TCL Chinese Theatre

@Bigjoe: IMAX has repositioned themselves to have a new release every week. So they’ll be fine.

Hello From NYC-

i hope this isn’t a silly question. if the auditorium is being done over into an IMAX theater does that mean it can only play IMAX movies? if that is correct then doesn’t that limit the commercial viability of the theater?

That was the real thing, not a replica.

bigjoe59: I don’t know of any other reserved seat engagements at the Wiltern, but it seems likely that there could have been a few. It is a big, palatial theater in a district that, until the late 1950s, still had a number of fairly posh neighborhoods nearby.

It’s likely that quite a few roadshows were hosted at theaters in downtown Los Angeles as well, but not in recent memory. The last hard ticket movie downtown that I know of was in the mid-1950s, when Todd-AO was installed in the United Artists Theatre and the house shared the reserved seat engagement of Oklahoma with the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. It ran five weeks exclusively at the Egyptian, then ran in both houses for 46 weeks, then an additional six weeks exclusively at the United Artists.

There are quite a few engagements and roadshow listings here:

http://fromscripttodvd.com/70mm_in_los_angeles_main_page.htm

bigjoe59: The Chinese hosted some roadshow engagements other than West Side Story over the years, but the only ones I recall offhand were Hello Dolly and Windjammer. By the late 1950s, which is as far back as my personal experience of Hollywood Boulevard goes, roadshow engagements were much more likely to be booked at the Egyptian or the Pantages or even the Paramount (now El Capitan) than at the Chinese. The Warner Hollywood got all the Cinerama roadshows of course, until the Cinerama Dome opened.

Hard ticket engagements also took place at some theaters outside Hollywood, usually at houses on or near Wilshire Boulevard. The Carthay Circle was the most notable roadshow house outside Hollywood, but there were also quite a few hard ticket engagements at the Fox Wilshire and the Warner Beverly Hills, and even at a few smaller theaters.

Hello From NYC-

a history question. down thru the years Grauman’s Chinese(i refuse to call it by any other name) hosted many exclusive first run engagements of big films when studios still opened their big releases in only one theater. this is where my question comes in- other than the roadshow engagement of “West Side Story” did the Chinese host any other roadshow engagements?

Folks, I propose a little more tolerance and a little less nit-picking (sp?) Let’s stay on subject here, which is the Chinese. I have my settings so I get notified if people post here, but it is a waste of my time to read petty spelling and word choices. I can find that on any chat on the internet! We should be able to rise above this on CT, since we have so much in common!

Speaking of the Chinese, for those in the Hollywood area, the Chinese is offering Hard Hat tours during construction. I have no idea what parts of the theatre will be on the tour, and it will probably change as the process continues, but it might be of interest! You can buy tickets at the link at the bottom of this page: http://www.tclchinesetheatres.com

That’s correct. They are making the audience slightly steeper, lowering the front into part of the basement (the orchestra pit was removed long ago, and the screen already has taken most of the original stage area). They are also raising the back rows up to where they used to be. Originally the back rows were at the same level as the lobby, then it sloped down to the orchestra pit. At some point the seating area was leveled, so you had to go down a flight of steps before getting to the back row. So in a sense the new seating will more closely reflect the original! It will be a HUGE screen, I’m sure it will be bright and high rez since the whole point of this renovation is to make it once again the state of-the-art, best place to see a movie!

I wonder what Sid’s ghost will think of IMAX. There are many who say the place is haunted.

I think this is one of those projects where we really have to wait and see how it turns out. It could be great or it could be a disaster (Egyptian theater). I just hope that when I walk into this new Grauman’s it won’t be like they forcefully jammed an IMAX theater inside.

Alright, went to the LAHTF tour of the Chinese this morning and got some info that may or may not be of comfort to people. I got a moment to talk to one the main presenters (not a tour guide, but one of the guys who seemed to be working with the new managers on the retrofit) and asked him a few questions. Now, again, these answers don’t come from the source, but they come from a source WORKING with the source.

First, I asked about the curtain and he seemed to think (as did a few people there) that they would be replicating the Chinese’s curtain, only longer to cover the full IMAX height (as can be seen in the Curbed LA link Chris posted above). I asked if they would also be including top and bottom masking so that they could bring the screen ratio back to a normal scope ratio when not showing IMAX (or when simply showing 2.40:1 in the IMAX frame, ala Trek ‘08). He was less sure about that, but still seemed more positive than not.

With regard to the bookings… IMAX will be booking this theater directly. Basically… if it opens in IMAX, it opens at the Chinese. It certainly appears that the Chinese is going to co-book with Arclight for most movies (and maybe the El Capitan). I look at this as potentially great news because it’s going to force the Arclight to stop all the 3D in the Dome non-sense. I can’t imagine most people willing to sit through mediocre 3D in the Dome when far superior 3D on a bigger screen is going to be just a few minutes down the street. If given the choice between 3D IMAX or 2D Dome, I’ll take 2D Dome. I hope this forces that option.

As for the renovation, I’m kind of OK with it for a few reasons. A) The Chinese has always been a theater to keep up with film as it evolved. In 1958 they destroyed the proscenium and widened the screen to 92' for Windjammer and that’s about the width we’ve been accustomed to with modern widescreen movies (actually 35mm and 70mm was usually closer to 75/85'‘ wide if the numbers I found are correct). This is no different except they’re going 'down’ instead of ‘across’ this time. B) They’re not going to be disturbing any of the walls/ceiling/ornamentation (quite the opposite… they’re actually fixing things that have been neglected for years) and C) the slope of the auditorium is not going to be nearly as drastic (and “stadium-y” as I once believed it would. Basically they are going to go down about 10/12' into the basement and bring the back of the auditorium back up to the lobby level. It’s going to be much more gradual than a traditional IMAX theater. It seems like the screen is actually going to have a ratio of approximately 2:1. Not the super tall 1.4:1 that Universal and The Rave have. I could be wrong about that, but with a screen 95' wide and only going down another 10/12', it’s going to make the screen height about 45/50'. And while they’re taking out all of the old seats (which need it) they’re even exploring finding high back chairs that look the same.

Overall, would I rather have the Chinese of my youth when it was THE most happening theater in world and could consistently draw the big crowds with the latest and greatest blockbusters? Sure, but just as television put the hurt on them and forced them to adapt to widescreen to survive and thrive… so it seems that the multiplex has nearly choked the life out of it again and without the IMAX conversion, the Chinese would be in danger of becoming the world’s most famous looking office building. The good news is that the surgery to save her this time is minor and mostly plastic.

I took a bunch of pics throughout the tour, if you’d like to see what she still looks like for another 10 days, be my guest: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4726283275338.1073741825.1242342310&type=1&l=a1d0847221