New Beverly was not born as a showcase for Quentin Tarantino. Its relationship with cinema comes from a repertory tradition that first found in him a viewer, then financial support, and later a programmer.
Sherman Torgan's theater and Tarantino's arrival
Sherman Torgan opened the New Beverly's repertory era in 1978. For decades he sustained a schedule of double features that turned the theater into a meeting place for film lovers. After his death in 2007, his son Michael continued the day-to-day work. That history predates Quentin Tarantino's involvement and is necessary to understand what he wanted to preserve.
A report by Vanity Fair from February 2010 documented the director's financial support when the theater was going through difficulties and the purchase of the building in 2007. The distinction between protecting the property and directing the entire schedule avoids compressing a multi-year process into a single founding gesture. Tarantino did not create the venue's identity from scratch: he intervened in a film-exhibition culture he already knew as a customer.
In October 2014, a phase of direct responsibility for programming began, launched with a double feature devoted to Paul Mazursky: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Blume in Love. The reopening after renovations was then announced as a specific event, not as the absolute beginning of the New Beverly. The theater's past remained part of its public presentation.
The choice of Mazursky also helps avoid oversimplification. Identifying Tarantino exclusively with violence, martial arts films, or westerns leaves out part of his work as a viewer. A relationship comedy and a story about romantic ties can open his programming. A theater's personality emerges from those shifts just as much as from the genres for which its programmer is best known.
Programming means relating films
The double feature proposes a reading through proximity. Two films can share a director, an actor, a subject, or a more indirect relationship. Watching them back to back allows the second to alter the immediate memory of the first. That operation distinguishes programming from a simple list of available titles: what matters is the combination and the shared time set aside to experience it.
Historical examples show different criteria. In March 2011, the month curated by Tarantino paired Road Games with The Anderson Tapes. The connection does not require both films to tell the same story. Viewers can compare ways of handling surveillance, information, and suspicion across films with different protagonists and settings. That comparison is a critical possibility of the double feature, not an explanation of the programmer that needs to be invented.
Retrospectives and tributes allow for another movement: recognizing the range of a career. An actor may seem inseparable from one kind of role until several films reveal differences in register. A director associated with a famous title may reveal other interests. Repertory makes that continuity visible without relying on each work competing again as a commercial release.
The theater maintains a commitment to screening photochemical prints, including 35mm and 16mm formats. For audiences, that choice affects the material experience; for programming, it involves print availability and exhibition conditions. The broader debate about celluloid and digital cinema explains the arguments, but here the practical consequence matters: the format is part of the program's identity.
Tarantino's private collection feeds that work alongside other sources. Film collecting and preservation deserves its own explanation; owning a print does not in itself mean restoring a title or controlling its rights. In a theater, the value of the collection appears when it makes possible a public experience that would be harder to organize otherwise.
The interval between two features is also part of that design: it lets people talk through an impression before facing the next work and then see which connections hold and which fall apart.
An archive of screenings, not a permanent listings page
Historical schedules make it possible to reconstruct what was advertised and how the films were grouped. An old listing does not guarantee that a new screening exists or that it retains the same access conditions. To distinguish history from the present, any information about tickets, showtimes, or guests must be read with the date of the corresponding screening. The archive is useful for studying programming; the current listings are useful for planning a visit.
The connection with The Video Archives Podcast shows how a conversation can lead to a screening. In September 2022, the New Beverly announced a Philippine cinema double feature with introductions by Tarantino and Roger Avary. That example illustrates a flow between oral criticism and the theater, without every episode of the podcast having to become a live event.
The Vista Theatre serves a complementary function, with an initial approach more oriented toward first-run film prints. The identities of both venues can allow for crossovers and special screenings. The New Beverly keeps repertory and the dialogue between works as its main reference point. Its double features make it possible to study this way of recommending cinema through exhibition choices, without reducing the experience to knowing its owner's favorite films.
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