“Lush and classic”: Sean Baker’s favourite American cinema
For over 20 years, Sean Baker has been quietly carving out his niche as one of the most important voices in American independent cinema, with his filmography making a habit of tackling pressing social and societal issues head-on.
His stories tend to focus on overlooked and marginalised groups that most filmmakers wouldn’t shine a light on, whether it’s the the undocumented immigrants of Take Out or the sex workers of Tangerine, with Baker painting a compassionate picture of subcultures and subsections of the cultural melting pot that very rarely get their moment in the celluloid sun.
With that in mind, it wouldn’t be out of the question to imagine that when he was tasked with naming the single greatest place to enjoy the theatrical experience on the planet in his humble estimation, Baker would have opted for an unknown, underground cinema that only a select few people even know about.
However, that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, it was quite the opposite after he settled on one of the most famous and instantly-recognisable screens in the world. As he explained to Time Out, even though everyone knows it from sight alone without necessarily knowing its name, the iconic Grauman’s Chinese Theater is the place to be.
“I’ll spend the extra $10 just to see the latest mainstream film playing in the amazing IMAX auditorium. It’s lush and classic, and the projection and sound is just the perfect presentation of a film,” he said. “I’m also big fan of Tarantino’s New Beverly, which is just an old-school one-screen theatre. It’s about the crowd and the vibe and the love of movies in the room.”
Quentin Tarantino’s defiantly old-fashioned New Beverly sounds more like the sort of thing Baker would choose, if only because he’s a student of the artform and a known fan of such classical filmmakers as Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, John Cassavetes, Hal Ashby, and Steven Spielberg to name just a sample size of his wide-ranging influences.
Grauman’s, on the other hand, seats almost 1,000 patrons at maximum capacity and has become a piece of Hollywood legend unto itself, acting as the setting for countless premieres dating back decades and even serving as the location of the Academy Awards on three separate occasions.
It might seem a little mainstream, but people like what they like, and in Baker’s estimation there’s no better place to catch the latest releases than the staple of the Hollywood Walk of Fame that’s been running uninterrupted since 1927.
Sometimes, the classics simply can’t be beaten, and even though it’s been constantly upgraded and remodelled to match the latest developments in screening technology, the historic century-old location is one the Red Rocket and The Florida Project director thinks hasn’t been bettered.
