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Quentin Tarantino loves movies the way some husbands and wives love their respective spouses – with a deep and abiding love that is palpable. One of my favorite stories about the director of Pulp Fiction and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is from author Peter Biskind’s masterpiece of a book Down and Dirty Pictures. Within its pages, Biskind relates a story of a filmmaker trekking out to Tarantino’s lavish estate to watch some undisclosed film. Knowing of the former video clerk’s encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood, the fellow cineaste couldn’t help but speculate on which classic film would be on his friend’s dance card: Breathless? The Godfather? Annie Hall? The Seventh Seal? The possibilities seemed endless and Tarantino’s cohort braced himself for an evening of enlightenment and high culture. The punchline to this particular joke is that, upon arriving at the manse of the newly minted wunderkind director, this industry stalwart was gob-smacked to discover that the director re-writing the rules of Hollywood movies was happily ensconced with a viewing of one of the cheesier Lifetime Movies (think Mother, May I Please Sleep with Danger); The moral of the story here being that, to Quentin Tarantino, all movies are created equal and his love does indeed know no bounds, especially as it pertains to the sacred cathedrals where film is unspooled in front of rapt audiences: Which brings us to our above trumpeted headline…
According to our pals over at Variety, director Quentin Tarantino – already the proud owner of movie theatre the New Beverly – has come to the rescue of the Los Angeles landmark Vista Theatre, which was in peril of closing its doors forever due to the ravages of COVID-19.
Tarantino announced his purchase of the Vista while stumping on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast for his upcoming novelization on his film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, saying that he had indeed purchased the one screen film venue in Los Feliz and that he hoped to have it up and running around Christmas.
“When we opened up the New Beverly about two weeks ago, in June, we sold out every single show. And I’ll announce one thing here that people don’t know yet: I bought the Vista. We’re going to probably open it up around Christmastime. And again, only film,” Tarantino said, asserting that – thank the Cinema Gods – any films shown at the newly reopened Vista will only be featured in film, not in the ever-prevalent digital which most theatres have turned to. “But it won’t be a revival house – we’ll show new movies that come out where they give us a film print, we’ll show new stuff. It’s not going to be like the New Beverly, the New Beverly has its own vibe. The Vista is like a crown jewel kind of thing. So it will be the best prints, we’ll show older films, but they’ll be like older films where you can hold a fortnight engagement.”
Congratulations and thank you to Mr. Quentin Tarantino for preserving another piece of our slowly vanishing pop culture landscape. Now get the film queued up for Lifetime’s Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever or Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear and I’ll bring a heapin’ helping of box popcorn to seal the deal!
