The New Beverly was not born as a showcase for Quentin Tarantino. Its relationship with cinema comes from a repertory tradition that found in him a spectator, financial support and, later, a programmer.
The Sherman Torgan era and Tarantino’s arrival
Sherman Torgan opened the New Beverly’s repertory era in 1978. For decades, he sustained a programme of double bills that turned the cinema into a meeting place for film lovers. After his death in 2007, his son Michael carried on the day-to-day work. That history precedes Quentin Tarantino’s involvement and is essential to understanding what he wanted to preserve.
A report in Vanity Fair in February 2010 documented the director’s financial support when the cinema was in difficulties and the purchase of the building in 2007. The distinction between protecting the premises and overseeing the whole programme avoids compressing a process spanning several years into a single founding gesture. Tarantino did not create the venue’s identity from scratch: he intervened in an exhibition culture he already knew as a customer.
In October 2014, a period of direct responsibility for programming began, opened with a double bill devoted to Paul Mazursky: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Blume in Love. The reopening after the refurbishments was announced then as a concrete event, not as the New Beverly’s absolute beginning. The cinema’s past remained part of its public presentation.
The choice of Mazursky also helps avoid oversimplification. Identifying Tarantino solely with violence, martial arts films or westerns leaves out part of his work as a viewer. A relationship comedy and a story about romantic bonds can open his programme. A cinema’s character emerges as much from those shifts as from the genres for which its programmer is best known.
Programming means relating films
The double bill proposes a reading through proximity. Two films may share a director, an actor, a subject or a more indirect connection. 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 to tell the same story. The viewer can compare modes of surveillance, information and suspicion in films with different leads and settings. That comparison is a critical possibility of the screening, not an explanation of the programmer that needs to be invented.
Retrospectives and tributes allow another movement: recognising the variety of a career. An actor can seem inseparable from one type of character until several films show differences in register. A director associated with a famous title may reveal other interests. Repertory cinema makes that continuity visible without relying on each work once again competing as a commercial release.
The cinema maintains a commitment to screening photochemical prints, including 35 mm and 16 mm formats. For audiences, the choice affects the material experience; for programming, it implies print availability and screening conditions. The wider debate about celluloid and digital cinema explains its arguments, but here the practical consequence matters: the format is part of the programme’s identity.
Tarantino’s private collection feeds that work alongside other sources. Film collecting and preservation deserve their own explanation; owning a print does not of itself amount to restoring a title or controlling its rights. In a cinema, the value of a collection appears when it makes possible a public experience that would be harder to organise otherwise.
The gap between two feature films is also part of that design: it gives you time to comment on an impression before facing the next work, and afterwards to check which relationships hold and which fall away.
An archive of screenings, not a permanent listings board
Historical schedules make it possible to reconstruct what was announced and how the films were grouped. An old listing does not guarantee that a new screening exists or that it keeps the same access conditions. To distinguish history from the present, any information about tickets, times or guests must be read alongside the date of the corresponding screening. The archive is there to study programming; the current listings are there to plan a visit.
The link with The Video Archives Podcast shows how a conversation can lead to a screening. In September 2022, the New Beverly announced a double bill of Filipino cinema with introductions by Tarantino and Roger Avary. That example illustrates a circulation between spoken criticism and the cinema, without every podcast episode needing to become a live event.
The Vista Theatre has a complementary role, with an initial approach more geared towards new releases on film. The identities of both venues can allow crossovers and special screenings. The New Beverly keeps repertory and dialogue between films as its main reference point. Its double bills make it possible to study this way of recommending films through exhibition choices, without reducing the experience to knowing its owner’s favourite films.
Back to Tarantino’s books, criticism and film-lover projects.