Romance, relived
Today: Diana Moskovitz, investigations editor, writer, and co-owner of Defector.
Issue No. 536
Beauty is Forever
Diana Moskovitz
Beauty is Forever
by Diana Moskovitz
At the New Beverly Cinema on a cold December night, one would expect to see the cinephiles milling about. The standby line, and the even longer line at the concession. Signs advertising next week’s fare, and the giant marquee aglow with movie names. But this was a different crowd.
Which is to say there were a lot of women in it.
The viewership at any Los Angeles movie revival screening, in my experience, skews heavily male; factor in that the New Beverly is owned by Quentin Tarantino. Sure, there will be some women in the crowd, some of them with the air of plus-ones. Tonight’s group was, rough guess, about 75 percent women, and a lot of the men were clearly tagging along with a woman. Not the mix you’d see at a showing of, say, Reservoir Dogs.
The difference was right there on the marquee: a double bill of Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally and Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle, playing right before New Year’s Eve.
I’d bought the tickets during a rough week in early December, when I needed something to look forward to. The theater had announced the showing on its own Instagram account back in November. I don’t want to say that revival film houses never present romantic comedies, but the classics of that genre never seem to be in quite the same heavy rotation as noir, action films, or Westerns. I bought the tickets, informed my husband we were booked for that night, and promptly got back to stressing out about whatever I felt was going wrong in my life that day. There is always plenty to stress out about in December.
Keep us breathing fire!
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