The Bing Theater with a wall listing a few of the museum's donors

Leo S. Bing Center

Inside the Bing Theater







*The “Subway to the Sea” is scheduled to reach the VA – still six kilometers from the sea – in 2035. Meanwhile, the light rail alternative Metro Expo Line will be celebrating twenty years of seaside service.

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A recent viewing ofreminded me of just what a good idea it is for people who work at home (and perhaps have a bit of a tough time pulling themselves away from work) to forgo all work for occasional play. I also regularly suffer from a sort of paralysis that occurs when I try to figure out which of the hundreds (maybe thousands) of daily cultural events and then stay home. A good place for cineastes to check out is, a website which lists most of the special film events taking place around town. After checking the site and seeing the namesand, I decided before paralysis could take hold to take theto’s(incidentally one of the few local movie theaters that doesn’t go for the pretentious, supposedly (because it’s nearly ubiquitous) “chiefly” spelling of “theatre”) to see(1949).I’ve been to the Bing Theater a few times before. On the most memorable occasion I saw(마더,2009) there, a film directed by masterful genre-blender(who, it also transpired, was sitting next to me. On the other side, by the way, was). That film screened back when the Bing Theater still had regular weekend screenings of films by the likes of, and. Sadly, the current CEO and director of the museum decided to pull the plug on the screenings -- faced as he was with declining attendance and the inability to find sufficient funding to continue what his predecessors had successfully done for more than four decades. (Here’s a thought: concession stands provide 85% of the profits for most successful cinemas and it’s frankly perverse watching a movie without popcorn or).Although many bigfilmmakers predictably expressed their dismay with the killing of the program, apparently they were less willing to loosen their purse and neither were the usual big-money donors. Luckily, the Bing Theater still hasfor just $4 and occasional special screenings attached to art exhibitions. In the meantime there’s a petition to return the weekend screenings ().The Bing Theater is located, along with the, inside the, one of the three original buildings (alongside theand the(since renamed the)) designed by mid-century futurist– the guy who designed’s iconic, much of the campus of, and (with, and), theatLACMA opened in its present location in 1965 along a stretch ofin’sneighborhood that came to be known as(after it was joined by the, the, the, the, and the. Before that, thehad been located atinsince 1910. Its move in theto thearea was part of a greater cultural and capital shift away from the vicinityvicinity towardand theduring the mid-20th Century.The theater itself is a 600-seat, single-screen cinema equipped withandcapabilities and various projects film and video formats. I took, which conveniently drops riders off at the intersection of(wherewas gunned down in 1997). In another ten years, the Metro Purple Line (aka*) is scheduled to arrive at the intersection because apparently digging a subway tunnel with spoons and chopsticks is easier than changing a stupid, century-old law regarding the city’s primary east-west street that states:No railroad or pipe line franchise shall ever be granted, and no railroad track or pipe line shall ever be laid or constructed, except water pipes, sewers, gas mains and conduits for telephone and electric wires, for service of the property fronting on said boulevards and house connections and connections of water, sewers, and gas pipe lines, or conduits for telephone and electric wires on intersecting streets.Shockproof turned out to be highly enjoyable – wonderfully welding Fuller’s pulpy sensibility to Sirk’s melodramatic style. I’d guess that the average age of the audience was somewhere around 65 years old and one of the only people around who looked decidedly too young for retirement looked suspiciously like(although I couldn’t be sure since I’ve never seen him at a talkie before).Other members of the eccentric crowd included a guy wearing a fur-lined hunting cap (the temperature outside was somewhere in the mid-20s… Celsius). Another had an elaborate comb-over fashioned from and consisting of a single dreadlock arranged like a bouffant and attached to a visor. He snacked from a baggy full of sliced mangos (again, why no concession stand?) Behind me a man behind me grew increasingly aggitated, asking in an irritated voice that grew progressively louder, “So? …so what? …WHO CARES?!” Turning around and expecting to see either aor someone whispering into nasty nothings into his ear, I instead discovered that the nagging voice was apparently coming from within his head. Thankfully both were quiet once the film began.There was considerable clapping throughout many of the film’s opening minutes. “Directed by Douglas Sirk” was followed by a round of applause. Written byand Samuel Fuller – cue a second round of clapping. A shot of “Hollywood Blvd.” painted on a curb – more clapping. The interior of the– another uproar. When the site of’s gams produced another paroxysm, I wondered how long thisexercise would continue. The appearance ofwas thankfully followed by the last clap although someone later blurted out “the room is dark!” – which was both a statement of fact and a helpful reminder for those otherwise too wrapped up in the film.After the film ended, the walker-heavy audience shuffled slowly toward the exit – often struggling to reach past their walking aids to open the non-automated doors and slowing the flow of filmgoers to a point that I honestly thought that I might lose my balance and topple over.I attempted to return home on the 720, but was turned away with several others because the bus was too full. I took the alternative, not-rapid (and less-full), which stops about every eight feet and crawls along only slightly faster than the Bing’s audience. Our already slow progress ground to a halt when the driver of a minivan (license plate) attempted to merge his vehicle with a bus and found it impossible. Rather than exchange information, the driver crawled away with comical slowness through gridlock to a red light about twenty feet from the scene of the accident as the bus driver calmly looked on (those buses are equipped with interior and exterior cameras). At that point I decided to walk acrossand, neighboring enclaves whose uniquely Los Angeles mash-up was perfectly embodied by a Bengali boy in a dobok.As I trekked across the area I thought about the Bing Theater and Los Angeles, the so-called “” and where our great theaters fit into the larger picture. Los Angeles has been home to 369 movie theaters -- 307 of which have closed, 171 of which are demolished, and only 43 are currently showing films. More than the crummy, the fairly lame, or the 35-year-old replica Hollywood real estate sign, the city’s movie theaters are arguably the greatest legacy and embodiment of the city’s cinematic soul. Today the– the first and largest historic theater district listed on the– is home to only concentration ofin the country (twelve in six blocks). For now the Bing Theater remains a small but important part of that fabric but seems to be heading in the opposite direction.Los Angeles has a great legacy of placing importance on private space which I respect. But asincreasingly ditch cars for public transit and single-residence suburban bungalows for urban, mixed-users, hopefully they’ll also remember how much better it is to watch almost anything in a public cinema than streamed on a smartphone.Shockproof is available on DVD in(which also includes, and