Silent Movie gets ready to hit the road
The Silent Movie Theatre is getting its act together and taking it on the road. Beginning in 2003, the movie theater will be open only on select holiday weekends and for private parties, weddings and premieres.
Charlie Lustman, the theater’s owner for the past three years, will be touring the country with “The Silent Picture Show,” a vintage vaudeville and silent movie comedy presentation. Lustman opened the “Silent Picture Show” this weekend at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco and is booked to play in Chicago, Sacramento, New York and Phoenix.
“I have been planning this from Day One when I opened the theater three-years-plus ago,” Lustman says. “I wanted to establish the theater in L.A. I wanted to build it into a show that could be national and worldwide not only for the people who come to the Silent Movie Theatre, but also to take it on the road. I knew I had to establish the theater really firmly and get the publicity over three years worldwide to make it a reality to go out on the road.”
The road show will follow the format of Lustman’s movie presentations every weekend at the theater. Lustman will open performing his own tune “The Silent Picture Show.” Then, accompanied by the ukulele, Janet Klein will sing nice and naughty songs from the ‘20s. Ninety-year-old Bob Mitchell will accompany on the organ a program of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang comedies and Felix the Cat cartoons. There will also be silent-movie quizzes and giveaways.
“We are going to try to make our way around the country,” says Lustman says, but because of Mitchell’s age, the tour will be spread out so he won’t have to be away from home for any long stretches.
“We are going to try to hit the major metropolitan centers of the country first and then possibly try one of those bus tours that takes you through smaller towns, a mom-and-pop theater chain tour.”
Lustman says that a major theater chain has approached him about mass marketing his show -- “silent picture shows all across the country being played at the same time in 20 cities at once, which means I would distribute the show out there, hire an actor to present and sing and a musician to go out and play and do that 20 times. That is a whole other concept that is realistic, but for the first wave I think it’s more novel not to mass-produce this art form.”
The Silent Movie Theatre will reopen its doors in Los Angeles to the public on Valentine’s Day weekend with a show featuring Buster Keaton’s “The Battling Butler.” It will be open for all major holiday weekends during the year.
“Tickets are already on sale, now that the word is getting out that we are not programming every week,” Lustman says. “The show will involve more programming and more live acts prior to the show.” And prices will be going up from $9 to $15 for adults.
Lustman plans to return to the regular schedule of 52 weekends a year in 2004 -- “with more original programs and all the hits that missed the first time around.”
*
Silent Movie Theatre
Where: 611 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.
Contact: (323) 655-2520
On the Web: www.silentmovietheatre.com
