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LOS ANGELES (AP) – On a hot summer night, Miles Villalon lined up outside the New Beverly Cinema, hours before show time.

The 36-year-old already had tickets to the Watergate-themed double feature of 1976’s “All the President’s Men” and 1999’s “Dick.” But Villalon braved Los Angeles’ notorious rush-hour traffic to snag front-row seats in Quentin Tarantino’s historic theater.

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

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

Streaming – and pandemic – has dramatically transformed cinema consumption, but Villalon is part of a growing number of mostly younger people who are contributing to the resurgence of LA’s independent theater scene. The city’s continued, if rare, role as a film industry mecca still shapes its residents and their entertainment choices, often with renewed appreciation after the pandemic.

Revival in the City of Angels

Part of what makes the city unique is its abundance of historic theatres, which have been saved amid impending closure or resurrected in recent years by those with ties to the film industry. . Experts see a pattern of success for a special kind of theater experience in Los Angeles.

Kate Markham, managing director of Art House Convergence, a coalition of independent cinema exhibitors, said a key factor is the people who run these theatres.

“They know their audiences or their potential audiences, and they curate programs and an environment for them to have an exceptional experience,” he wrote in an email.

Tarantino pioneered the trend when he bought the New Beverly in 2007. After Netflix bought and restored the nearby Egyptian Theatre, which first opened in 1922 as a silent movie house, the company reopened it to the public in November in partnership with the non-profit American Cinematheque. It’s now a bustling hub, regularly hosting A-list celebrities premiering their projects as well as film buffs willing to wait for hour-long marathons, such as a recent screening of four films Paul Thomas Anderson.

Further east is Vidiots. Previously existing as a Santa Monica video store before it closed in 2017, Vidiots reopened across town five years later adding a 271-seat theater, a bar and a new crop of devotees.

“It’s literally my favorite place to be outside of my own cozy home,” says filmmaker and actor Mark Duplass, a financial backer of Vidiots alongside dozens of other high-profile names, including Aubrey Plaza and Lily Collins.

What brings people in?

What attracts people to independent theaters can vary, from older programming to a high food and drink offering to lower prices. But many agree, above all, there is a community aspect that chains cannot match.

“Obviously the bigger places have premium formats and things like that. But I believe there is much less community connection” said Dr. Michael Hook, who attended an afternoon of “Seven Samurai” at Vidiots with a colleague at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “You don’t hang around with people who have also chosen to go to 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 dented what made the movie theater landscape more sustainable for the streaming age, according to Janice O’Bryan, senior vice president of Comscore.

“Covid shut down some of the things that needed to be closed anyway,” O’Bryan said of the more than 500 theaters that closed across the country. “I think it’s made everything healthier.”

The surviving theaters have found niches, sometimes purposefully avoiding the chains’ 4DX, reclining seats and dining services.

“For the types of films we show, I definitely don’t want servers walking around, bringing people things and hearing cutlery scraping on plates,” laughed Greg Laemmle, who co-run Theatrau Laemmle, an independent game. cinema in Los Angeles for almost a century.

But Laemmle recognizes the importance of giving audiences options beyond popcorn and soda, especially as a source of additional revenue. Embracing food and drinks can sometimes turn the theater into a unique destination.

“When I usually go to a movie theater, I show up two minutes before the movie starts,” Duplass said. “I go to Vidiots like 45 minutes before the movie starts so I can have my cold Junior Mints, I can have a drink at the bar, see some people. I’m going to walk around the video store.”

In February, more than 30 filmmakers – including Jason Reitman, Steven Spielberg, Denis Villeneuve and Christopher Nolan – bought Westwood’s Village Theater in an effort to preserve it. Also coming to the red-carpet premiere favourite? Restaurant, bar and gallery.

Not without challenges

Like the rest of the country, L.A.’s movie theaters have had their share of pandemic-induced challenges — some exacerbated by last summer’s strikes — including fewer movies to show.

And not all theaters have found their Tarantino or Reitman. The closure of the iconic Cinerama Dome was a blow to the city’s cinephiles. Although owned and operated by the ArcLight Cinemas chain when it closed in April 2021, the Dome was something of a Hollywood extravaganza, a regular premiere spot commemorated in film and a symbol of the city’s place in the industry.

Its fate remains in limbo, with reported delays to the target 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 been preserved have often done so through some form of charity or assistance, such as the $16 billion federal Closed Venue Operators Grant program, which Laemmle used during the pandemic. He said the money was a necessary bond in June 2021. But full recovery was slow.

“It gave some stability. How much remains to be seen,” he said. “The waters are still muddy.”

Only in Hollywood?

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

Tarantino, who declined to be interviewed, is less likely to buy a dying revival house in Peoria, Illinois. But, Braunlich argued, that doesn’t mean this trend can’t have an impact there.

“Hollywood and filmmakers are saying, ‘Hey, movie theaters matter,'” he said. “There are amazing independent theater owners thriving all over the country. And I think they get a boost of confidence like, ‘Yes, this is a great business to be in. This is a great business to invest in. And we’re not alone as movie nerds doing this.’”

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

“I realized I’m the same age now as they were then when we first saw him in the movie theater together. And I held my father’s hand as we cried in that last scene,” he said. “We shared that movie, but we shared the passage of time in our favorite church, the movie theater.”