Plush Seats Boost Nuart’s Bottom Line

Some things in life are so pleasurable that you need to suffer a little for them, or so the thinking goes. Usually this penance is made to take place in the posterior region. Thus, in many fire-and-brimstone churches, the pews have been made deliberately rock-hard, lest the parishioner take too much ecstatic delight in the preaching on perdition.

Similarly, most movie art houses seem bent on providing patrons the most uncomfortable possible seating, in order that buffs not take the hedonist joys of reading subtitles on Eastern European films about repression and death unduly lightly.

And so, an era has come to an end: Penance has given way to plushness as the venerable Nuart in West Los Angeles has proudly announced “New Comfortable Seats” on its marquee. They’re the feel-good hit of the spring. Somehow, “Shoah” will never be the same.

The Nuart’s newly installed seats are “supportive enough to do the ‘Godfather’ double bill or ‘War and Peace’ and survive it,” boasts Landmark Theatres President Steve Gilula, citing two six-hour-plus possibilities.

No one knows exactly how old the seats were, as they had been in place when Landmark took over the Nuart (which had previously been a neighborhood second-run house, a porno theater and a Spanish-language screen) in 1974, but they prob ably dated to the ‘50s. They had later been rebuilt and recovered but were still--literally--a sore spot with customers.

“I think part of it was our audience was getting older and less tolerant,” Gilula says. He recalls that when the director’s cut of “Blade Runner” packed the house three years ago, Warner Bros.’ head of distribution, Barry Reardon, “was telling us we were selling ourselves short by not upgrading. He probably deserves some credit for it.” Sound and seismic upgrades have taken place since then, but the expense of all-new seats marked the final improvement on the checklist.

“Some of the seats were not just uncomfortable,” says writer-director Richard Tuggle, a frequent patron for 17 years, “but they didn’t work--there would be no seat bottom or the spring would be sticking up your rear end.” Still, Tuggle notes, “you only notice the seat if you don’t like the movie. If it’s ‘The Bicycle Thief,’ you never think about it.”

A spot check between showings of Svankmajer’s “Faust” one recent weekend found patrons indeed astonished to sit down and find themselves unexpectedly . . . comfy. No one professed nostalgia for the vintage quasi-cushioning.

“Once you get past 30, the more support you get for your lower back, the better,” said Tom Freeman, confirming Gilula’s age theory as he slid a soft drink into the newfangled cup holder and settled down for a little surrealism.

“Now we want to know when they’re gonna put ‘em in the New Beverly,” added Wendy Rosen, referring to the famously spring-loaded seats in the cross-town revival house. At least there’s one local art den where you can still sit down and ask: Is this seat defective, or just happy to see me?*