SOME guys daydream about playing center field for the Dodgers. Others wish they had as much luck with women as Antonio Villaraigosa. But when I'm in my car, trapped in the Westside's endless rush hour traffic, all I can fantasize about is how good life would be if there were more great movie theaters on my side of town.
There have been many nights when I could fly and see a movie in San Francisco faster than plowing through the Westside's snarled traffic to where the ArcLight sits in the distant reaches of Hollywood.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday July 11, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 34 words Type of Material: Correction
Movie theaters: The Big Picture column in Tuesday's Calendar section misspelled the first name of Lew Harris as Lou and misidentified the website for which he is editorial director. It is Movies.com, not Movie.com.
Luckily, I now have \o7two\f7 beloved neighborhood theaters: the sleek new 12-screen Landmark complex alongside the Westside Pavilion and the handsome old Westwood Crest Theater, a 1940-era movie house on Westwood Boulevard. As different as they may appear on the surface, they are fascinating examples of the brave new world of high-quality movie exhibition, a world full of movies aimed at -- gasp -- people who aren't dying to see "Transformers."
They are also theaters that tell us a lot about the changing moviegoing habits in Hollywood's company town. In a way we've come full circle. Los Angeles used to be less a city than a series of small 'burbs -- Santa Monica, Pasadena, Culver City -- separated by wide swaths of undeveloped land.
Each town had its own local movie palace. But each year, as snowbound Easterners saw our sun-kissed hills in the background of the Rose Parade, more people came West, eventually filling in all that open land. Now that L.A. is so crowded, local neighborhoods have become distinct 'burbs again, isolated not by open land but by unnavigable traffic. People look to their own neighborhoods for essentials, be it Starbucks coffee or an inviting movie complex.
The Crest is a lovely theater, but saddled with a crushing disadvantage. With one screen, its fortunes fluctuate by the luck of landing a hit picture; a multiplex can book hourly showings of a popular film while relegating a fading flick to a smaller theater. The only reason the Crest still exists is that it is owned by one man, Robert Bucksbaum, who bought it in 2002 and operates it as a labor of love.
I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't rooting for the mom-'n'-pop owner to survive. My grandfather was a theater owner with an abiding love for movies -- he was always happiest in a crowded theater with a bag of popcorn and an aisle seat. So although I may be a jaded entertainment writer, I'm not so jaded that I don't delight in going to a theater where the owner is often in the booth selling tickets.
