Gentle reader, In early 2019, after months of rumors, it became obvious that Netflix was dead set on buying the Egyptian Theatre, the sole asset of the community non-profit American Cinematheque. We were kept informed about this by a steady stream of discrete calls and emails from concerned insiders, which started off anxious and escalated to outright alarm. And when asked to help by speaking up,
I hear you, I can see from the recording how it's enraging they just said f- it to public comment because zoom was out and breezed past the public input. Because in part it had been a "long day". Still though, they need to advertise showtimes to the public. Maybe they could have tried something under the columns. They kept it pretty discreet and somewhat in keeping with photographic proof of a box sign from the 1920s in the same place. I guess the ideal would be the garish original signage out of Hollywood Blvd. but that seems totally off the table. A possible bright side is it's hopefully not destructive to the building so could be removed or altered at a later date. I'm sorry it didn't work out.
I hear you, I can see from the recording how it's enraging they just said f- it to public comment because zoom was out and breezed past the public input. Because in part it had been a "long day". Still though, they need to advertise showtimes to the public. Maybe they could have tried something under the columns. They kept it pretty discreet and somewhat in keeping with photographic proof of a box sign from the 1920s in the same place. I guess the ideal would be the garish original signage out of Hollywood Blvd. but that seems totally off the table. A possible bright side is it's hopefully not destructive to the building so could be removed or altered at a later date. I'm sorry it didn't work out.
This is truly unfortunate. Thank you for taking a stand for those of us who love and value our cinematic history
Babs
I can't help thinking what Sid Grauman would think of the Egyptian goings on. That theatre and the Chinese Theatre were his babies.