has yet to recover, it also served as a wrench that made the theatrical landscape more viable for the streaming age, according to Janice O’Bryan, senior vice president of Comscore.

“COVID has sorted out some of the things that had to close anyway,” O’Bryan said of the more than 500 theaters that have closed nationwide. “I think it made everything healthier.”

The surviving theaters have found niches, sometimes consciously eschewing the chains’ 4DX, recliner and dining services.

“The kind of movies we show, the last thing I want is waiters walking around bringing things to people and hearing the scraping of cutlery on plates,” laughed Greg Laemmle, who runs Laemmle Theaters, an independent film stalwart, has been running cinema in Los Angeles for nearly a century.

But Laemmle recognizes the importance of giving audiences options beyond popcorn and soda, especially as an additional source of income. The enjoyment of food and drink can sometimes make the theater a unique destination.

“When I normally go to the movies, I arrive two minutes before the movie starts,” Duplass said. “I go to Vidiots about 45 minutes before the movie starts to get my chilled Junior Mints, have a drink at the bar and see some people. I’ll go through the video store.”

In February, more than 30 filmmakers — including Jason Reitman, Steven Spielberg, Denis Villeneuve and Christopher Nolan — purchased Westwood’s Village Theater to preserve it. Is your favorite also coming to the red carpet premiere? A restaurant, a bar and a gallery.

Not without challenges

Like the rest of the country, L.A. theaters have faced a number of pandemic-related challenges — some exacerbated by last summer’s strikes — including fewer films to show.

And not all theaters have found their Tarantino or Reitman. The closure of the legendary Cinerama Dome was a huge blow to the city’s cinema lovers. Although owned and operated by the ArcLight Cinemas chain following its closure in April 2021, the Dome was something of a singularity in Hollywood, a regular premiere location memorialized in the film, and a symbol of the city’s stature in the industry.

Its fate remains in limbo as there are reportedly delays in its planned reopening date, despite parent company Decurion Corporation, which could not be reached for comment, being granted a liquor license for the multiplex in July 2022.

The venues that have survived have often achieved this through some form of charity or aid, such as the $16 billion federal Shuttered Venue Operators grant program that Laemmle took advantage of during the pandemic. He said the June 2021 funds would be necessary assistance. However, a full recovery has been slow.

“It provided some stability. How much remains to be seen,” he said. “The water is still muddy.”

Only in Hollywood?

In some ways, this renaissance is limited to Los Angeles thanks to the city’s history, culture and abundance of theaters, admits Bryan Braunlich, executive director of the National Association of Theater Owners Cinema Foundation.

Tarantino, who declined an interview, is less likely to buy a dying revival house in Peoria, Illinois. However, that does not mean that this trend cannot have an impact there, argued Braunlich.

“Hollywood and filmmakers are saying, ‘Hey, movie theaters are important,'” he said. “There are great independent theater owners all over the country who are thriving. And I think they get a confidence boost and say, “Yeah, this is a great business. This is a great business to invest in. And we, as film nerds, aren’t the only ones who do this.”

Reflecting on his own introduction to cinema while growing up in the New Orleans suburbs, Duplass recalled a trip to Vidiots to see “Raising Arizona” with his parents.

“I realized I was the same age now as she was when we first saw it together in the cinema. And I got to hold my dad’s hand in the last scene as we cried,” he said. “We shared this film, but we also shared the passage of time at our favorite church, the movie theater.”