The city of Ojai has a long-established reputation as one of California’s most quintessentially laid-back small towns. But residents and frequent visitors who have a love for movies may actually have to work up some adrenaline to keep up with the aggressive film programming schedule being announced for the reopening of the Ojai Playhouse, a 110-year-old venue that sits smack in the middle of the historic main street located amid the Topatopa Mountains, roughly an hour and a half north of Los Angeles.
After being dark for the last decade due to a devastating flood, the mission revival-style theater has gotten a $10-million-plus renovation from a new owner and is officially coming back into action next week. There may be some L.A.-based cineastes who quietly start looking up real estate in the vicinity of the tourist town (population: about 7,500) since this now state-of-the-art, 200-seat showpiece is suddenly starting to look like the neighborhood movie house of any film lover’s dreams.
While live concerts and events are also planned down the line, the Playhouse will initially come back to life with a packed slate of films that alternates between brand new Oscar contenders and classic revival films — a mixture you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in California, aside from Quentin Tarantino’s Vista in L.A., which also mixes first-run and vintage in roughly equal measure.
The opening month of films, with nightly turnover in titles, includes everything from showings of acclaimed Oscar fare like “Babygirl,” “Emilia Perez,” “Conclave,” “Anora” and “The Brutalist” (the last two of those being screened in 35mm prints) to old favorites such as “Heat,” “Mulholland Drive,” “Wall-E,” “Fitzcarraldo” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” and “Phantom Thread” (a New Year’s Eve double feature, also in 35mm)… not to mention contemporary blockbusters like a Thanksgiving Day “Dune” double-feature in Dolby Atmos. Christmas movies won’t be overlooked, with programming spanning the gamut from “It’s a Wonderful Life” to “Eyes Wide Shut.” (Scroll down to see the full lineup of film scheduling through the end of the year.)
David Berger, formerly an executive with companies like Live Nation, bought the theater in 2020 and has spent the last four years working on a top-to-bottom renovation with principal architect Bob Kupiec, local builder Kerry Miller and the construction team Holwick Constructors. It’s been a long road in bringing the theater back from a 10-year-old flood that left a sea of mud in the interior and a sinkhole alongside the sidewalk… not to mention a hole in the community where its central gathering place used to be.
“A water main broke in front of the theater 10 years ago that ruined the foundation and almost destroyed the whole building,” says Berger. “I bought it in 2020 and have been restoring it ever since and bringing it back into a cinema that can do live and can do a lot of things… Over the past couple years, I’ve been really grateful to really create a really positive relationship with a lot of studios and distributors in curating a really cool, diverse list of first-run, indie, arthouse movies, mixed with a lot of nostalgic classics…
“Because this is really the only independent, arthouse, single-screen cinema that’s California-coastal between L.A. and Santa Barbara,” Berger continues, “it puts us in a really unique place where studios and distributors and directors and writers want to show their movie here in Ojai, where it’s such a magical, creative retreat place for the film industry and the entertainment industry. A lot of people live here full-time or part-time or come on the weekends and are really inspired by Ojai because of its profound nature and its creative effect. So having a beautiful, artsy, contemporary, historic theater that can do old and new and really presents a lot of different possibilities.”
The owner says that “the first few months will be very focused on film. but my goal is to really get into live performance, especially comedy, lecture, podcast and curated music. And we have the capabilities to do that. We have 35mm reel-to reel Simplex projectors and we have a Barco 4K laser projector for film. And we have two (sound) systems in the theater. We have a Meyer Sound system for cinema, but then we have the live stage with a Nexo live PA system built into the proscenium” — in a house that opened with silent films as the Isis back in 1914 and adapted to talkies in 1926.
Kupiec, the architect, says that “acoustically, I mean, we’re near recording-studio quality.” Berger, for his part, adds that “it’s equivalent to the highest of screening rooms. And what makes us different is that it’s for the general public.”
During Oscar season, that combintion will very much be apparent, with some FYC screenings of films concurrent with or slightly ahead of their official openings, advertised as being targeted at Academy members but also open to the general paying public.
For musical endeavors, Berger doesn’t expect the theater to make a play for touring rock bands, but his “curated” philosophy involves thinking along the lines of “classical, singer-songwriter, electronic, jazz, blues or international.”
What historic elements remain in the first mission revival building constructed in Ojai? The outside looks much the same as it has for decades, including a neon-like sign atop a new marquee. The inside won’t be so recognizable — it was gutted and now looks almost thoroughly 21st century — but most of the historic elements of the interior were gone anyway. In fact, during reconstruction, they found some vintage wooden elements that had been covered up for many decades that they incorporated into the new design.
Says Kupiec, the architect, “There was really kind of a monumental effort to even save the outside. The building had not undergone any kind of real maintenance, so there were a lot of leaking things in the walls, which needed to be re-stuccoed just for the seismic safety of the building. But we really wanted the outside to still capture the essence of what Ojai feels like, with many of the original qualities. The last marquee was truly hideous, and we wanted to do things that were sympathetic to the historic facade. That being said, once you go through the front doors, theaters are incorporating a tremendous amount of new technology, and the inside of the building really is something quite different. I think David’s been very sensitive to the issue of, if there was historic material appropriate to the building, it was left in place or featured.
“In order to accomplish both the acoustical enclosure and structural enclosure that was necessary to do all of this work, we literally built a new roof above the building to contain the old roof. But the old roof, which had been hidden by a tin ceiling, is more than a hundred years old, using original lumber from in the era when wood was wood, and it’s beautiful. We used that geometry in order to incorporate the quadratic diffusers, the lighting patterns. I mean, the building actually spoke to us in ways that kind of directed us to do certain things, with the geometry of the existing structure incorporated in what Dolby Atmos requires in terms of developing arrays for the appropriate placement of all of these fabulous speakers that are surrounding you from the ceiling and all the walls. The building had a lot to do with telling us what to do and how to get it done.”
Going back to what visitors will see at street level, Berger says, “We restored the Ojai Playhouse sign — which was neon, but we actually restored it in a Krypton gas instead of a neon gas, because we wanted to be more sensitive to the night sky initiative that’s in Ojai. Plus, the Krypton was just beautiful anyway … We waterproofed, re-stuccoed, and then we deeply researched a paint that would really be of essence of a mission revival color — a white shade of white — and we found incredible paint, with everything approved by the historic commission in town. And so we did re-waterproof, re-stucco and repaint the facade to make it more monochromatic, and again, to bring it back to its earliest sense of time.”
There were some real finds in the tear-down going on behind the façade. “When we gutted the lobby, which is like a hallway that transports you into this rite of passage into the main room, we tore down a wall, and behind the wall was another wall of tin, and behind the tin was the original redwood wall of the building. We took that wall down in panels, restored it and put it back on the wall. And also in the ceiling of the lobby, we gutted the dropdown ceiling and opened up the room to be as spatial as it could be, and we found the original wood joist ceiling… So we never tried to recreate anything from the past, but we found some gems in the wood in the ceilings and the wall, and we restored them and kept them in place. But everything else, we designed around it in a very contemporary way. So the building itself has a lot to say. It’s very past, present, and future.”
Now, Berger says, “This theater could stand another a hundred years — you know, way past us. Part of the goal is the preservation of the space of the building, but also its purpose as a theater. Because every owner — and I’m the seventh owner — made sure that the next owner would continue the theater and run it as a movie theater. And that’s my job here and that’s what Bob and I have done.”
Adds Kupiec, “I have to tell you, I think David is very modest. You know, many people have tried and not been able to have the kind of staying power in many ways, both intellectually and financially, to save the theater and turn it into something that is an active part of the community again, and David’s really done it in every way. I’m grateful that he’s let me be his partner in this adventure. But the truth is that something that was on the verge of extinction is now going to be one of the most spectacular theaters along coastal California. It’s an amazing room with amazing things in it. And it feels good — it feels relaxed, very meditative, and grounding, and I think that also is a reflection of Ojai.”
“I mean, David’s also very careful about the things that get chosen and that he chooses,” Kupiec adds. “So I’m betting that we’re probably gonna have the best popcorn in California.”
The Ojai Playhouse Inaugural Film Schedule Through December
November 22 – Heat (Michael Mann); opening night film
November 23 – Anora (Neon; Oscar contender); 4 showings in 35mm
November 24 – Heat (Michael Mann); 3 showings
November 28 (Thanksgiving) – Dune 1 and Dune 2 (Oscar contender) (in Dolby Atmos)
November 29 – The Brutalist (A24; Oscar contender; for Academy of Motion Pictures members and public; sneak peek);1 showing in 35mm
November 29 – Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
November 29 – The Substance (Mubi/Variance – midnight showing)
November 30 – WALL-E (Disney)
November 30 – Welcome Space Brothers (playing festivals; UFO documentary)
December 1 – Fitzcarraldo and Burden of Dreams (Werner Herzog)
December 6 – Emilia Perez (Netflix; Oscar contender)
December 7 – The Wild Robot (Universal; Oscar contender; best animation); 2 showings
December 7 – Emilia Perez (Netflix); 2 showings
December 8 – The Wild Robot (Universal)
December 8 – Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli)
December 13 – Anora (Neon; Oscar contender); 3 showings in 35mm
December 13 – Easy A (3 showings; filmed in Ojai; “Easy A All Day”)
December 14 – Anora (Neon; Oscar contender); 2 showings
December 15 – The Wild Robot (Universal)
December 20 – The Substance (Mubi/Variance); 2 showings
December 21 – Flow (Janus Films; Oscar contender; best animation); 2 showings
December 21 – Babygirl (A24; Oscar contender for Nicole Kidman; for Academy of Motion Pictures members and public; sneak peek)
December 22 – Sing Sing (A24; Oscar contender; for Academy of Motion Pictures members and public)
December 23 – It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra classic)
December 23 – Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick)
December 24 (Christmas Eve) – Die Hard
December 24 (Christmas Eve) – Bad Santa
December 25 (Christmas) – The Brutalist (A24; Oscar contender; for Academy of Motion Pictures members and public; sneak peek);1 showing in 35mm
December 25 (Christmas) – Conclave (Focus Features; Oscar contender)
December 26 – Conclave (Focus Features; Oscar contender); 2 showings
December 31 (New Years Eve) – Phantom Thread and Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson); in 35mm
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