Pacific Northridge Theatres
After the Americana, this was my favorite place to see movies as a kid. It was within walking distance of where my grandmother (and later my parents, sister, and I) lived, and the place usually had the best, first-run movies. I can't recall the first movie I saw there, but I think it may have been Ghostbusters.
I was there with Jason, Chris, and Mike one night to see Blue Velvet (we had heard there was a lot of nudity in the film, and we were just 16). I remember that we were too young for the film, that we were confused and bored by it, and that we laughed and joked all the way through it to the annoyance of the 3 or 4 adults who were in the theater. Afterward, I picked up an application and was hired. It was a great job: I got to see a lot of films, made a lot of friends my age, and the work was never too serious. Mostly, the job consisted of preparing food in the snackbar and then cleaning up the food from the theater floor between shows. Later, as I gained seniority in the place, I tore tickets at the door, kept kids from sneaking in the back exit doors, managed lines of people waiting to see the next show, and sold tickets in the box office. Toward the end of my time there, I would resupply the stock room (upstairs above one of the theaters) and set up scaffolding to change out the letters on the big marquee out front.
The big marquee is gone now, in its place is a ridiculously ugly pink and purple nameplate--something that had been done in the mid-nineties. I always looked forward to seeing the names of six films in 2-foot high red letters.
When I went in, the woman working behind the snackbar eyed me suspiciously when I said I just wanted to come in and look around. I let her hold onto my drivers license.
What were they thinking when they redesigned this place? I understand that you have to have a certain amount of theaters to keep up with the times, but the place is ugly apart from it being unkempt. Want to know what I mean? Two words: faux columns. I took pictures of what used to be called theaters four, one, and five. Theater six, which had formerly been the biggest, had long been carved into microcinemas.
Something I had forgotten about the place, because it had been completed after I stopped being an employee there, was that Giovanni Dulay had painted four murals in the main exit hall. Only two of them are dated, 1992 for one and 1993 for the other.
Gio was one of the kids who worked at the theater with me, who was into heavy metal music, weight lifting, and the Marines. He so wanted to be a Marine, that he jumped into the reserves out of High School and was sent, a few years later to Quwait during Gulf War I. He was a really nice guy, always laughing, and aside from the heavy metal and muscles, didn't seem the type to me to be a jarhead. In fact, I remember hanging out with him one night before he shipped off--and we didn't usually hang out together just the two of us. We went to a in a North Valley neighborhood late on a weeknight and sat on the swings and talked for a while. I couldn't comprehend why he would go, but I tried to keep that to myself. I think we were both considering the possibility that he would get killed over there, but to me it was much more of an abstraction. He didn't--but he did confide in me that he had to kill one Iraqi soldier who refused to lay down his rifle. When he came back from the war, he was very serious and unsmiling.
But I remember now that Gio was also a very talented illustrator. He was a big fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger, so he used to draw the actor in Conan poses and Terminator glasses. Standing there, looking at the murals, I saw that Gio painted himself into the Star Wars mural as Boba Fett, the masked mercenary from episodes 5 and 6. What turned out surprisingly foretelling, the image of fett with his helmet in his hand and Gio's face looked surprisingly like the actor that Lucas later casted in the Episode II prequel. 
When I came out here searching for something from my past to connect to, I didn't know what I was looking for. I still don't, but seeing Gio painted into his mural made me feel like I was getting close. The past weighs heavily on me, and this theater was a major part of my life during a very formative time. I wonder if it was for him, too, and that by painting himself into the mural--no, into the movie--was his way of crossing time into the future.
I asked to speak to the manager at the box office. The manager was there, and could hear me (the outside is amplified inside the box, but the only sound that gets out comes through the microphone). The girl at the window acted as an intermediary. I asked if they knew who had painted the murals or if they had any contact information, and they said, no, they didn't know, and that they were painted "a long time ago." They didn't at all seem interested in why I was asking...
I was there with Jason, Chris, and Mike one night to see Blue Velvet (we had heard there was a lot of nudity in the film, and we were just 16). I remember that we were too young for the film, that we were confused and bored by it, and that we laughed and joked all the way through it to the annoyance of the 3 or 4 adults who were in the theater. Afterward, I picked up an application and was hired. It was a great job: I got to see a lot of films, made a lot of friends my age, and the work was never too serious. Mostly, the job consisted of preparing food in the snackbar and then cleaning up the food from the theater floor between shows. Later, as I gained seniority in the place, I tore tickets at the door, kept kids from sneaking in the back exit doors, managed lines of people waiting to see the next show, and sold tickets in the box office. Toward the end of my time there, I would resupply the stock room (upstairs above one of the theaters) and set up scaffolding to change out the letters on the big marquee out front.
The big marquee is gone now, in its place is a ridiculously ugly pink and purple nameplate--something that had been done in the mid-nineties. I always looked forward to seeing the names of six films in 2-foot high red letters.
When I went in, the woman working behind the snackbar eyed me suspiciously when I said I just wanted to come in and look around. I let her hold onto my drivers license.
What were they thinking when they redesigned this place? I understand that you have to have a certain amount of theaters to keep up with the times, but the place is ugly apart from it being unkempt. Want to know what I mean? Two words: faux columns. I took pictures of what used to be called theaters four, one, and five. Theater six, which had formerly been the biggest, had long been carved into microcinemas.
Something I had forgotten about the place, because it had been completed after I stopped being an employee there, was that Giovanni Dulay had painted four murals in the main exit hall. Only two of them are dated, 1992 for one and 1993 for the other.
Gio was one of the kids who worked at the theater with me, who was into heavy metal music, weight lifting, and the Marines. He so wanted to be a Marine, that he jumped into the reserves out of High School and was sent, a few years later to Quwait during Gulf War I. He was a really nice guy, always laughing, and aside from the heavy metal and muscles, didn't seem the type to me to be a jarhead. In fact, I remember hanging out with him one night before he shipped off--and we didn't usually hang out together just the two of us. We went to a in a North Valley neighborhood late on a weeknight and sat on the swings and talked for a while. I couldn't comprehend why he would go, but I tried to keep that to myself. I think we were both considering the possibility that he would get killed over there, but to me it was much more of an abstraction. He didn't--but he did confide in me that he had to kill one Iraqi soldier who refused to lay down his rifle. When he came back from the war, he was very serious and unsmiling.
But I remember now that Gio was also a very talented illustrator. He was a big fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger, so he used to draw the actor in Conan poses and Terminator glasses. Standing there, looking at the murals, I saw that Gio painted himself into the Star Wars mural as Boba Fett, the masked mercenary from episodes 5 and 6. What turned out surprisingly foretelling, the image of fett with his helmet in his hand and Gio's face looked surprisingly like the actor that Lucas later casted in the Episode II prequel. When I came out here searching for something from my past to connect to, I didn't know what I was looking for. I still don't, but seeing Gio painted into his mural made me feel like I was getting close. The past weighs heavily on me, and this theater was a major part of my life during a very formative time. I wonder if it was for him, too, and that by painting himself into the mural--no, into the movie--was his way of crossing time into the future.
I asked to speak to the manager at the box office. The manager was there, and could hear me (the outside is amplified inside the box, but the only sound that gets out comes through the microphone). The girl at the window acted as an intermediary. I asked if they knew who had painted the murals or if they had any contact information, and they said, no, they didn't know, and that they were painted "a long time ago." They didn't at all seem interested in why I was asking...
Labels: San Fernando Valley
<< Home