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Another Item Crossed Off the Bucket List

The 30s era movie palace The Los Angeles…

You’ve seen this theater, The Los Angeles, used in a million movies. In Gattaca you saw Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke have a dinner date at a table set up in the lobby. The big space is dressed to look like a restaurant. On the clip wait until the 45-second mark and you’ll see the grand staircase in the background. It’s the one I sat on for a photo this past week. I’d suggested the place because of the theater setting in my book Haunted, and because theaters are so much like churches in how they exclude the real world in order to present another reality.

That’s an iron-clad rule of fiction. Gordon Lish called it “ruthless exclusion,” and I’d first noticed it in the work of Joan Didion. It’s the importance of leaving out everything except what matters to the story.

Among my dorkiest obsessions is the architecture of S. Charles Lee, and how he structured the storytelling experience. From the facade inward, he moved people deeper and deeper into fantasy, preparing them for the film which was projected on the back-most wall of the building, as far from reality as he could steer the viewer.

Right now the theater is staged as a large haunted house, but the cobwebs are all real. Despite looking like a palace — the lobby is modeled after the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles — the place is very grim and tattered. Still, I have to love it more this way than if it were clean and shining. As is, it’s the nadir of Las Vegas architecture.

My special thanks to Christina Ruffini of CBS who kept me laughing all Wednesday and today sent this picture. This was a much better setting than the Hotel Cecil would’ve been. Even in the daytime, this place feels scarier than the Cecil.