Quote Originally Posted by topspeed
Westwood, right? The best THX theaters were always in Westwood and there were like 3 different ones within walking distance. Almost every movie I saw during the latter half of the 80's was there.
Yup, and I was probably in some of those opening night audiences with you. Amazing that Westwood can feature so many world class theaters in such a small area. Living on the westside truly spoiled me! The four THX showcase theatres were the Avco (the original THX installation), Village, Bruin, and National. Until the Avco got chopped in half, all of these theaters featured 800+ seat auditoriums, huge screens, and excellent sound systems.

I knew the manager at one of the smaller theaters in Westwood and got some insights into just how much attention to detail (and fanatical overengineering of the projection, screen, and audio systems) went into the presentation at those theaters. Apparently, Westwood was a favorite spot for studio execs to pop by on a given night and see how a paying audience was reacting to a movie. If the sound wasn't right or the picture out of focus or not bright enough, there was bigtime hell to pay. Aside from fielding irate inquiries from studio higher ups, the theater managers would occasionally even get blamed for negative audience reaction to a particular movie since it would unnecessarily spawn negative word-of-mouth (doesn't matter if it's just a bad movie; less-than-stellar presentation was bad for buzz).

Before moving to San Francisco, I just assumed that the grand old single screen theaters in every big city got the same kind of state-of-the-art retrofitting that the theaters in Westwood got. How wrong I was! I still try to catch movies in Westwood whenever I visit SoCal.