Mobile-First Content Evangelists,
We are nearing a full day since first reading that the Arclight Hollywood is closing. I am... well, I am flummoxed.
We have no idea how this shakes out. Maybe it'll be saved, maybe by new management. I've spent a decade watching movies in nearly-empty theaters, and I worked at the studio most tied to the American theater business. I have no illusions left about its viability... or about the people and institutions who could save the theater: real estate ghouls, mercurial patrons of the arts, disappointingly-shady non-profits, Big Tech goliaths, or beleaguered studios and theater chains. My first instinct is the Dome itself will be saved, but the chain is done for... and as for the other screens in the Hollywood complex... Condos? Condos. Retail never stuck there anyway.
So I don't know in what tense to write about the theater. But if the Arclight Hollywood dies, let's not forget it was ugly. There were too many steps. The doors were too heavy. The ceiling in the lobby was way, way too high. It was impersonal and lazily futuristic. It felt like an architecture student's model from 1999 that probably shouldn't have been built. Everything was unconscionably expensive, maybe still paying for the cost of the construction. The abstract screensaver thing that played before the movies was just so off (my wife pointed out there was usually an "A" hidden in there, which is clearer than usual below & a little creepy). Plus, the art they showcased near the bathrooms routinely bummed me out.
But I went to the Arclight every week, religiously, almost always on Fridays. Leave work at 730, Chipotle at 8, movie at 830.
Moonlight and Beale Street, Inherent Vice and Phantom Thread, Close Encounters and Arrival. Frances Ha and Ladybird, Snowpiercer and Parasite, Jump Street and Lego. Shame and 12 Years. 10 Cloverfield Lane, Split, and Don't Breathe. Girls Trip, Blockers, and Game Night.
I saw Paper Moon there, and in the very last moment before the movie started, Edgar Wright plopped down next to me. For those ninety minutes, he was focused.
I lost my mind at Fury Road. And then I really lost it at Get Out.
I actually lost my mind there too. I had light panic attacks during Nightcrawler and Annihilation. I thought I might have one in Midsommar. I loved all three.
I sobbed throughout Fruitvale Station. I scratched my beard throughout Vice. I wanted to leave Steve Jobs.
I've lived in LA for almost ten years. I didn't know I wanted to do this as a kid, so I started film school school out here while I was still falling for cinema. I went to a late showing of Drive with my classmates, who knew it was the movie to see. I felt like I was Ryan Gosling in that I was driving around LA, alone, and listening to pop music... but also not like Ryan Gosling because I absolutely could not get laid. I was exactly the right age for Drive. We all were. I don't ever need to see it again.
Eight and a half years later, in March 2020: my now-wife and I still hadn't said aloud that we'd have to cancel our wedding because of the pandemic. We risked exposure (!) to see The Invisible Man in the dome instead. There was only one other couple there. We called it off the next day.
I've never seen a movie I've worked on at the Arclight. I really, really regret that. I've seen movies made by people I know there... and by people of whom I am intensely jealous.
I've seen a lot of famous people on dates there. Maybe more interestingly, I have a friend who had sex in the parking lot.
The same chatty guy was almost always selling his CDs by Veggie Grill, and there were always at least a couple unhoused people, which made me feel guilty about spending so much on a ticket every single time. It was more or less a rich person's theater in a place where there's basically a rolling humanitarian crisis. There were also the less dire discrepancies it exposed: the dozens and dozens of times when friends wouldn't join because of the ticket price.
Nonetheless, for those of us inside, it was deluxe. The sound and picture were always up to Arclight standards. It was awfully well-run. I've been there a few hundred times. The projector never broke, the speakers never blew out. Every movie started just seven minutes after its official time. It’s not like that in other parts of the country. It’s not even like that at the Landmark in Westwood. Plus, the people who worked there were always really nice and enthusiastic, though I rarely recognized them or got to chat with them in the way I do at Skylight Books. The place was huge, the staff was huge. It was not a community. It had none of the charm of a "neighborhood spot."
The Arclight wasn't the best for popcorn movies you want to see with a fired up crowd, new obscure movies, or old repertory movies. But it was probably the best for new non-popcorn, but not-totally-obscure movies. It was where I went to see the kind of movies I like most often, "director-driven" movies: Spike Lee, Sofia Coppola. It may be the only place open to the public where she'd do a Q&A, though I don't remember if that happened. (I am still recovering from second-hand embarrassment from a Moonlight Q&A there and have not attended one since. Not one. Jerrod Carmichael was hosting it but basically quit midway.)
Regardless of what happens at the Arclight Hollywood, the possibility of its closure feels like yet another nail in the coffin for that kind of moviemaking and moviegoing. Right now, I'm thinking much more about the latter. My wife just said the closure of the Arclight makes staying in LA long-term less appealing. I had the same thought.
If the Arclight really does close -- and I still think it could be rescued, but who the hell knows -- I will miss hanging after the movies next to the tanning place near the parking lot with you all. I fucking loved yelling and being yelled at there about the divisive ones: Gone Girl, The Beach Bum, Mother!, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Hateful Eight, Inherent Vice, Elle, Stoker, Fury, The Descendants, Uncut Gems, Jupiter Ascending, Cloud Atlas.
The Arclight is the place where I realized that I got from movies what my mom got from the temple. Stories to grapple with, community, the occasional glass of bad wine, fleeting moments of something larger. So, I guess it was my temple. My big, ugly temple.
Arclight Hollywood Forever Y'all*,
Max
*of course I saw Spring Breakers there too, on a weekday afternoon, and a couple years ago, I gawked as Harmony Korine shuffled by me in giant khakis.