After sitting dark for two years, the Bruin Theater in Westwood is set to reopen on Friday. The 1937 Streamline Moderne landmark designed by architect S. Charles Lee will screen Wildwood, the new stop-motion animated film by Laika.
Rui Pereira, a theater operator from Toronto, has a ten-year lease on the movie house, which was made available after Regency Theaters exited the neighborhood following the sale of the Fox Westwood across the street, which they also operated. “I run the Kingsley theater in Toronto and just cold called,” Pereira says. “Nobody seemed to be running the theater so here I am.” This summer, Pereira faced accusations of racism and antisemitism, which he denied to The Hollywood Reporter.
Pereira had screened Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at his Canadian theater and remembered the scenes shot at the Bruin with Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate. “There’s been a real renewal in movie theaters in Los Angeles,” Pereira says. “A lot has been lost but there’s still plenty of great places like the Bruin and the Chinese and the Vista and the New Beverly.”
“It’s not nostalgia,” Pereira says. “They come to see the show the same as they would have done in 1948 and the theater is a conduit for that experience.” New digital projectors, as well as vintage 35mm and 70mm projectors, have been installed to accommodate new films and revival prints. “There’s no such thing as old movies,” Pereira says. “Just movies you haven’t watched yet.”
The 89-year-old cinema has a brand new roof, and he’s repaired the flashing neon, but Pereira and his team are racing to get the interior spruced up in time for the first show. His biggest challenge was removing rotten blue draperies he believed were installed in the 1950s. “When we took them out the musty smell went away in here,” he says.
The curtains had been installed on top of original murals and artwork on the side walls depicting lounging women, birds and neoclassical themes. Theater historians, including Bill Counter of the Los Angeles Theatres blog, have been looking for historic photos of the original auditorium for years with no luck. After holding a blacklight up to the murals, the new owner believes these works once even glowed in the dark. “We cleaned it up but we’re not touching the murals. They’re in reasonable shape,” he says. “It’s like visiting a Roman ruin. We’re going to keep working on it after hours but we don’t want to make it into Disneyland.”
Bruin Theater
948 Broxton Avenue, Westwood
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