Cinema and Los Angeles
As the fall winds along, and the summer recedes into the past, the furor over the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s embattled film program gradually diminishes. And, yet, the museum, which is the largest of its kind west of the Mississippi River, and which has had a vibrant film program for more than forty years, ignited a firestorm when Michael Govan, the museum’s director, decided to cancel film screenings because of apparently declining attendance and an annual program deficit of approximately $100,000. Film at LACMA (as the museum is called) had become a line item on a spread sheet, a number in the red, an unnecessary expenditure, nothing more. This was unfortunate; cutting spending always seems to be the immediate purview and the reaction in dire times of directors, foundation boards, governors, deans of colleges, presidents, and CEOs, and yet there are many occasions in which the line item, the red number, mean more than just a problem to be solved.
Los Angeles, of course, is the center of the U.S. film industry, the locus of a nationally and globally dominant cultural machine, but it can be a fairly rich place for those of us who prefer international, art-house, and repertory cinema over the bulk of current mainstream films that the studios here generate. We have venues such as the Nuart on Santa Monica Boulevard, the Landmark on Pico (thanks to Mark Cuban, no less), the American Cinematheque, the Red Cat, the Billy Wild Theater, New Beverley Cinema, Laemmle’s various houses, and more. But the loss of LACMA’s film program was a harmful, disturbing development. The program, to a great degree, was the heart pumping all the celluloid blood: the museum is centrally located; its Bing Theater is spacious enough for large turnouts (600 seats); and the museum over the years has hosted career retrospectives of directors as diverse as Bergman, Bresson, Ozu, and Mizoguchi, of actors and actresses such as Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Carole Lombard, and Humphrey Bogart. In September, LACMA premiered an entirely new print of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness, while, in October, it ran a retrospective of the films of Alain Resnais, including the mysterious Je T’aime, Je T’aime, which rarely, if ever, screens in the United States. And last year, LACMA was the only venue in Los Angeles to show Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light. The museum’s importance to the cinematic life of its city is difficult to overstate; we need this program.
In the very least, this need arises from Los Angeles’ undeserved reputation as a relatively hollow place, an apparent cultural also-ran slouching far behind New York and Chicago. Los Angeles is certainly many things: an oasis in a desert, an endless freeway, a holiday, a headache, an excuse (as in, I can’t make it because it’s thirty miles in stop-and-go traffic). The city is expansive and diverse; a trip from the east side, along the 60 and 10 freeways, to the west, beyond Fairfax, crosses entire social worlds. But the city is certainly no slouch. Its celebrated philharmonic, led for nearly two decades by the accomplished Esa-Pekka Salonen, now has a trailblazing leader in the young Gustavo Dudamel. The Mark Taper Forum, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theater, and various venues in west L.A. provide theater and opera lovers with their cultural fixes. Listeners can find jazz at the Catalina Bar & Grill or rock at historic clubs on Sunset. We have two Getty Museums, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, the Museum of Contemporary Art, literary events and readings on a year-long basis, Shakespeare festivals, used book shops, and ethnic restaurants. But, even for all that, the decline of an institution as central as LACMA’s film program only feeds the stereotype of L.A.’s vast emptiness.
More than anything, though, the fate of LACMA’s film program revealed just how much attitude and perspective matter in the treatment and survival of any cultural endeavor or institution. As K.A. Westphal has pointed out in an incisive editorial on the crisis at LACMA, the museum has historically failed to promote its film program thoroughly, treating it is an afterthought and granting it only the tiniest portion of the museum’s massive $75 million annual budget. The director and staff of the museum can’t honestly expect citizens and museum supporters to take the film program seriously if they don’t. Or, as director Martin Scorcese wrote in a stern letter published in the Los Angeles Times, “the film department is often held at arms’ length at LACMA and other institutions, separate from the fine arts, and this simply should not be. Film departments should be accorded the same respect, and the same amount of financial leeway, as any other department of fine arts.” The question about the future of cinema in Los Angeles was not, and is not, a question solely about what a museum is going to do with its movie theater or how many tickets it will sell for a film starring Audrey Hepburn, much less one starring Setsuko Hara. The question, as Scorcese suggests, involves how we all think about cinema as participants in a larger conversation about the arts, as members of a larger culture in this city, this nation, and across the globe. Scorcese’s words reminded me of the late Susan Sontag, who spent a career battling colleagues and institutions who refused to take film seriously and who privileged the other arts over it; the belief that film is somehow a separate, and by extension inferior, form of expression was antithetical to her notions of artistry. It should be antithetical to ours as well. At the heart of it all, the debate about the future of a major film program is a debate about how we think about film, how we interpret its vitality as an art.
Keeping international, art-house, and repertory cinema alive in Los Angeles, and well beyond it, amidst all the challenges that face public institutions, among all the other activities that divide the public’s attention, seems to be a greater priority now than it has in the past. Due to the efforts and pressure of a grass-roots organization called Save Film at LACMA, the museum has agreed to maintain its film program at least through June 2010, although its plans beyond that involve grandiose financial visions more than they do a requisite adjustment of aesthetic and cultural attitudes. The wrong approach could very well condemn film at LACMA, and in the city, to relative obscurity because of the precedents it could set; all the while, a renewed focus, some passion, and a seriousness about the importance of cinema are likely to keep film alive. Following Scorcese’s cue, if institutions here, and elsewhere, hold cinema closer than arm’s length, perhaps everyone else will too.
Thanks for this great article. Hopefully the powers-that-be will listen up…
I wonder why USA, the first economy in the world, the first cinema industry in the world, could not afford (at the very least) as much subsidised culture as we have in France.
Hollywood domestic 2008 B.O. : $9.8 billion
US 2008 TV Ad revenues : $141.7 billion
US 2008 DVD, VOD revenues : ?
total : $151.5 billion (+DVD/VOD)
French subsidies support cinema production, scenario, marketing, distribution, exploitation, videos, short films… they are paid for by taxes on TV revenues, video revenues, cinema admissions (=$816 million)
which is 0.5% of the Hollywood budget (without counting DVD/VOD)
The question is : could Hollywood spare less than 0.5% (especially since L.A. only needs a complement, not a full budget from zero) of their revenues for a non-profit investment in maintaining a “cultural reservation” for art cinema in L.A. the capital of cinema? I guess the shame of being ranked behind NYC, Chicago, and Paris isn’t worth that price.
Harry, you make some good points about the national commitment (or lack thereof) to film and to the arts in general. The odd thing about LACMA’s film program is that, after the museum canceled it, several parties stepped in and donated $150,000, and this has kept the program on through next June. So roughly $150,000 to maintain the program for a year, and the museum’s budget is $75 million. A drop in the bucket. Now, if they really wanted to be committed to film — and if they were genuinely concerned about what their program means for Los Angeles — they could make the program even better, giving it full-time staff and genuine promotion; that might exceed the $150,000 they have at the moment, but it wouldn’t be astronomical by any means (and easily obtainable). In other words, it’s entirely feasible, provided their attitudes are in the right place. Of course, my larger concern is what the whole debacle means — it could very well be that it’s a symptom of a larger cultural problem. I wish Hollywood weren’t so obtuse to all this; Scorcese took the museum to task, but we haven’t heard too much from others in the industry.
I can’t believe that Scorsese is the only person concerned by World Cinema and cinema History in the USA…
What is $100,000 to A-list actors, directors and executives? They should rush by dozens to have their name engraved on a donor’s plate at the museum (for sparing pocket change that will be tax deductible).
This can’t be a financial issue in Hollywood, is it?
Even without resorting to a state funded cultural subsidies (which is frowned upon in the USA), private donations or non-profit sponsors could easily spare such an insignificant budget, to give to America THE best Cinema Culture Program in the world. That’s where the industry is making the most money, that’s where the industry should pay back its dues to the rest of the world, who keeps buying Hollywood movies at the expense of their own local culture. That would be just kind charity.
I entirely agree with you about the need for the industry itself, along with individuals, to get behind the film program and support it, in large part because they themselves would benefit from it. Having said that, the issue is less outside support as it is the museum’s own priorities. They lost money on the venture because they never took it seriously or funded it properly to begin with. They consider the film program more of an “outreach” to the public instead of a bona fide arts program that should be curated in the same way they curate photos, paintings, sculptures, and so on. Of course, the argument against that is that the museum doesn’t actually own the films they show, but that in actuality doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be as committed to film as they are to their more standard exhibits. They are, after all, the best institution in Los Angeles to do this, and they could make an important and indelible cultural contribution if they continued the program beyond June 2010. In other words, if they had additional funding but maintained their old attitudes, I’m not sure how well the program would do — but with some funding and a lot more focus, they might be able to make something more alluring, profitable, and permanent.
LACMA is the tip of the iceberg. And the museum wouldn’t think twice if a tycoon made an annual check of $500,000… they would comply.
If LACMA drops the ball, Hollywood could build a new space elsewhere, or rent it… We’re not talking about ACORN, we’re talking about a multi-billion dollar industry. If a small country like France can afford it, I would be shocked that Hollywood couldn’t. They just need to put their mind to it, to start to find it a top priority. All the rest (LACMA or not, in LA or in NYC, in a brand new building or in an existing institution, funded by federal taxes or by private donations…) is pure formality.
Waiting for the audience to ask for it and buy tickets is the wrong attitude. The audience could only become attracted by foreign cinema and oldies IF they are in contact with them again and again, all their life, getting familiarized with them by constant immersion in such culture. The principle is to make films available on daily basis, all year long, years after years, give cine-clubs, improve popular culture and taste. That’s how people will respond more actively to underexposed art film programs in the future. That’s how executives, people influencing the Hollywood industry will get better at their job, to greenlight less flops, and secure more quality productions (in the mainstream market). Why reasonable people wouldn’t see the long term benefits of this meagre cultural investment?
Is there an American journalist who would get the idea to survey the film culture of influencing Hollywood people? How much do they know about film technique, film history, world film culture… I bet the result would be appalling. Isn’t it news worthy? Isn’t it what American readers want to know? Isn’t it the job of a journalist to investigate these issues at the root?
Harry, I agree with you that public familiarity is an important part of this process — and with that familiarity, film programs are more likely to survive. The money itself is a secondary issue, given that the museum here has a $75 million annual budget; once they take film more seriously as an art unto itself and not an “outreach” tool, they could very well play a role in that public familiarity that you allude to.
Well, an art museum isn’t exactly where the mass audience get their culture… it’s an elite venue. That’s why I said it’s the tip of the iceberg.
If you want to improve the culture of a society, you need to the movie goer base, and bring quality movies where they go watch their usual Hollywood blockbusters, in the same commercial venues, or in the same quarters at least (in an arthouse nextdoor).
Here is an effort in the right direction :
“Eccentricities of an American Film Festival: AFI Fest 2009” by Gabe Klinger
So it is possible to bring underexposed film culture to the wider audience, with sponsors, with free entrance.
The AFI critic as programmer news is excellent. Thanks for the link.
And to contribute: Whenever in Paris for a sizable amount of time, I end up spending most of it in the Forum des Images, glued to one of the screens in the archive area where one can instantly watch most of what has been committed to celluloid and hard drives by French artists. It is a great use of a few euros. I am not even aware of whether something like this exists in the States, and can’t imagine why there hasn’t been a similar instantly accessible archive in at least one of the cities I have lived in.