Forget Peoria--Studios Say Art Movies Don’t Play in the Valley

Christmas weekend is the time when Hollywood presents its most sophisticated films of the year--but if you want to see them, you’ll have to go to Santa Monica, Beverly Hills or maybe even Irvine.

Among all the places that won’t get these films, one stands out: the San Fernando Valley, the movie studio capital of the world.

“Magnolia,” for instance, is a movie set and filmed almost entirely in the Valley. It is named after a North Hollywood street and is the work of a bona fide Valley boy, 29-year-old filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, who grew up in Studio City hoping to make “the epic, all-time great San Fernando Valley movie.”

But like many movies aimed at sophisticated audiences, the three-hour film won’t land in the Valley until weeks after it has created a buzz on the other side of the Hollywood Hills.

The Valley is home to Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros. and Universal Studios. Even so, “the studios consider the Valley almost like Middle America,” said Robert Bucksbaum, president of ReelSource, a box office tracking company. “It’s not true, but the perception is that the Valley is more conservative and less sophisticated than the Westside.”

If there’s ever a time when Valley film buffs get treated as hayseeds, it’s Christmas weekend. Just consult the list of studio-coddled projects playing now: “Angela’s Ashes,” “Snow Falling on Cedars,” “The End of the Affair,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Cradle will Rock” and “The Cider House Rules.”

All are “exclusive engagements” and are playing on the Westside. None is playing in the Valley, though “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,” is being shown on 17 screens in the Valley.

“It bugs the daylights out of me that after all these years, we still have to drive over the hill to see a decent film,” said Ernie Schroer, a Northridge resident who prefers subtitles to submachine guns in his movies.

Sometimes, though, theater owners try to get a film to open in the Valley. “Liberty Heights” is a case in point.

As Warner Bros. prepared to distribute a film about coming of age in a Jewish community, Bob Laemmle, owner of Laemmle Theaters, pressed the studio to let him in on the opening weekend. Laemmle wanted to show “Liberty Heights” at his Encino Town Center 5, the Valley’s lone art house theater, located in an area with a large Jewish population.

Barry Levinson, who wrote and directed the film, said a director can influence where a movie opens.

“Encino does seem like a good territory for this film, and I could have asked why we weren’t doing it there.”

But it was news to Levinson, who lives in Marin County, that a theater owner was pushing to open the film in Encino.

In the end, executives at Warner Bros. decided Encino was too suburban to warrant a first run of “Liberty Heights,” said Daniel R. Fellman, president of Warner Bros. distributing. The film debuted in Century City on Nov. 17 and then expanded to Beverly Hills and Irvine.

“These are very, very delicate films that we open in densely populated areas so we can pack people in and do really well,” Fellman said.

The Valley does draw large opening-weekend crowds for wide-release movies. In summer, Valley multiplexes are swarmed by candy-gobbling teenagers seeking the latest action films and comedies.

For year-end projects that are less commercial, studio executives like Fellman say the Westside is the most reliably sophisticated area to generate buzz.

But when “Liberty Heights” came to Encino on Dec. 10, it grossed $11,704, more than any other theater on the West Coast that weekend, according to ACNielsen EDI Inc.

Many of the exclusive engagement films are being rushed into theaters this weekend to qualify for a 1999 Academy Awards, and the Westside is believed to be home to the highest concentration of Academy members.

The Westside also has more art houses, from Laemmle’s Sunset Five in West Hollywood to Landmark’s NuWilshire in Santa Monica.

“It takes a lot of time and energy to nurture a film that doesn’t have big names,” said Tom Sherak, chairman of 20th Century Fox Domestic Film Group. “The last thing an art company wants is to have their film get bumped before the buzz has had a chance to build.”

“American Beauty” shows how an exclusive engagement can build buzz. The film opened Sept. 15 in 16 theaters, and fueled by word-of-mouth and flattering reviews, expanded to a peak of 1,528 theaters six weeks later.

DreamWorks SKG chose to start “American Beauty” in Century City, Santa Monica, West Hollywood and two theaters in Orange County.

“People in the Valley can drive to the Westside, but you can’t expect that from folks in Irvine,” said Jim Tharp, president of distribution for DreamWorks.

This weekend, films not playing in the Valley but showing in Pasadena or Orange County include “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Cradle Will Rock” and “The Cider House Rules.”

On a recent night at the Laemmle theater in Encino, many moviegoers sounded defeated.

“Nobody in the Valley wants artsy-fartsy,” said Ralph Zaichik, a UCLA student living in Encino.

“There’s no culture here,” said Allan Chalme of Sherman Oaks.

But change is just over the hill, so to speak. This week, Columbia Pictures opens “Girl, Interrupted” at six theaters in the Los Angeles area, including two in the Valley.

A studio executive said that’s because the Valley is increasingly important in the overall box office economy. The 6,000-seat Winnetka 21 in Chatsworth, for example, is one of the top-grossing theaters in the nation.

This month’s top show: “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.”