In Memoriam to the Cinema Palace

The following is the original, raw and unedited version of an article presented in the the 26th edition of OtherZine.  You can see the edited, presentable version here: http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/in-memoriam-to-the-cinema-palace/

The following represents a closer example of the writers voice, but it is also unpolished.  It includes the accompanying video that shows footage of the demolishing of the cinema described in the article.

“The death of cinema” is a term that is thrown around quite often.  British director Peter Greenaway said it came with the invention of the remote control (1983).  Susan Sontag suggested it had died in her article "A Century of Cinema" (1995).  Many cinephiles believe it died with the invention of video or at least when it completely took over cinemas.

For me cinema died today.  Not with any conversion or transition of our beloved images, but with the erasure of my first movie palace.  The Park Theatre, in Menlo Park, California, was 66 years old when the property owner decided it should be flattened and turned into office buildings.  That might not seem very old, but for California architecture that is ample time especially considering the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.

Progress is haunting.  In one regard things change for the better.  Technology advances to make things easier, cheaper and more accessible, but not always.  Sometimes progress squashes beauty.  To what extent do we let progress determine our lives?  This was a question that spun around my head 11 years ago when the Park first closed it’s doors as a cinema to the public and now the wound has reopened and flows with blood once more.

Situations like this really make me wonder if the invisible decisions made by our current form of economy are really in line with our values.  When the pursuit of profit goes before culture, history and community it loses purpose.  Environment is a beast of a topic.  Books and artwork are archived.  Human lives are protected.  Buildings are quite different.  With property, or more specifically, buildings it is the owner that decides the fate.  A building, like a painting, can be protected, but this involves an active city council, experts and an interested community.  If someone possesses property of historic significance that they do not appreciate then why do they bother owning it?

The Dorothy Chandler Pavillion is only 50 years old and yet the Los Angeles Conservancy chose it to be apart of their Last Remaining Seats film series to recognize it’s historic significance.  The Park is it’s senior by 16 years and it left without a whisper.  However it was brilliantly orchestrated by the owner, Howard Crittenden.  Almost mysteriously so for me.  Eleven years ago he closed it’s doors to the protests of Landmark Theatres, who ran the cinema, and a few local residents.  I left for college to New York and later Los Angeles.  Upon my return to the Bay Area and after so many had forgotten and so much neglect to the building Mr. Crittenden decided to destroy the Park.  A completely unintended last laugh.

“In a critique of the lamentable state of American cities, there can be no appeal to the nostalgia for lost traditions and ways of life; our appeal can be only to the future.  This should not necessarily excite optimism.” - James Brook (“Remarks on the Poetic Transformation of San Francisco”)

In an essay on the development and short history of US cities, San Francisco in particular, Mr. Brook makes reference to a man named Nicholas Calas a European writer who immigrated to New York City in the 1940’s.  Having come from the old world with endless history in the walls of buildings and the floor beneath his feet he couldn’t stop writing about how bizarre of a hogpog construction that was the Big Apple.  A city that came from nowhere and grew not from history, culture or organic construction, but from market flow.  In many ways Calas was correct that in 1940 New York was still quite young and San Francisco even younger.  Buildings and places develop their true characters only after their initial purpose has waned.  

In previous times humankind's constructions were made to outlive their makers as a way to personify the power and creation of that period.  Now real estate developers are driven by profit, which is driven by current market trends.  It is as if the moment construction is complete that a building is already a burden upon the owner for not being enough of a cash-cow.  California is perpetually changing with the tides.  Landmarks barely have a chance to find their true personalities before they are razed and forgotten.  As Brook mentions this leaves us with only the ability to look to the future.

Calas believed that the poetry of a city could be found in the forgotten spaces and "flow" from one wondering place to the next.  The accidental or intentional additions to a sidewalk that leads to a building that's followed by a path through a park.  This is what I saw in the Park Theatre.  After 50 years of movie goers, employees, accidents, violence and love.  It was in the walls.

If enough people love something can it ever be killed?

In an age where most people are regretting the slow fade out of the medium of celluloid film, for me, this overrated argument takes a back seat to the erasure of the elegant classic movie palaces that are now on the verge of extinction.  This is a thought that runs through my mind knowing that Mr. Crittenden is also the owner of the last remaining classic cinema palace in Menlo Park, the Guild; due to turn 90 in just about two years from now.  Will we be lamenting the destruction of that elegant construction in ten years time?

Movie palaces

Well, I'm already behind in my project for the Echo Park Film Center's LA AIR (artist in residence) program.  I have until Feb 28th to make a film.  I'm working with my buddy Ale again and he's made a great soundtrack.
I've shot just about everything I need (I think) and I'm editing.  I had to scrap the idea of shooting entirely on Single-8 fuji film, but I still shot some stuff on Single-8 and I'm waiting for it to get back to me.  Yet, I have to say every day that passes I'm less hopeful I'll get the footage in time to use it (and I even gave them a cool Kodachrome pin when I returned my footage - Retro8.com have been a huge hassle).

Well, now I am editing and thinking how daunting all my animation and FX work will be.  I want to add all the missing marquee sign and neon lights to what is up to 7 minutes of footage, but will likely be closer to 10 minutes.

These are the images I'm referencing.  The theatres include the Mason, Orpheum, Loew's State, the Philharmonic Auditorum, Olympic and Tower (during the Newsreel days).

Philharmonic Auditorum

Philharmonic Auditorum

Orpheum

The Philharmonic Auditorum has one of the most elaborate signs and lights of any of the downtown LA movie palaces.  It's actually really hard to tell from some pictures but the roof top sign is shifted back by about 20 feet and on the East most building and so it's just right of where you would enter and all the lights go up the building.  A little strangely positioned.

The Orpheum was originally a Vaudville house.  And the rooftop marquee used to have that in the title.  It also used to face both East and West because the old Central Station where people would get off after spending the last 3 days traveling from New York, Chicago or somewhere else was located directly East of here.  In the 30's Union Station was built where Chinatown was, Chinatown moved and so did a lot of interest in entertainment and business.  Lucky enough the Orpheum was restored and looks amazing.  But the "Vaudville" part is gone.

 The State used to be called "Loew's State".  Yes, the same as the Loew's theatre chain originally established by Marcus Loew.  The building used to have a sign that ran up to the top and a couple different entrances with signs directing you to them.  It was quite elaborate.

 The Mason was originally an Opera House back at the turn of the last century.  Later it became the first cinema in LA to be exclusively Mexican Cinema.  Now?  It's that giant hole of a block next to the LA Times building - ugly, stupid and anything would be better then that...even a parking lot!

A less remembered cinema, was not on the Broadway strip, but still interesting and found itself in a few movies over the decades.  The marquee is still there.  The building facade has changed (for the better), but the marquee is painted almost completely black.  It seems obvious that the owner wants to get rid of it.  Kinda sad.

 This is a quick mock up of how I want to put the Loew's State together.

And here is a postcard I made and came out with a nice fake neon and florescent glow look that I'm going to use for the actual film.

So, I have a lot of work ahead and I might not finish in time, but I think whatever I do get done will be amazing.

Single-8 film: a missed lover

A little history:
Single-8 film, one of the more rarely used stocks.  This was Fuji's version of Super 8.  So, to explain this a little, Kodak originally created S8 to be extremely easy to shoot for home movie purposes.  It came in a cartridge so there was no threading at all.  It was just like sticking a cassette into a tape deck.  They, of course, patented this cartridge so that no other company could manufacture the stock and therefore most camera companies made Super 8 cameras.
Fuji decided to make their own version of the cartridge and did so in such a way that you could do one or two of the functions that was impossible with the Kodak cartridge - namely run the film in reverse (this might seem simple and unnecessary, but can come in handy for camera tricks).  This warranted the need for Sinlge-8 cameras, which were only manufactured by Fuji.  This stock and cameras were really only popular in Japan.

As a film stock, Single-8 is identical to Super 8 except for the cartridge (and Fuji film has a polyester base where Kodak mostly has an acetate base).  So, once your film was processed and returned you could still use your Super 8 projector to run Single-8 film.

Last year Fuji discontinued the final stock of Single-8.  This was a time when I was struggling financially and therefore I could not purchase any film, sad to say.

Single-8 and me:
A couple years ago I met a generous and elegant filmmaker named Sky David through my involvement with the iotaCenter.  He told me he had quite a bit of film equipment that he wanted to get rid of and that included Sinlge-8 camera. So he inquired if I might know anyone who would want it.  I jumped at the opportunity and exclaimed that I would.  He quickly mailed me this extremely complex Fujica ZC1000.

But he also included 4 rolls of film, which I was not expecting.  They all referenced an expiration date of some time in the early 80's, which only added to my excitement receiving this treasure in the mail.  This was the first time in about 5 years or more that I had some film to shoot.  I still had my 16mm bolex (with light leaks) and a Super-8 camera that the motor was wearing down and only running intermittently.

So, I'd just been given my best working camera and film.  It took me some time, but I'd decided to finally shoot the rolls of film.  Some on my roof top (with an amazing skyline of downtown LA) and some in other places.  But then I was in a predicament.  I didn't know where I could process the rolls.

I'd contacted Retro8.com in Japan, but they'd quoted me something to the effect of $50/roll for processing.  So, $200.  No thanks. I looked into Rocky Mountain Film Labs, which normally is extremely helpful, but not in this case.  I searched and searched online for any processing information, but to no avail.  So, I just hung on to the rolls for almost two years - exposed, but unprocessed.

Eventually, I'd decided, for some reason, that I was going to try hand processing using the E-6 technique.  I got a small kit from Freestyle Photography in Hollywood and I did a snip test including these rolls and some other 16mm film I had in my arsenal.

To my surprise the only rolls that worked were the Fuji Single-8 film.


This ended up being some of the best stock I'd ever shot.  Specifically the Fujichrome R25N, which has a greenish tint to the stock.  Of course, you can see there are color shifts due to the old date of the stock and there seems to be some mold or something that animates about half way through, but it looks amazing!  I was in love....

Kodak usually ends up being more of an orange colored stock, but the R25N being green was really breath taking.  There was only one roll of RT200 and that ended up being kind of blue as well.  So, I was not as keen to that stock, but it was still fun to shoot.


The breakup:
From this experience it renewed my interest and desire to shoot some more film and as the Fuji camera was my only working camera I'd decided to get some more Single-8.  The only place I can still find some Fuji film and specially in the Single-8 cartridge is from Retro8.com based in Tokyo.

In November I decided to use this film for my current project with my residency at the Echo Park Film Center.  However in dealing with Retro8 over the past 3 months I've so many delays and frustrating occurrences with them that I can not use Single-8 film and finish the project on time.

Originally, I'd decided to get one of their variety packs.  I wanted to test each of the stocks that they had and then pick one to make my project with.  This consisted of the R25N, Cinevia 50, Cinevia 100 and Retro-X (b/w) all reversal stocks and some of them were custom made.

In particular the Cinevia 100, which I tried shooting and shooting and shooting, but something was wrong.  Eventually, I decided to test the stock to see if it was moving in the camera at all and I found out that the take-up side of the spool was not pulling the film through.

So, I had to send it back to Retro8 to fix.  Which took a few unanswered emails to figure out what to do and get it done (I even included a nice note in returning it and a Kodachrome pin I'd gotten from EPFC as a nice Japanese style gift, but that didn't seem to help).

This was back in early December and now 6 weeks later I have received nothing.  I was told that the cartridge was shipped before Christmas and I keep emailing Retro8 for updates, but they are always reluctant to respond and demanding that they shipped it off with no interest in trying to make this ordeal any better.

So, again, I have 3 rolls of exposed, but unprocessed film.  I paid $250 for these four rolls and that included processing.  So, I still have to go through the same BS when I have them processed.

Unfortunately, I payed them via paypal, which only gives you 45 days to dispute a charge.

And now it's too late to use the film for my project, which makes me very sad.  At this point I don't think I'll want to use Single-8 film again.  It's sad cause the moment I fell in love with it was also the moment that it became out of reach.  It's like a one-night-stand.  Leaves you happy, but wanting more and now they won't return my phone calls.

The only thing I'm trying to figure out is if I can recycle the old cartridges from the films I hand-processed.  That way I can use any film (and I have a roll of Kodachrome in a S8 cartridge - unexposed) and insert it into the Single-8 cartridge.  It seems doable, but I can't figure out how to pry the cartridge open without damaging it.  Then I'd also have to correctly put new film into it....in complete darkness.

Seems tricky, but I still want to try it.

Internal and External perceptions of LA

"I just want to be in a swimming pool, eating tacos and signing autographs" - "The Smithereens" the movie one of the down and out character's says about moving to LA while living in a scummy basement apartment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

They say that when you visit Venice, Italy you need to arrive at it by the sea.  Venice is a magical place where all your romantic impressions from movies and history come true.  And this perception is solidified if you literally approach it properly. I, on the other hand, arrived to Venice for the first time by train.  Which means I passed through Mestre before I got to Venice.  Actually, my hostel was in Mestre and I stopped off and walked around that city for a couple hours before departing for Venice.  If Venice is a magic dreamland then Mestre is an industrial nightmare.  Most cities have a mix of "nice" qualities and necessary, but "ugly" qualities, but when faced with a place that needs to exist as a fiction then all the necessary aspects of it get shoved into a nearby area and the local commerce tries as much as possible to get visitors to ignore it.  Or sometimes, like in the case of North Vegas, be afraid of it.
Still, I was absolutely glad I went through Mestre and got a chance to see what a completely rejected working class construction zone was like where there is practically nothing "nice" or "beautiful" about the entire place.  I guess it might seem strange, but I have never really agreed with most of society on these terms of "beauty", "good", "prosperity", etc.  Often I find things that are supposed to look beautiful to actually look very ugly and visa verse.  This particularly true with modern architecture.  As one of the last created cities on earth Los Angeles as some of the most diverse architecture and it can change dramatically within a span of 10 feet.

One of the most apt and concise descriptions of the conundrum of LA I found in a somewhat creative bureaucratic text book from 1955 titled  The Metropolis: Is Integration Possible? which is part of the series Metropolitan Los Angeles - A Study in Integration [the entire book is quite facinating because it give eloquent and complex descriptions for a purpose that is clearly supposed to be quite dry given chapters titled "Local Governments - Your Concern", "Water Supply - Your Heritage", "Protective Forces - Your Safety", etc]:

"Los Angeles and its environs are many things to many people.  The metropolis spreads out across the coastal plain and its surroundings valleys in a turning areas, farm lands and orchards, industrial centers and oil fields.  No other metropolitan area in the United States, or perhaps even the world, is so diversified and decentralized.  Consider the dilemma of the visitor from New York or Chicago who is completely at a loss because he can find no particular place to pause, as in Time Square or The Loop, and say to himself, 'This is Los Angeles'."

With such a short history as a city Los Angeles approaches itself in a very "modern" way.  If cities were humans who had personalities then Los Angeles reached adolescence and its most influential time period in the 1950's.  The biggest explosion of the cinema industry, automobiles, suburbs, microwave dinners and disposable products.  It is a disposable city.

How can a city express an adjective such as disposable? If you spend any time in virtually any city that is older then LA you quickly notice that there are a lot more older and classic buildings then in LA.  However, often, especially in California, many buildings are not necessarily older then LA, but they are much more cared for.  Simply spend some time in downtown Los Angeles and you can see a dozen buildings that are over 100 years old.  There are a few, like the Eastern Building, that are pristine and well cared for, elegant, beautiful and decadent.  However, there are hundreds of others that are decaying, rotting and falling apart.  Why?  It's quite easy.  Just like the City Market of LA (which I describe in a previous entry) many buildings in LA develop a certain amount of decay where it becomes more of a nuisance to repair then it is to destroy entirely and rebuild a new building entirely.  It a way it's a perpetual process.

Let's take a recent example at my armamada, the University of Southern California.  Just a few years ago they constructed a new Building for the Cinema School.  The Lucas building.  This was to replace the old Lucas building (both created from huge donations from, you guessed it, George Lucas).  The old building was only built sometime in the 80's, but just over 20 years later the University needed to fix so much in the building and, according to the Dean, there were so many new restrictions in relation to earthquake safety that it was cheaper and easier to just tear down that building and build a new one all together.  So, now the old building is just a memory.  It is disposable. Get rid of the old to make way for the new.  When the old is just out of style that it's an eyesore and just before it becomes beautiful again as a historic relic.

So, this is what real estate developers do.  They wait for a building to die, in a sense.  They want a building to become an eyesore (or become a hazard) in some cases for much older buildings that have a historic value to it.  That way they can bypass city laws forbidding destruction of historical landmarks.  It might take 5 or 10 years, but eventually they will have their way and the city looses more of it's historic culture and instead is replaced with the cookie cutter machine of big industry where everything should look the same. Every Walmart looks the same, every high rise, every 7-11 and eventually everything will look and be the same.

Enjoy it while we can.

Obituary for the LA City Market

For those who don't know. The most amazing complexes in the entire city of LA is the City Market of Los Angeles. This is the long giant two square block complex of loading docks that appears to be at least 80 years of age. Surrounded by San Pedro, 9th, 11th and San Julian streets the complex is one of the most negelected, over used and amazing constructs. More then anything this building represents the beauty of collective construction, neglect and pieced together necessity. More specifically the entire place was originally used for loading and unloading of goods. Huge trucks would move in and out during the peak of it's life time.  There were a few major accidents and thousands of minor accidents most were left as is and only a few times did the owners decide to try fix any damage done.

It was originally build to house businesses and make it easy for trucks, vans and other vehicles move in and out.  Chances are there were at least a few dozen deaths and maybe even one or two murders within the life of the premises.  It also appears that there there a few different parts of the building that once had extensions to it.  Therefore, there are some walls and doors that were once interior, but for some reason or other a part of the building needed to come down and now the wall or door was exposed to the outside world when it was not intended to.
The image to the right is a perfect example of a walk-in fridge door that was no longer in use and mix of laziness necessity to keep the door permanently closed someone decided to use a 2x4 to block it off and the need to mask the wall as much as possible by painting it the light camouflage green in order to conceal the door just enough so that people won't casually notice.  In a way this turns into that "truth is stranger than fiction" or I would call it "accident is more beautiful than art".  What artists in their right mind would even think of creating a door and even creating a door in such a fashion?  And yet I have never seen anything so beautiful.

So, now in it's latter years with an inch thick layer or rust and it's 10th coat of paint the owners have decided to tear it down.  It's age has reached the eclipsing point where the asphalt that was crudely added in the 60's or 70's has worn away enough for the elegant tiled brick ground to peak through and just a tiny amount of the old railway has shown through as well.  Now the complex if half gone.  The amazing Art Deco sign has turned in to a vulgar Billboard and the cranes have already ripped apart the entire north corridor of the complex.

In speaking with one of the owners I mentioned that this is one of my favorite places in LA he replied "Ya, but it's unsafe."  And it was the most obvious explanation that made me realize and masochism of my aesthetic appreciation.  Reason why I love this place is 1) because if has an old classic look to it (in a strange way it's like being in Italy - but this is a totally different time period) and 2) it's totally neglected.  There were hundreds of thousands of decisions that lead to people decided to clean something up either in a half-assed fashion or deciding not to fix something at all!  AND this is the very reason why it must be destroyed.  There is simply no way for this space to be usable and safe.  It's like an old dog that you love, but it's so old that it's body hurts by just existing.  You can't be so selfish to keep it around when it's in so much pain.  It must be euthanized.  Still, I'll always wish I had more time with it.

When I first saw that space I knew I wanted to have a crazy huge installation of art, video projections, DJ's - just one crazy huge festival of art and music. Certainly, the best time to visit is night. Unfortunately, that will have to be left to my dreams.

Good-bye, old friend.

Documentation of the disappearance of the most beautiful structure in LA

Can you spot what is missing from the right side that's in the left?
This is probably my favorite spot in the whole world. I've been shooting here for quite a while and one day I came along and noticed that the most beautiful piece of this area is now gone.