Hundreds of people evacuated the Landmark Theatres in the Westside Pavilion tonight after a fire alarm sounded, but firefighters found no sign of a blaze or other emergency, a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman said.
“We have responded out there to investigate an alarm that has gone off several times. There are no reports of fire or hazards at this time. They’ll make sure the situation is stable before clearing the scene,” Myers said.
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“Movies,” says the narrator of Billy Taylor’s enormously entertaining debut novel, referring to the making of them, “are about chasing tornadoes and trying to catch something magical before the trailer park is destroyed.”
“We called ourselves filmmakers, but our jobs had so little to do with making good movies,” says Bobby Conlon, the key grip on a film called Aquarena Springs, the story of an English professor’s marital meltdown with a key scene set against the backdrop of the aging San Marcos, Texas, water attraction, featuring the late, lamented Ralph the Swimming Pig.
Since bull (and pig) excrement rolls downhill, a lot of it piles up on Bobby, who is paid to keep temperamental directors of photography relatively happy, setting up lights and dolly shots and cranes and taking their “slime.”
Bobby, a veteran of many film and TV shoots good and bad over a couple of decades, is getting close to the end credits. His producer wife is having an affair with a hot young director that Bobby introduced her to.
Bobby’s boss on Aquarena Springs, a true genius with a lens, is a diabolical Polish Nazi who himself wants to direct. But after the confused but well-meaning British theatrical director is fired from his first film job, who does the production company bring in to wrap things? You guessed it. The wife’s new boyfriend. Billy’s now buried in it.
Taylor, a soft-spoken, affable man of 47, knows of what he writes. A graduate of the Film Program at the State University of New York, Taylor has worked crew on dozens of films, two of the better being My Cousin Vinny and the original PeeWee’s Playhouse TV series.
“The worst thing about film school,” Taylor writes in his novel, “is that it gives you a taste of what it’s like to direct. And oh, what a sweet and addictive flavor that is. There’s no greater rush on this planet than leaning forward and saying, ‘Action.’ It’s honey, sex and heroin combined.”
Here’s the satirical core of Based on the Movie: the film business is a bunch of overeducated artsysmarties trying to figure out what the masses will pay to see.
Shooting on Aquarena Springs, which Bobby Conlon, through a series of Machiavellian, manhood-crushing machinations, finds himself quietly backseat-directing, continues, even though this ain’t the set of Kissin’ Cousins.
With Based on the Movie, Taylor has done us the favor of dispensing with the “magic” of moviemaking and made it indelibly clear that creating memorable cinema has a lot more in common with stuffing tasty hot links than, say, building a cathedral.
Plus, there is a healthy dose of tawdry sex and lots of gratuitous talk about having it or having had it. It’s the sort of adult comedy that falls somewhere between Mike Nichols and Judd Apatow. Thumbs up.
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After spending a few minutes browsing aisles of books at McGinley Memorial Library, it’s easy to forget that long ago the place was a movie theater where people lived out today’s distant memories.
But in the same way that Sparky, the 19-year-old library cat sleeping unobtrusively under the checkout counter, is easy to miss when you walk in, so are the clues of the building’s past.
The shape of the room - narrow and deep, is easy to envision filled with rows of seats and a screen in the back where a mother and two children now read.
And the door of an interior room still has a “Crying Room†sign on it.
Betty Crelia, library director, explains that movie theaters in the old days often had a room where mothers could take their crying children to quiet them, or nurse them. The room was equipped with speakers so they could still listen to the movie.
But if there are few clues of the building’s past in the main room, the same cannot be said of the projection booth and balcony, accessible by way of dusty, creaky stairs up a dark stairwell.
The projection room was left as it was when the building was acquired for a library. In it are two large projectors, a rewinding and splicing machine and other movie paraphernalia.
The balcony, although used for storage now, still has its original seats and other vestiges of times that were much different than they are today.
“When this theater was here, black people sat on one side and this was the only place they could watch the movie,†she explained.
Instead of a view of folks sitting below the balcony, the view now is of insulation and ductwork above the library’s ceiling, although the walls above the insulation level show rainbow colors and patterns from the original theater’s paint job.
“This is exactly as we found it 23 years ago when we started working on the library,†Ms. Crelia says, pointing out the two projectors. “One reel would be showing the movie and the other would take over when the reel would run out.â€
The projector room is small and cramped and the projectors still contain ash from the carbon arc method used to light them. Cabinets still contain material and parts for the projectors, as well as books the projectionist probably read while at work.
The Ritz Theater projection room also contains an old Ritz neon sign and a poster board displaying old candy wrappers found at the theater.
She remembers the year the theater opened very well. It was the year color movies came to town for the first time and the year she and her husband were married.
“I remember we were excited because we grew up on silent movies,†she said. “And then I remember the Ritz showed the color pictures, too.â€
She said the Texas Theater around the corner, which at the time was the only theater in town, showed mainly black and white silent films, which she said she also loved.
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