Searching For Hollywood's Oldest Cinema

With the film festival tour for my documentary, "Your Cinema Needs You" and some of my travel shoots overlapping this year, I've made a point of searching out old cinemas in a lot of the different places that I've been going.

In Los Angeles, a city full of incredible theatres, I thought it would be interesting to find the oldest cinema in Hollywood. This lead me down a bit of rabbit hole.

For starters, until Hollywood was incorporated into Los Angeles in 1910, the town had regulations specifying no theatres. Once incorporated, this changed quickly. The first cinema built in Hollywood in 1910 was called the Idyl Hour, which was later renamed the Iris Theatre, however the location changed several times in just a few short years. A very familiar story.

With only a few images and an old fire map to go on, the theatre would've been located on prime real estate on Hollywood Boulevard. Unfortunately, when I went to see what was there today this is what I found - an empty lot with a direct view of the Hollywood sign.

The cinema had been defunct since the 1920s and the name moved again, but I was curious if the building had been repurposed or modified. What makes this location special is just how many incredible cinemas are still in the area.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre (now the TCL Chinese Theatre) is just a few blocks away and in addition to still hosting movie premieres to this day, it's endured as one of the most famous movie palaces in the world. Quite the contrast from where the Iris began over a century ago.

Each of these detours makes me further appreciate what was uncovered in making the documentary about Medicine Hat's Monarch Theatre. It's a fascination about how much has changed, what's been left to find, and that through it all that little cinema back in Medicine Hat has survived when so many others didn't.

A Film School Reunion in Saskatchewan

This last week I was soaking up the nostalgia on a film school reunion tour around Saskatchewan with some of my closest friends. While we've all been back over the years, I don't think we've all been back at the same time since we were actually students.

With so many of us living out of province now, this Saskatchewan trip became the perfect excuse for us to all travel back to Saskatoon and Regina to hangout, reminisce, and go back to some of our old stomping grounds. I can't quite remember the last time I've consumed this much beer in a single week lol.

Amazingly everything always seems to fall back into place when revisiting old friends. The trip coincidentally lined up with move-in week at the University of Regina, which immediately triggered so many great memories of my years living in the dorms there.

If there was any more glaring reminder of just how much has changed since my days as a film student, my feature-length documentary was also playing at the 2024 Regina International Film Festival just days before I made it back. With the trip finalized long before I even knew the doc would pick up the 'official selection' here, it was another serendipitous bit of timing.

These moments always seem too few and far between, but what a great week. I'm glad we're still making memories all these years later.

Trevi Fountain in Rome, Italy

A few visuals of the iconic Trevi Fountain in Rome, Italy.  

Hotel Revival in Baltimore, Maryland

A few visuals from a stay at the Hotel Revival in Baltimore, Maryland.

I Funko'd Myself in Hollywood (Again)

My strict rules for purchasing any Funko Pops aside, I took the bait at the Hollywood Boulevard store in in Los Angeles, California and created myself in miniature vinyl form once more.

As was the issue last year, a blonde dude in a hoodie doesn't look personalized. Then I saw the popcorn and trophy accessories and it clicked. In keeping with this year's over-extended theme I made the Monarch Theatre premiere / film festival version of myself to compliment last year's mini-me Funko travel photographer. 

In short, this became another brilliantly kitschy souvenir from the latest Hollywood travel shoots ... and, let's be honest, one more opportunity to name-drop "Your Cinema Needs You" as the international festival tour rolls on through 2024. 

Centre Pompidou in Paris, France

A few visuals from a morning visit to Centre Pompidou (also known as Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou) the iconic contemporary art gallery in Paris, France.