Los Feliz 3, 1822 N Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027;
New Beverly Cinema, 7165 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036;
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, 6925 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028;
Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90403
The entire premise of this project stemmed from the time I spent in Los Angeles from July until November, 2022. In fact, without that trip, I never would’ve considered thinking at all about my memories of going to the cinema in New York City as a concept for a memoir. From my time living in and walking around L.A., observing people, their film and cinema scene, and marking the city’s evolving architecture, Cinematic Memories was born.
It was 2022 and I was still trying to make my way back to The City, applying for jobs and interviewing without success until I was offered a job which I eventually turned down. The location of the job (Chelsea Piers), the commute to this new gig, my experience trying to find an apartment a bust, it all felt the same. If I was going to have a fresh start, this wasn’t it. Everything about it felt wrong or too familiar, and I was confronted with re-entering the workforce at the bottom, a few years older, wherein everyone around me were in their early-to-mid 20’s. Consequently, I went back to St. Paul, MN and spent April until the end of June working another job and saving for a new venture – to live and work in Los Angeles, CA.
I’ve had an indifferent relationship with SoCal, specifically Hollywood and L.A., since I was a teenager. Deciding where to go to study film, the only options that seemed available were either in Los Angeles or New York City. At the time (2001/2002), the idea that the only interesting stories worth telling for the screen took place in only those two cities annoyed and ultimately drove my decision to find a film school in the Midwest. Things have sort of changed since, but back then, it was really a binary choice for success in a filmmaking career. However, when I was 18 years old, on spring break from my first try at University, in March 2004, I took a trip to L.A. to explore the possibility of going to CalArts (the private arts college co-founded by Walt Disney, with notable alumni like Sofia Coppola and Tim Burton). I wasn’t getting on where I was, and I thought I could use my cartooning and writing skills to apply to one of the most premiere institutions in the country as an animator. It didn’t bring me any confidence that I could be accepted when, on the tour of the facilities, the only other prospective student that day to visit happened to be Glen Keane’s nephew (Glen Keane, for those unaware, was the superstar character animator of Disney’s “new era” in the late 1980’s through 1999’s Tarzan. He was the animator of Ariel, for fuck’s sake. What chance would I have next to Keane’s nephew, who, undoubtedly, would get in without any trouble at all?). The idea of going to that school immediately left my mind and my ambitions to create a portfolio to apply vanished, as well, and so the trip was somewhat of a bust. Although, I saw a lot of the city from the vantage point of a passenger in a family friend’s car.
I saw the beaches, the hills, filming locations of my driver’s favorite movies (I remember one such location was where Kevin McCarthy ran away from the eponymous Body Snatchers down a hilly residential street), and saw what was north of Hollywood, in Toluca, and how regular people lived. They existed in modest homes with backyards of scorched grass, eating cheeseburgers, drinking beer and enjoying mellow nights. It was only a short trip, but I was able to have free time to watch a movie, and I saw Starsky and Hutch (2004) in The Kodak Theatre (now called The Dolby Theatre). After the picture was finished, just outside the cinema on Hollywood Blvd., the closed-off street was being used as a premiere for Disney’s Home on the Range (2004), one of the last traditionally animated films before computer generated artistry took over. A car door opened and Harvey Weinstein’s bloated, pock-marked face slimed out and into the bright sunshine. It was disgusting. I didn’t want to see any more.
The trip was memorable for being one of the first times I traveled to a large metropolis alone, but the impressions of L.A. as an aspirational goal to conquer (in whatever medium) was lost on me. Sure, the weather was beautiful, the women were out of my league, I was able to walk through the Paramount lot without security, but I wasn’t wooed by what I experienced.
Ten years later, in May of 2014, I traveled to L.A. again. That time, I wasn’t interested in movies, per se, I was a street photographer. I walked all over the place shooting photos of a city that interested me as the place where Charles Bukowski roamed and wrote, where Ed Ruscha found inspiration in the streets and landscapes. In the daytime I’d walk for miles, photographing buildings, people, street scenes, and at night I’d drink beer and smoke. I’d write dirty, lascivious poetry and take breaks to piss in the same urinal Buk would do, then flirt with older women at the bar. I’d walk through Skid Row, viewing a side of Los Angeles I’d rarely seen in media (The Soloist [2009] being one of the few contemporary films I enjoyed that presented L.A. in a light which wasn’t about the entertainment industry, filmed some of its scenes at The Midnight Mission), and then find myself turning a corner, a witness to early gentrification of Downtown L.A. in the form of a hipster coffee shop. I took the bus from DTLA to the Santa Monica beach pier and walked the boardwalk, my Rolleicord twin-lens reflex camera hung around my neck like a talisman, garnered looks from passersby, or none at all. It’d be a few more years before I’d see more hipsters on the streets who looked just like I did, cosplaying as Weegee, traversing the asphalt like Garry Winogrand with their Leicas and Rolleiflexes. Meeting up with a former lover at the Henry Fonda Theater, we saw Goblin play their Italo-horror-prog hits and I felt like I was being both resurrected and christened with the ash of demons. Jessica Harper was in the audience, I told her I was a big fan. She was lovely.
I’d never considered moving to Los Angeles, even during that trip when the possibility seemed more realistic now that I was older. Everyone I met seemed a little too happy, like they were all high or elated on something, and their attitudes weren’t welcomed – they felt suspicious. I just never saw the appeal of the city. If anything, I think I still had that chip on my shoulder, that sense of dismissal from either coast, that if you weren’t in either New York City or Los Angeles, then, well, you weren’t really worth much of anything, were you.
But I went to visit, I suppose, as an anthropologist with a camera. Recording my findings through a Zeiss lens and approaching the people of L.A. as oddities, as foreign objects to study, rather than as competition, superior beings, or even, empathetically, as equals. I was a foreigner in a strange land, and these people were my study.
In the mid-2010’s, while I was still enthralled with movies, my main focus was on photography, the study and creation of photographic art. In that second trip to L.A., I couldn’t gauge at all any sense of a film or cinema scene in the city, but again, I wasn’t necessarily looking in that direction. Of course, I noticed some buildings in DTLA that looked like they were once cinemas, their broken facades displayed remnants of movie marquees, but their degradation, their importance, was lost on me then. However, I did visit what was then The Silent Movie Theatre (run by the now-defunct Cinefamily), in the Fairfax neighborhood, to see a 35mm film screening of The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), which was introduced by Wayne Federman and Jeff Garlin (of Curb Your Enthusiasm notoriety).
After the screening, Federman and Garlin came back on the stage to discuss briefly their admiration for the film before offering the audience to the back room, or their patio – whatever it was – for some drinks. No one in the audience responded to their invitation, a party hangout with celebrities, I’m guessing was the appeal, with Illeana Douglas in the audience, to boot. But as soon as this silence was confronted by the comedians, the crowd relaxed, laughed, and some of them exited to the back for free drinks. I thought about going, if only to ask a portrait of Ileana Douglas, but I rationalized that I didn’t want to contribute to the idolization of celebrity with my camera. That I was more interested in the real people on the street who weren’t given as much attention. That was what I told myself, but the truth was I was a bit scared to go into a back room with strangers for free drinks. It felt a bit creepy. I took a cab back to the hotel downtown and slept it off.
After my attempt to return to New York in the spring of 2022 failed, I sought after Los Angeles, eight years after my second trip to the west coast, again. Maybe this time it would be different, I thought, maybe this time I’ll really try to make it there, to just get a job and live. That was all I wanted coming out of the pandemic, to just live. It didn’t matter doing what – being a photographer, a writer, a filmmaker, or anything at all – I just wanted to move past the previous two years and live my life. Also, I had now what I never really had before, people I knew who lived in L.A. Sure, I could look up my old flame, but to her our connection (not only through sex) was linked to the Midwest, Minnesota, and its culture. I couldn’t relate to that at all. The last thing I want is someone thinking our shared connection is talking about a regional sports team, or local accents, or music from a certain time and place that I have no relation to whatsoever.
So that’s where I was at in the middle of 2022: New York didn’t work, I can’t stay in Minnesota, I’ve got film friends in L.A. now, so let’s try Hollywood again. I genuinely went into this excursion with optimism, partially because I’d become ingratiated with Californians who hadn’t acted patronizing, arrogant, or fake with me (the majority of personalities up to that time I’d encountered that represented Californians). I could go into this knowing I’d have some foundation of reliable people to talk to, hang out with, and grow together.
Once again I traveled without a car, reasoning that I could simply get by on mass transit for a time. For a time, I did. I walked all around Los Angeles, from Glendale through Atwater Village and to Los Feliz. I’d walk from Silver Lake to Echo Park and down to Chinatown. I’d walk from Little Armenia to Larchmont Village, and back again. I lost maybe twenty five pounds the first month I was in L.A., not only from walking five to six hours a day, but from the heat and sweating off my beer fat. I’d stay in Airbnb’s for two weeks at a time until I’d planned to get a job and find an apartment to rent. First I stayed in a bungalow in Glendale hosted by a bitter, out of work actor, then in a monolithic apartment complex surrounded by college students in Westwood, after that I stayed in a camper van on the street in Little Armenia where I’d go to sleep every night hoping no one would shoot up the vehicle, and finally I’d find a room in a trash heap of a bungalow in Silver Lake with a roommate who existed in one, continuous cloud of pot and hashish smoke. It would be where I’d stay until I finally got sick of it all and left.
In all that time, searching for a job, being lead on with a prospective one, walking, taking Ubers, riding the bus or zipping through traffic on a scooter, I couldn’t help but compare this experience with my previous ones in different cities. I found myself referring back to New York City and comparing most everything to my encounters in Los Angeles because my search for a life there was not working out. Everyone compares the two cities. Everyone has a preference, and it’s all such a naff, first-world problems conversation that’s ultimately pointless and boring because the two places are so radically different. Essentially, one city is old, the other is new. That’s it. One city caters to multiple industries and art worlds, with at least 28 distinct independent cinemas, the other claims to be the center of the entertainment industry yet has so few cinemas it’s shocking.
Piecemeal I became aware of the cinema scene in Los Angeles. To start, there was the Los Feliz 3 cinemas, The New Beverly Cinema, and The Aero Theatre. While more prominent, well-known cinemas: Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, The Alamo Drafthouse, and any number of AMC cinemas, rounded out my experiences in L.A.
The neighborhood Los Feliz 3 cinema opened in 1935 as a single screen theater, which later expanded its small space to house two other auditoriums to cater to the Los Feliz and Silver Lake neighborhoods, with one screen exclusive to The American Cinematheque’s screenings (a satellite cinema along with The Aero and then-under construction Egyptian Theatre). The Los Feliz 3 is a quaint cinema sandwiched between a taco spot and a terrific bookstore. Its architecture is modest, and their inclusion in the neighborhood feels ingrained in the landscape.
The first weekend I arrived that July, I saw two films at Los Feliz 3. As a kind gesture of welcoming to the west coast, I caught up with film friends I’d previously only seen online, in real life, for food and drinks. We talked, understandably, about movies, the weather, jobs, travel, and got along well as we rushed through our liquor and a quick bite to nosh on before the screening of a new film we’d agreed to see, Competencia Oficial (2021). Although I was still in a haze from the prior day’s screening of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), which put me in a trance-like state (Zamfir’s pan flute never failed to hypnotize me, the image of the astoundingly beautiful Anne-Louise Lambert innocently wandering into a mysterious trap, a strange disappearance, continued to haunt me), I was ready to visit the cinema again.
The film was memorable for being a European arthouse comedy, with all that entails. Humor mixed with pathos, grandiose performances coupled with intimate revelations. Starring both Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, you couldn’t but help feel the influence of Almodovar in the colorfully abstract set design, the multi-layered plot, the sense of humor. The writing skewered the arthouse film world, mocked and analyzed the differences in acting techniques between the more intellectual, European approach to performing and the flamboyant, Hollywood action style of being a “star.” Films like these can get lost in the mix if they don’t break through culturally, so I was glad I saw it and enjoyed the first of many, many, many movies I’d see at The Los Feliz 3. That place practically became a second home while I was in L.A. It was relatively easy to get to, the tickets weren’t cheap but the matinees were, and their programming was constantly changing. That cinema was an escape and a home from all of the problems I had during my time in California (in the four months I was in L.A. I saw ten films at that cinema).
From The Los Feliz 3, I was aware of The New Beverly Cinema (any rabid film fan would know that this is Quentin Tarantino’s house which screens only film prints of movies), but aimed to receive more advice from my film friends on which movie theaters were the best in the city. I only could get a few recommendations from them (The Aero, The New Bev, The Academy Museum), and from this scant list, I began to wonder, How many independent movie theaters are there in Los Angeles? and Why are there so many movie theaters still shut down? Why are the only big cinemas those gaudy AMC ones? There were about five distinct cinemas most everyone recommended, each about 10 miles apart from the other, and that just struck me as very strange. How is it that I’m in Hollywood, and it feels like the cinema scene is so small?
The week after the event screening at Los Feliz 3, I met up with two more film friends to see Hiroshi Teshigahara’s masterpiece, Woman in the Dunes (1964) at The New Beverly.
I met them in the cinema and we found seats middle row, center. I told them about my encounter at the coffee shop just ten minutes prior, wherein an actress feigned help, I assisted her, then got her phone number. I only mentioned it because of how direct the encounter was, and the significance of the actress in the event (someone I had a crush on when she was on Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ political satire show).
Personally, I felt fat and ugly. I felt like I was constantly sweating and had a flabby disposition, so I couldn’t understand why a beautiful woman would want to: a) talk to me, and b) give me her phone number to hook up later. It was especially pointed because I’d only been in L.A. less than a week, and I was already chatting it up with people, with strangers. My experience with that woman afterwards is a whole other story, but it defied my expectations of sex, attraction, money, and intellect. From there my film friends and I talked about current cinema news and the atmosphere of The New Bev before the film started.
It’s a small cinema, single screen. From what I can remember the walls are red, the seats are crushed, red velvet, slightly uncomfortable if the theater were packed. The “lobby,” as it is, is almost miniature. I wonder if it were once bigger to accommodate more people, or if the auditorium was enlarged to include more seats, and the lobby (really, a space to walk into or out of the cinema, and a small queue for the concessions stand) bore the brunt of that expansion? Small as it is, the space is slathered in ephemera from Quentin Tarantino’s film career. You almost feel like Tarantino is in the back office crunching the numbers or talking to the projectionist about the state of the print they’re about to screen. It’s got a very lived-in vibe, despite its prominence, and still acts as a neighborhood cinema for the Fairfax crowd (and beyond). The audience were mostly men, and the women who were entering the auditorium came with their boyfriends. I was unsure if it was because of the specifics of the film, or if this was that type of place, overrun by film bro nerds. Regardless, if they’d seen this film or were watching for the first time, it surely would impress them. An entomologist essentially becomes as trapped as the bugs he catches, when he stumbles into an isolated village that’s been overrun with sand. He stays in a hut with a beautiful woman, and together they dig out the sand every night, make love in the summer heat, and become subjects of perverse interest for the villagers above, who control if and when they can ever leave.
When the film finished, the three of us marveled at just what a masterpiece the film was: from the music, the cinematography, the surreal setting nearly underground in a sandy trap, to the precision of capturing and directing the movements of sand and wind. Teshigahara made a handful of films throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, but they’re all masterpieces of contemporary surrealism, as evidenced with his collaborations with writer Kobo Abe. A block up and around the corner from the cinema we hung out at the outdoor patio of a bar that was closing soon. We briefly talked about the film, our visceral and emotional connections to what we saw (while most of us had already seen the picture before this screening, it still hit differently, at least, was effecting us in a different place in our lives).
This is what I imagined film culture to be like in L.A. Going to screenings with friends, seeing rep cinema, and grabbing a bite to eat or a beer afterward. It seems like a simple pleasure, yet I rarely experienced that in New York. The closest experiences I’d ever had were with big groups of people going to dumb movies, or being let down by storied filmmakers’ turns into overindulgences.
During that summer, incidentally, Tarantino and Roger Avary had started publishing their Video Archives podcast. In that series, the two of them (supported by Avary’s daughter, Gala, and special guests sometimes) discuss movies that had been in the Video Archive’s library. They’d watch the movies on VHS and then discuss three of them on the show. It was great. I loved it. The production on the show was imaginative, and it kept me company on those long bus rides from Westwood, East, or wherever I was walking that day. The clincher for anyone listening to the podcast who also lived in Los Angeles was that, the movies they discussed on the show would undoubtedly be screened (on film) at The New Beverly Cinema. You could listen to Avary and Tarantino disagree on the merits of Moonraker (1979), and then the next week go and see that Italian pigeon do a double take in Venice on the big screen. That’s just what I did.
I would assume that going to multiple screenings of film at The New Beverly would make one feel like a part of a community of filmgoers, however sporadic the repeat customers might be. Yet this exercise in resurrection, of bringing back old movie theaters from their brink of disappearance, even, gave me pause. From The New Bev I looked at other cinemas in Los Angeles, cinemas that had been negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, they had to shutter their doors, or took the opportunity to upgrade and modernize their facilities for an eventual re-opening. I just couldn’t understand how most of these cinemas had closed, and the only way for them to re-open was, by many accounts, have a filmmaker buy it and restore its purpose. It seemed like the city didn’t give a damn about its cinematic heritage in that way, that no one was protecting these old movie palaces from degradation and destruction, other than the very people who made them light up – the filmmakers.
Downtown L.A. felt like that – abandoned, left for scraps or refurbished garishly for new technology and gentrification. Want to visit the location of Club Silencio from David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001)? Well now you can have a freakout in the balcony just like Naomi Watts while you’re watching a powerpoint presentation on how to operate the newest Apple illustration software. What was once a perfect movie palace has now been whitewashed (literally, the whole place is white like the inside of a porcelain toilet) and converted into an Apple store.
Is the problem that too many of these old buildings just lacked any upkeep? Did the multiplex phenomenon of the 1980’s through into the 1990’s and beyond, squash the appeal of these cinemas? Were they that much of an appeal? I couldn’t figure it out. These buildings were so beautiful and regal, and it seemed that there was such an abundance of them, now forgotten, in favor of the garish, ostentatious AMC movie theaters built in suburban city outlet malls like The Americana at Brand.
I only saw one movie at an AMC theater while I was in Los Angeles – Don’t Worry Darling (2022) at The Grove, next to the Original Farmers Market. The hubbub surrounding the film was really what brought me to the cinema, otherwise I’m not certain I would’ve gone. It was fine, it wasn’t terrible, it had plot holes and a generic, ambiguous ending that reminded me of The Truman Show (1998), but it wasn’t mind-blowing. Not as much as how people in the press or involved with the film touted it to be. I sometimes wonder if these new filmmakers have seen, or are familiar with, the broad strokes of the history of films (domestic and international)? Every generation “discovers” something from the past generation and claims it as their own, but this seems to be happening more frequently, and faster, as time moves on (or maybe I’m just getting older and noticing it more).
From The New Beverly, it’s a ten-minute drive or an hour-long walk, three miles uphill towards the Hollywood Hills there’s Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (or Mann’s Chinese Theatre, or that famous cinema on Hollywood Boulevard where films from the golden era had their premieres), with their stylized designs and celebrity hand and footprints cemented on the ground out front. It’s a unique piece of film history open for exploration, and one of the better cinemas I’ve ever been to – not least because of the sheer size of it.
It was late July and Jordan Peele’s newest film, the cryptically marketed Nope (2022), had just been released. I wanted to see it in IMAX, and the closest cinema was at The Chinese Theatre, so in a half-full cinema I saw Peele’s UFO spectacle. The film’s got its flaws, its commentary on spectacle, Hollywood, television shows, celebrity, they all play into something which I could tell Peele may have only recently experienced after becoming an Oscar-winning screenwriter and a veritable “name director” (like Nolan is a name, like Fincher, et. al – directors who are as notable as the films they make). For however flawed the movie was (in terms of motivation, plot, etc.), its sense of dread and its depiction of place was so, so, so comforting to me at the time. I don’t know how to describe just how comforting seeing that movie was, but being in that movie theater, so enormous, regal, the cold air relaxing my sunburnt face and sweat-stained clothes, coupled with the mood of the movie, it was perfect. It was probably my favorite experience watching a film that entire year.
The confluence of the stunning cinematography, the naturalistic bantering between siblings that was Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya, and the relaxed atmosphere of a desert lifestyle in Southern California made me feel completely at ease, until the flying saucers came around and I felt totally at an unease. Seeing this in a cinema with such history, as well, while not packed to the brim with people, too, added to the comfort. That stretch of Hollywood Boulevard outside Grauman’s Theatre is so gaudy, loud, full of tourists, soaked in the smell of human excrement, marijuana, tobacco, and car exhaust, just being in a movie palace as an escape was a relief. Grauman’s Chinese Theatre wasn’t a place to escape or venture towards as easily as a neighborhood cinema like Los Feliz, it was an event. You went there for the grand cinematic experience. I’d visit again to watch Moonage Daydream (2022) on opening night, which itself was another mind-bogglingly astounding experience of sight and sound.
The last cinema I ventured out towards (and it was a venture to get there) was The Aero Theatre, in Santa Monica. A place which I recognized instantly as the cinema Chili Palmer sees a screening of Orson Welles’ 1955 film Touch of Evil in the movie Get Shorty (1995).
The commute from Los Feliz to The Aero was about an hour on the bus plus walking. I was early to a screening of the premiere of Triangle of Sadness (2022), as part of the Beyond Fest (a yearly film festival catering towards unique films, horror, science fiction, the grotesque).
Like The New Beverly, it was a single-screen auditorium with loads of seats, a more spacious lobby and concessions stand, what I’d say was an example of a perfect neighborhood cinema. Approachable, still retaining the architecture of its inception from 1940, its location, however, seemed completely antithetical to common sense, being so far away from nearly anything. I later learned it was built for employees of a nearby aeronautics plant. Well done. Now it’s surrounded by fancy restaurants and upscale clothing stores. It’s a boon to the cinema culture of Los Angeles that it still exists, not only for its heritage, but its malleability for repertory screenings. Like Los Feliz 3, I believe that every neighborhood should have a movie theater like The Aero, and dispense with the multiplexes. Keeping a rolling schedule makes an audience salivate for new films, or if one is popular enough, it plays continually.
My experience seeing Ruben Östland’s “eat the rich” film was notable for the audience, and its reaction towards the film (a dark, European comedy), which was equally as shocking as some of the scenes in the film. Bawdy would be the word I’d use to describe that audience. Overreacting to scenes which, on a surface level, were disgusting, hilarious, or perceptive, they vied for my attention towards the actions on screen. Frequently I find myself not jibing with the audience I’m sat with, irregardless of the film we’re watching. I’m never gasping as hard as they are, I’m never shocked to spout out “No!” or “What?!” or “You’ve gotta be kidding me!” towards revelations in films. It’s not that I’m not engaged with the film, but I’m usually internally receiving these reactions to scenes as they occur, and they’ve never necessarily given me credence to blurt out my opinions without regard for the cinema. I don’t know how that comes across, but the audience for Triangle of Sadness was not my crowd. They all seemed overly enthusiastic (perhaps because this was the premiere of the film), laughing at every joke, even if they weren’t laugh-out-loud funny. Gasping at every revelation, even if it didn’t warrant that kind of reaction. It went on like that for the majority of the film, and not to say these audiences only exist in Los Angeles, but I took it as a sign that I don’t belong here. Maybe I was looking for an excuse, a reason things never went my way as I tried to live and work in L.A. The audiences had no filter to what was good or not, everything was great. Of course, we were in paradise, right? The beach, the sun, the sand, the money, the glitz, the glamour, the perceived importance of it all – why complain when you’re succeeding in the last City of the World?
As I’m writing this I know that a few other cinemas have reopened. The Egyptian has finished construction and begun showing films again. Vidiots, which started as an alternative video store in the 1980’s, took over what was once The Eagle Theatre, and began hosting screenings and events. The Vista Theatre (another cinema saved by Tarantino) was recently refurbished and reopened in the Los Feliz neighborhood. So maybe I just came at a bad time, the effects of the pandemic still not yet gone, but profoundly seen in the makeup of the city, I didn’t give it enough time. I don’t think it would’ve mattered if I’d have stayed longer than I did, though, just because how much I disagreed with the way of life there.
I left L.A. and didn’t want to stick around because I realized, once again, that I love walkable cities. Within that, I relish public transportation. When it works swiftly within a city, it’s a lifeline. You never have to concern yourself with auto insurance, with gridlocked traffic, and all of the pitfalls of operating and maintaining an automobile. New York City isn’t perfect, either. The subway system is often never on time, smells of piss, people smoke more blunts on the train now, there’s the rush hour sardine packing of people that can become suffocating, there’s the sound of the trains that can be grating, and the constant maintenance which never seems to add any improvements to its systems can feel overwhelmingly depressing. But you’re with people, you’re not alone in your car. You’re not in what I experienced as being two worlds in Los Angeles: the pavement and the car. One is potentially dangerous, the other is barricaded off from the world it’s passing by in an automobile.
The NYC Metro is not as good as London (presumably), or Tokyo (obviously), yet somehow it trudges along. However, L.A.’s public transit system, while moving along at a snail’s pace, will never replace the city’s love for cars. It’s a city built for cars. That’s one of the primary reasons I did not gel with it that time. I hate cars. I hate driving them, I hate sitting in them, I hate navigating them in cities where millions of other cars are vying for the same space I’m in.
Los Angeles cinema culture builds itself back up from the ruins of the pandemic. There are more cinemas I was aware of which I never visited, like The Academy Museum and The Nuart. There’s the two cinemas in Westwood, The Regency Bruin and Village Theatres. I never went into those cinemas, only watched at a distance the red carpet film premieres as the oddities they were. For every screening in parks and islands in New York City, there are screenings in cemeteries in L.A. or other unique locations for film viewings. The seeming lack of interest in movie theaters in Los Angeles spurred my memories of cinemas in New York City, and by that measure, the two cities are linked and can find a commonality between their apparent rivalries – they both love movies and in spite of everything, strive to maintain and support a cinema culture that can thrive in an ever-changing artistic landscape.