Scott Pilgrim's lightning-fast path from box office bomb to local cult revival speaks to the fact that one reliable way to motivate Los Angeles audiences is by turning a movie into an event. That's something at which Cinefamily, with its all-night marathons and back-patio post-movie parties, has excelled. As Belove contemplates expanding the brand, he says he thinks they could do even better if they moved out of that tight geographic cluster and closer to the conclaves teeming with members of the culturally curious breed known as the hipster. "L.A. has shifted east," Belove says.
For the younger-skewing genre films he acquires for Magnolia's Magnet label, Quinn agrees. "Los Feliz [is] where you need to be. It's hard to book, because there's a limited number of theaters there. But that's where the audience is."
PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN
PHOTO BY Anne Fishbein
Greg Laemmle
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Belove says it's a "well-known secret" that a number of parties are trying to figure out how to serve that audience in their backyard. "That neighborhood should be like the Village in Manhattan. The first person to open an art house triplex near Los Feliz is going to do just fine."
Expansion funds are an issue for the nonprofit Cinefamily, and Belove is concerned that although their audience may be east, "The wealth of Los Angeles is in West Hollywood and West L.A. Generally, when somebody donates, they want to be able to drive by the theater and see the fruits of their generosity."
Still, he says, "Someone's gonna do it, and it would be a shame if it wasn't with us."
That someone could be Tim League, CEO of the Alamo Drafthouse, a Texas-based chain of theaters that, with their fun-film bent and kitchens serving booze and food during all screenings, offer a party atmosphere that appeals to fanboy nerds and highbrow cinema connoisseurs alike. Nationally regarded as a force for good in the fight to keep film culture thriving, League confirms rumors that he's hunting for an L.A. location for an Alamo Drafthouse expansion. "We'd like to be out there," he says. "We're looking."
But some aren't so sure that what this landscape needs is more screens.
Lorber speculates that the problem may be less geographic than generational: "The question is whether the young hipsters, so to speak, are actually interested in seeing films like Dogtooth. We're all hopeful, new venues are great, [but] the question is just whether 20-somethings who grew up with the Internet really want to go to the movies. It's going to be interesting if the filmgoing culture is sustainable in these new communities."
Speaking before Dogtooth's opening-night sellout, Belove had faith. "Hipsters are poor, and hipsters know how to download, so maybe that makes them harder to get. But on the other hand, these are the most curious, active people. If something is new and interesting, they'll show up. I've seen it."
In its full one-week run at Cinefamily, Dogtooth grossed $16,030 — and that was from just one or two shows a day, compared to the three to five shows it played in New York, where its opening weekend grossed less than $7,000. That enormous success probably had something to do with timing — the second week of January was the perfect time to capitalize on Dogtooth's placement on many critics' year-end best-of lists, including my own — but it's also unquestionable evidence that it is possible to bring an obscure art film with cult cachet to L.A. and attract a young audience whose evangelism to friends via social networks like Twitter can then keep a house nearly full all week long. As a result of Dogtooth's success at Cinefamily, Laemmle scheduled a series of weekend morning shows at its theaters in Pasadena and Santa Monica. Two weeks later, the film became a surprise nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Suddenly a film that for so long was a victim of the unique challenges to the L.A. market is now the embodiment of how to face those challenges smartly — and win. As Kino's Palmucci wrote in an e-mail once the final totals for the week were in, "We may have to rethink this whole L.A. exhibition scene."
This successful first-run experiment could point to a future path for Cinefamily. "Because L.A.'s so spread out, and a lot of the distributors are New York–based, it's harder for them to work L.A.'s weird market," Belove says. "So maybe a function that we're going to have is to help them spread the word to the people who would be interested."
Of all the word-spreading via Twitter occasioned by the Cinefamily run, one opening-night micromissive from @spinenumber408 best summed up the sense of celebratory relief that a film like Dogtooth could fill an L.A. house: "The turnout tonight for DOGTOOTH at @cinefamily is proof that we, in L.A., sometimes can have nice things."
The key to having "nice things" may be to think of access to films like Dogtooth not as an inalienable right but as a privilege. The less we take advantage of that privilege, the greater the chance that it could disappear.
