The ‘oh my god!’ effect

Other than the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of JFK, the biggest event in my childhood was the day we got a color television. It was a Friday evening, late 1962. I can still see my dad pulling into the driveway in his pickup with the big walnut console RCA in the back. I was playing catch in the street and ran so hard to get home that I tripped going through some ivy in our front yard and ended up chipping my front tooth. But I didn’t care. All I cared about was that we had the first color TV in the neighborhood.

The way my dad told the story, he bought that TV as a birthday present for my mom. In a way, I suppose that’s true. But I’ll tell you the real reason he bought it: “The Flintstones.” That modern Stone Age family. That fall “The Flintstones” was airing in living color. My dad could live without watching “Bonanza” or “The Ed Sullivan Show” in color, but not “The Flintstones.”So he raided his savings account and bought a new RCA, and that changed everything. We became instantly popular in the neighborhood. A neighbor who had always refused to lend my dad his tools came over that evening to help us “set things up.” His wife, carrying a plate of just-baked cookies, arrived with her three kids a short time later to “see how things were going.” Then another family came by, just to say hi, bringing the fixings for root beer floats. By the time everything was hooked up, just before “The Flintstones” came on, you had to step over a dozen neighborhood kids sprawled on their stomachs on the floor to get to the cookies and ice cream on the coffee table, and there wasn’t an inch of free space on our living room sofa. It felt like being in church. All cozy and familiar. Only better.

My mother, unfortunately, was sulking in the kitchen. She knew we couldn’t afford a color TV; knew that the “birthday present” was a ruse to get her to go along with things. But I also remember the show starting and everyone in the room clapping, like we were at a play, and wishing my mom were there, and then, before the familiar theme song had finished, hearing her enter the living room and gasp, “Oh my god.”

I looked at my dad and he looked at me and we both smiled. She was hooked.

Cheri Shankar knows that feeling. Her husband, Naren, a tv executive producer for “CSI,” had been dying to build a home theater in their Sherman Oaks home for several years, but Cheri wasn’t persuaded.

“I really didn’t want one,” she says. “To be honest with you, I was dragged into this project kicking and screaming. I was against it.” And now? “It’s my favorite room in the house,” she says, laughing. “I spend more time in there than he does. And the best part is when we have people over and they walk in the room and go, ‘Oh my god!’ I love that!”

Naren Shankar compares it to the early 1950s, when families got together to watch shows such as “I Love Lucy” or “The Honeymooners.” “Having this room in your house where everyone can get together and enjoy a little entertainment, it’s very communal. Know what I mean?”

Sing hallelujah, brothers and sisters.

The father of home theaters is Theo Kalomirakis, a former magazine art director from New York City who, in the late ‘80s, built a home theater for himself in his Brooklyn apartment that included mementos of his favorite old New York movie palace, the Roxy. Word got around, and others began asking him to do something similar in their homes. Soon he had a modest little business going.

“The first year, 1989, I had two orders and thought that was pretty good. The next year, I got eight orders. Now we do 50 to 60 projects a year, and I’ve got about 80 in the pipeline.”

The Consumer Electronics Assn. says nearly one in three households now has a home theater, but its criteria (a 27-inch or larger television, VCR or DVD player, and four or more speakers), isn’t exactly what Kalomirakis has in mind. His company, Theo Kalomirakis Theaters (www.tktheaters.com), specializes in high-end projects--sometimes costing well over a million dollars--though he has created a number of home theaters in Southern California for substantially less, including the one he designed for the Shankars.

“It took us a year just to get the courage to call him,” says Cheri. “We assumed that since he has all these big clients and works on so many million-dollar projects that it wouldn’t be worth his time. But he said he enjoyed working on smaller projects.”

Says Kalomirakis, “There’s no challenge in doing a home theater for $100,000 or more. Anyone can do that. I take pride in bringing in a project like this at their price. So when I talked to them and they told me that their budget was $30,000, I said, ‘Consider it done.’ In fact, I said, ‘I’ll bring it in under $29,000.’ ”

That may seem like a lot of money until you realize that even 15 years ago, getting movie-theater quality easily could cost $100,000. Even today, the expense of furnishings and accessories can cost more than the high-tech video and sound systems. Plush motorized theater recliners, some with cup holders and a vibrating device that will enhance the rumbling of a good action flick, start at about $2,500. And then there are the disappearing screens, motorized curtains that part in the middle, and the popcorn and cotton candy machines. It can get pricey.

“I think it’s comparable to doing a big kitchen renovation,” says Wendy Pritzlaff. She and her husband, Wayne, took a deep breath three years ago when they decided to turn an underused rec room in their Glendora home into a dedicated home theater. Nobody thinks anything these days of spending $50,000 or more for a new kitchen, acknowledges the mother of three teenagers. “Frankly, this has been the best investment in the house we’ve ever made.”

Three years ago, the Pritzlaffs hired Innovative Theatres of Santa Monica (www.innovativetheatres.com) to design a room that met their needs without being too fussy and without having to knock out any walls. “At the first meeting, I told them I didn’t want to change the look of the house with the home theater.”

Jon Heberling of Innovative Theatres says the Pritzlaffs’ project was unusual for a couple of reasons. “Both the budget and size of the room (about 15 by 15) were very modest.” Since most of their previous clients had been folks in the multimillion-dollar manses in Beverly Hills and Palos Verdes, it made them rethink the whole design process. “We got creative,” says Heberling, “in figuring out ways to give them the best possible home theater for the least amount of money.”

It also led to a new business prototype called Classic Editions--10 different home theater styles that are pre-designed for homeowners who want the best possible equipment and home theater design in the $55,000 to $90,000 range. The “Moderne” design (about $55,000), with very sleek lines, light finishes and streamlined ornaments, was inspired by the theater Heberling designed for the Pritzlaffs. Other designs include Erte, which Heberling describes as having the style elements of the Chrysler Building and the Queen Mary, and a Zen theater, which is “very minimalist, very contemplative, with platform seating and big pillows instead of cinema loungers.”

Wendy Pritzlaff says their home theater not only was worth the cost, it has changed their lives. Literally. “My son, Christopher, is a film student at Chapman University now. He was always kind of into movies--we all are--but I think having a home theater really made him see the possibilities.” The 19-year-old likes to edit his student films from a laptop perched on a pull-out tray from a specially designed credenza in front of the reclining cinema lounger.

The theater probably has inspired a few other future Spielbergs in the neighborhood as well. Not only do the Pritzlaffs host red carpet, black-tie premieres for their son’s films and those of other Chapman students, they also stage a number of neighborhood cinema events, from an annual Halloween horror film open house to Academy Award parties. Younger son Jonathan, 17, screens titles such as “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” for fellow students in his high school honors English class, while Valerie, 13, likes to invite friends over for slumber parties to watch “Clueless” or “Legally Blonde.”

“We’re definitely the neighborhood hub,” says Wendy, which is what she was hoping for when they first decided to splurge on a dedicated home theater environment. “We have three teenagers and we wanted our house to be the place everyone congregated. It’s fairly commonplace that I’m getting ready to go to bed and all of a sudden there are a dozen kids over here. But I think that’s wonderful. We’ve gotten a lot closer to our kids’ friends because of it.”

But the kids aren’t the only ones who take advantage of the high-tech room. “We’ll go out to dinner with friends and come back and watch a foreign film or something the kids just aren’t interested in,” says Wendy, adding that the family tends to screen movies and other special events, such as the recent Olympics, four or five nights a week.

Not all home theaters are as elaborate as those designed by Theo Kalomirakis or Innovative Theatres. Alex Flanagan, a sports broadcaster for ESPN, and her husband, Kevin, a sports trade show director, wanted something that would fit in with their recently remodeled Newport Beach home, so they turned to Murray Home Theater of Huntington Beach (www.murrayhometheater.com) and company president Mike Murray, an American Airlines pilot who has turned his passion for high-tech electronics into a side business.

With a new baby in the house and little time to go out, the Flanagans are typical of his younger clients, Murray says. They are willing to splurge on home theater systems the way an older generation once broke the piggy bank to buy a color TV (that RCA my dad bought for $1,000 in 1962 would cost about $6,000 in today’s dollars).

“Our business has grown tremendously since 9/11,” says Murray. “I think people just want to stay home and be with their family and friends.”

Alex Flanagan says it’s that, plus the expense and hassle of going out. “We have to get a sitter, and then there’s the cost of going to the movies in a dirty theater where someone else has brought their crying baby or a cellphone is going off or they’re talking behind you. It’s just not worth it.”

Peter Lawrence, a former marketing executive for several high-tech firms, took a hands-on approach when he decided to add a theater room to his West Hollywood home six years ago. He combined two adjoining rooms, neither of which was getting much use. After knocking out a wall, he turned the space into a split-level home theater and office. The first person Lawrence brought in was Bradley Blair, a Hancock Park interior designer. Blair’s job was to make the home theater fit in with the rest of the house, which basically meant making everything disappear. “This is a beautiful, adult space,” Blair says of the room, which is warm but very contemporary. “I don’t do popcorn machines or themed designs.”

Custom bookcases hide audio and video equipment, while the armchairs are easily maneuvered and an armless sofa looks nothing like the bulky reclining loungers in most home theaters. A motorized screen, hidden from view, is recessed in the ceiling. “I got exactly what I wanted for about $25,000,” says Lawrence, who often uses the room after dinner parties to screen movies or unreleased TV shows. “I’ve got friends in the biz, and they’ll bring over their work to watch at my house, which is fun.”

While men often are the prime movers in creating home theaters, women are realizing it’s not just about who has the biggest wide-screen TV in the neighborhood and are fueling the trend. “When I started this business three years ago, our clients were almost all men,” says Murray. “Now our best clients are women. They’re the ones driving this market. They like the idea of having their family around them, and they see home theaters as a way to keep everyone at home.”

Jon Heberling of Innovative Theatres agrees. “We live at a very fast pace today and I think people are looking for ways to get their family to stay home and be together. The second element driving this trend is that the technology used in home theaters is higher and the price lower than it has ever been before.”

Adds Theo Kalomirakis: “The technology has gotten the price down so low that everyone can be a big Hollywood producer now. Fifteen years ago, there was no way you could do this without spending a fortune just on the projector. In a few years, everyone will have the equipment for a home theater. Not everyone will have a room in the house dedicated to being a home theater, but everyone will have the equipment. It’s the same phenomenon as the ‘60s, when people got their first color television. Someone gets a home theater now and everyone wants to come over and watch a movie there or a special TV show. It makes us feel good. It makes us feel happy.”

Yabba-dabba-doo.