The Arclight goes out

I don't live in Los Angeles anymore. Haven't for nearly eight years now.

But that doesn't mean it's not a sad, sad day for me.

Arclight Cinemas -- the chain that brought arthouse films to the masses with high-end auditoriums, comfortable seats and taking your beer into the movies with you -- has declared it is going under.

The actual wording in their statement is "not reopening" and "handing the keys back to the landlord." This last suggests maybe the announcement is a negotiating tactic, to bring attention to the company's financial plight in the hopes that someone will swoop in either to save it, or to put pressure on the landlords.

So there's some hope. But we can't really bank on the continued existence of one of the most prestigious and well-liked chains if you liked good cinema.

I was a regular Arclight customer. The flagship location in Hollywood was only a special occasion visit, since it wasn't particularly near anywhere I lived. But its world-famous Cineramadome, which had the world's largest contoured screen, was a great place to take in an epic spectacle (I saw Peter Jackson's King Kong there, among others). One suspects that will continue to operate as a cinema, even if under new ownership.

But Arclights kept on popping up near where I lived, most recently the one in Sherman Oaks, which was only a couple miles from where I lived in Van Nuys at the end of my time in L.A. The locations were known for their dramatic appearances, with lobbies that had 60-foot ceilings, opulent bars and eating areas, and a beautiful shade of mahogany wood paneling throughout. The Arclight screamed refinement. 

They were also one of the first places I can remember having stadium seating, comfortable reclining chairs, and a minimum of pre-show ads. It was the perfect place for a movie date night, even in if your date was a sophisticate you would not normally take to the movies.

Arclight started out primarily as a purveyor of arthouse films, but that model was not sustainable with the number of screens each location had. Pretty soon they were just as likely to have Star Wars on five screens as the next place, by necessity. However, even in its later years, you could always find a new buzzed about Oscar hopeful that had not gotten a wide release yet, or an indie darling people were only just starting to discover. It was the kind of place where you knew you'd love the experience, even if you didn't love the movie.

The timing of this announcement is particularly sad, as L.A. is finally reopening its cinemas and aiming toward full capacity in June. After a year of not going to the movies, Angelenos were certainly ready to fill the seats at their local Arclight. In fact, the Hollywood Arclight was, I've just read, the most profitable single theatrical location in the whole country.

But like so many things that have faded, steadily or abruptly, from the landscape during COVID, now so too does the Arclight go down that path.

I really hope that this is something, collectively, we can't afford to lose from the cinematic landscape. Which means that indeed, we may reasonably expect some swooping, and hopefully, some saving of the Arclight.

If they brought back Twinkies from the edge of extermination, maybe they can bring this back as well. 

The dumbing down of Arclight Cinemas

Tomorrow night I'm scheduled to catch one of my final true theatrical priorities among 2011 movies: The Adventures of Tintin. In fact, I'm even thinking of making it an (illegal) Steven Spielberg double feature, following up the 7:30 Tintin with a 9:30 War Horse -- even though it's asking for trouble to start a 146-minute movie at 9:30 p.m.

A friend gave me a $20 gift card to Arclight Cinemas for Christmas, so I was originally going to use this to visit the nearby Arclight location known as "Arclight Beach Cities" in Manhattan Beach. In fact, I may still, but I think the times work out better at the theater mentioned above (in downtown Culver City).

Scanning the movie options at Arclight Beach Cities, however, I came to a rather disappointing realization:

Arclight isn't arthouse anymore.

And in fact, the "arthouse multiplex" -- a concept that only a big city like Los Angeles can support -- may no longer be supportable after all.

Before we go any further, I should tell you all a little bit about Arclight Cinemas.

The original Arclight is in Hollywood, where it is and has been the crown jewel of Hollywood moviegoing. It's got something like 14 screens on two floors -- well, three floors really, as the main floor has only the ticket windows and a restaurant, and you can take escalators either up or down to catch your movie. The lobby is simply breathtaking:


In its heyday, not only did the Arclight offer the latest in independent cinema and limited releases, but it also pioneered a concept about seating that I think is rather brilliant. (It was the first I was aware of to do this, anyway.) If you are late for the show, you simply won't be seated. So below each movie on the screen you see here, it says things like "Now available for seating" and "NOT available for seating." It's all part of Arclight's mission to give you a luxurious moviegoing experience, uninterrupted by jackasses picking their way to their seats five minutes after the movie has started. It's also one of the first places I remember seeing gourmet food at a movie theater -- you can get a chicken-apple sausage sandwich with watermelon salsa. Believe me, it's good.

You do pay extra for all these frills, but they're worth it. More worth it than anything was that Arclight carried movies I couldn't find elsewhere, because they had not yet reached the regular multiplexes, and probably never would. It was even worth the 30- to 45-minute trip to Hollywood.

But as is the case with any successful concept, it expanded. The Arclight concept is now in three other locations -- Sherman Oaks, which is in the San Fernando Valley; Pasadena; and the aforementioned Beach Cities in Manhattan Beach. Each of these locations has steadily watered down the concept a little bit, leaving that grandiose clock and the color of the wood paneling as the signature Arclight detail, not the movies they show.

But I didn't think it had gotten this pedestrian. Here's what's currently playing in Arclight Beach Cities:

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
Hugo
New Year's Eve
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
The Adventures of Tintin
The Artist
The Descendants
The Devil Inside
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
War Horse
We Bought a Zoo
Young Adult

Perhaps this list of movies does not leaving you gasping with incredulity. I mean, there are some movies in there that were not widely carried at other theaters, such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But TTSS is not what I'm talking about when I think of Arclight's unique, rare offerings of yore. The Descendants and The Artist may not have made it into every backwater multiplex in the country, but they are also two of the frontrunners for best picture, meaning Arclight can't claim it as a novelty to carry them. (Especially since I saw The Descendants in the theater before Thanksgiving.)

The movie that really concerns me on this list, however, is The Devil Inside.

When the movie that claimed the honor of "first wide release of 2012" came out last Friday, the only thing I could think to write about it, in my normal Friday spot, was to make an INXS joke. So I didn't.

Since then, I've thought of two other things:

1) So, are we going to get movies about demons possessing religious people every January from now on? (See The Rite in 2011).

2) So, does the first movie of the calendar year really need to be shown by Arclight?

This, more than any of the other titles on that list, is what worries me that Arclight is slowly but surely morphing into Just Another Theater Chain. If that happens, I'll be really sad to see it.

I think it's indicative of two dispiriting trends, one of which is probably more important than the other in terms of guiding Arclight in its choices about what to screen. The most important trend is, of course, the economy, or more broadly, the times we live in. A large theater trying to stay afloat in a tough economy, and competing with a myriad of sophisticated home video options, simply must take on its share of crowd pleasers in order to turn a profit. The Twilights (which probably played at all the Arclights) prop up the theater and give it the opportunity to play the Take Shelters.

The second trend that worries me, however, is that I suspect the audiences are really getting increasingly less sophisticated, and increasingly in need of popcorn movies as opposed to the acquired taste of the nourishment provided by independent cinema. I have no evidence of this, at least none that is concrete. But I think it's a legitimate worry.

However, before you lose all hope that a multiplex devoted to arthouse movies can survive in this economic climate, I should let you know that the original Arclight still gives us hope.

The Arclight in Hollywood is currently playing Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Iron Lady, two movies that have not yet had their wide release, and is the only theater I'm aware of playing Pariah, which I'd really like to see in the theater but probably won't. It's also in the midst of a one-week return engagement for Drive, for people who like that movie.

However, even the Arclight in Hollywood is playing The Devil Inside.

I'll just try to think of The Devil Inside as the devil that must exist inside the Arclight, allowing it to shine the rest of its light of angelic, cinematic goodness.