Los Angeles is a mecca for many things, movie theaters being one of them. The sheer number of cinemas out here along with the fact that it’s freaking Hollywood makes each month very exciting in terms of what’s showing. I thought I’d name my personal top three fave theaters out here.

1. New Beverly Cinema

It’s a revival house owned by Tarantino that runs 35mm double features for seven dollars.

Let me say that last part again.

You can see two movies for seven dollars.

That alone is reason enough BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. It’s a cozy one-screen theater but they do such a good job of curating that you don’t need or want more screens. Billings typically run for two days, usually two shows a day per film and sometimes a special midnight screening. We first went to a Marilyn Monroe double feature and since then we’ve seen stuff like a midnight screening of Scott Pilgrim with cast/crew, Charles Bronson double feature with producer/actors, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles midnight show with co-creator in attendance. They’ll also have guests curate the schedule as Edgar Wright did January and Tarantino is doing this month at the moment. Films are also preceded by vintage trailers and advertisements which always warms my heart.

2. Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater.

As they describe themselves: The Cinefamily is an organization of movie lovers devoted to finding and presenting interesting and unusual programs of exceptional, distinctive, weird and wonderful films. The Cinefamily’s goal is to foster a spirit of community and a sense of discovery, while reinvigorating the movie-going experience. Like campfires, sporting events and church services, we believe that movies work best as social experiences.

Basically, they’re like the New Bev but they’ll often show crazier movies and do more elaborate events. We’ve gone to a wake for Party Down that they hosted where we watched both seasons back to back and in between the cast and crew came out to talk about the show and do a Q&A. This month they’re doing a John Cassavetes retrospective and last night we went to a screening of Ben Gazzara films that was opened with a Q&A of Gazzara conducted by Gary Oldman. Crazy, crazy, awesome stuff.

The only reason that they’re not at the top is because the tickets are a bit more expensive (they do offer memberships) and most of the seating in the theater are these folding chairs with a cushion on them that is HELL for tall people like me. There are some awesome couches near the front but good luck getting them if you’re not a member.

3. The American Cinematheque at the Aero and Egyptian.

Ok, technically these are two theaters but they’re part of the same organization. They do a mix of current and old, often with special guests and whatnot. They do really stress that you become a member, which you’ll probably want to do because some of their events sell out crazy fast. Definitely the nicest theaters on this list, and they run some great events, but I feel like you don’t get the joyous intimacy of the previous two. New Bev and Cinefamily feel like the ragtag group that always lives on the edge while the AC is a bit more highbrow (especially if you look at those membership levels). Still, we went to a double feature of Pierce Brosnan movies with him in attendance (handsome man), and also went to a screening of Memento where Nolan was interviewed by Guillermo Del Toro.

Can’t really do that anywhere else.

Because it’s kinda appropriate for our situation right now, I’m going to post another excerpt from Chris McQuarrie’s interview on the Creative Screenwriting Podcast.

That was sort of my journey for seven years, writing scripts that everybody wanted to read but nobody wanted to make. Everybody wants to make Deliverance. Nobody wants to play Ned Beatty.

And people would call and say “Hey, I really want to read your Booth script, I heard great things about it.” I’d say “GREAT,” and send it to them and they’d take three months and they’d send it back and go  “Yeah, we’re really not interested in doing the Civil War right now.” Oh, I see, so you didn’t know that it was set during the Civil War until you read the screenplay?  So now, when people call and they say, “I’d really like to read Booth,” I’d say, “Great. Now go back to your boss, whoever that is, and when your boss says ‘I want to make Booth,’ I’ll let you read it, because you’re going to pass for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the script. I can speak for the quality of the script; it’s a good script, it’s good enough, it’s a good story. I didn’t have to make anything up. You’re not going to make the movie.“

Screenplays don’t get movies made… Your job, my job, and by the way, it doesn’t matter what level you get, you can dismiss everything I say and say that the experiences that I’ve had, etc, etc. I can’t get a script to anybody. I can’t do it. Scripts don’t get movies made. Screenplays are the afterthought to the decision to make a movie. A director decides he wants to make a film about… Chinese ice-skaters. All of a sudden, we need a Chinese ice-skater guy to write the script to go with the director’s vision. An actress decides that she wants to make a movie about World War II test pilots, female test pilots, because she likes the clothes. I’ve had that meeting.

The script is an afterthought to that process. So when you have people that come to you and say they want to read that, as they’re reading your script they’re gauging the interest of the universe, trying to find a person who will make that movie a go-movie, and then attach your afterthought to their vision. So in that month that you think they’re reading your script, they’re actually gauging the interest of the six or seven directors that get those movies made. It’s directors who get movies made. You’ll say it’s actors who get movies made and you’re correct except the first question the actor will ask when you send the script is “Who’s directing this movie?” And it really comes down to a very small group of people, and my seven-year saga had been learning this process because no one explains it to you. And it was my learning this process through trial and error, of writing scripts that people liked, and trying to get actors to read it, and actors wouldn’t read it because studios wouldn’t finance it. So I’d go to the studios and say “Hey, why don’t you finance this movie and then I’d give it to an actor?” The studios didn’t want to finance it. Nobody wants to be the first one to jump in the pool.

I would like to make the distinction that we don’t put ourselves anywhere near the level of McQuarrie. Speaking of ourselves, we’ve been fortunate enough to meet some people in the industry who are interested in reading/seeing our work in a business sense. We’re still new enough to this that this is a major victory for us. That said, and without going into specifics, we’ve already been involved in situations similar to what McQuarrie talked about, where projects have been given the go-ahead not for creative reasons but simply because someone else is interested and we need to beat them. We aren’t, and shouldn’t be, surprised by this but it still makes your head spin a bit when it happens.