Any plans for the Cineramadome? Just asking.
Photo: Olivia Wong/FilmMagic
Move over, Quentin Tarantino, there’s a new hotshot celebrity restoring old movie palaces to their former glory. Kristen Stewart gave an interview to Architectural Digest about her plans for L.A’.s Highland Theater. “I didn’t realize I was looking for a theater until this place came to my attention,” she said. “Then it was like a gunshot went off and the race was on. I ran toward it with everything I had. I’m fascinated by broken-down old theaters. I always want to see what mysteries they hold.” The movie theater in the Highland Park neighborhood, conveniently located by both a light-rail stop and the Chicken Boy statue, closed in 2024. Stewart plans on refurbishing the building and adding community meeting spaces. “It’s an opportunity to make a space to gather and scheme and dream together,” she said. “I see it as an antidote to all the corporate bullshit, a place that takes movie culture away from just buying and selling. I think there’s a huge desire and craving for what this kind of space can offer.”
During the press tour for her directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, Stewart has been clear about what needs to change in the business of show. While speaking to the New York Times, she said the entertainment industry “is capitalist hell, and it hates women, and it hates marginalized voices, and it’s racist.” She’s looking to escape profitability as a movie’s main metric for success. “The next movie I wanna make: I want to do it for nothing, I want to make not a dollar, I want it to be a smash hit — do you know what I mean? It’s just so difficult to make movies, it just doesn’t need to be,” she said. “I’m just trying to think of some weird Marxist, communist-like situation.” The Highland Theater can be her staging ground for said communist-like situation. And maybe the location for the premiere of her Twilight remake, too.
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