He's king of the second-run palace

By Greg Braxton

Sept. 8, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Hollywood is in pre-Saturday night fever mode. Mother-daughter combos gleefully exit the El Capitan following a “Princess Diaries 2” tea party. The courtyard of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre is overrun with tourists trying cement footprints on for size. And on Sunset Boulevard, the entrance to the upscale ArcLight is buzzing with moviegoers, grooves from a small jazz band and diners relaxing on the cafe patio.

But a stone’s throw away, on a seedy stretch of Hollywood Boulevard bordered by a Scientology center and a strip club, Le Sex Shoppe and a triple X theater, a lower-key vibe is unfolding at the aging and unpolished Vine Theater.

Inside, the Greek warrior Achilles, better known as Brad Pitt, has just met his fate in “Troy” and a few members of the sparse, mostly male audience stagger out of the dark auditorium to wait for the next film, the disaster epic “The Day After Tomorrow.” One gravel-voiced customer with a black do-rag and dirty shorts pleads at the unlighted snack bar, trying to score some free popcorn. A younger man positions himself in the “smoking area” -- an ashcan propping open one of the grimy doors.

A middle-aged couple in white polyester outfits survey some of the “No’s” plastered over the Vine’s box office -- “No Refunds,” “No Loitering,” “No Outside Food and Drink,” “Walk Don’t Run.” Two separate groups of high schoolers come in to use the bathroom but turn quickly on their heels when told it will cost them $2.

As darkness and show time approach, Vine owner Jim “Jamshid” Barmaan hurries from the box office to the snack bar to his upstairs office, personally seeing to all of the details that come with running Hollywood’s only second-run movie house, one of the boulevard’s few cinematic survivors.

In his own way, Barmaan, an energetic and talkative Iranian immigrant, has realized his lifelong dream of belonging to the once and future glamour capital of the world. And although the Vine is not exactly a destination point for most filmgoers, Barmaan couldn’t be prouder of it.

Declining in typical Hollywood style to give his age (“Just say I’m around 40”), he’s mostly a one-man band, though he does have a few employees helping out when he’s not there. When he is, he will jump from taking tickets to recording show times for callers to manning the cluttered snack bar, where patrons can buy a cup of instant noodle soup. And the Vine is probably the only theater that stocks Tylenol alongside the Milk Duds.

Placed near the entrance to the theater is a board posting pictures of Barmaan with various stars -- Leonardo DiCaprio, Quentin Tarantino, Jean-Claude Van Damme -- who have visited the Vine for screenings or while filming there.

“I so happy to be on Hollywood Boulevard,” Barmaan says in broken English. “Since I was a boy, I wanted to be in the movie business. I thought I would be at studio. But I have my own movie theater.”

In the midst of Hollywood’s continuing revitalization highlighted by flashy commercial developments such as Hollywood & Highland, most of the area’s movie theaters keep expanding and upgrading, adding reserved seating, gourmet snacks, VIP lounges and ticket prices that can reach $20 a pop. But the 600-seat Vine -- with its promise on the marquee of “Two Movies Seven Dollars Any Time Any Show” is a remnant of the district’s less ornate past.

Built in the 1940s, the Vine at various times has been a first-run movie house and a Spanish-language movie theater before Barmaan, looking for real estate opportunities, took it over in 1992. In addition to being a registered historical landmark in the Streamline Moderne style (etchings in the floor, a chandelier in the lobby), the Vine is one of the final stops for major studio films before they wind up on Blockbuster shelves.

The venue specializes in action movies -- don’t look for “The Notebook” or other slower-paced dramas to play here. “We had ‘The Matrix’ for four months,” Barmaan says with pride. He also has his favorite directors: Tarantino, De Palma, Spielberg (although he thinks “The Terminal,” while “a decent movie,” may not be a good fit for the Vine).

Barmaan gets his movies only after they have played for weeks or even months at the ArcLight or the Chinese, a fact that often frustrates him. “The ArcLight, they keep ‘The Passion of the Christ’ for four months, so when it come here, everyone had already seen it,” he says. Film exhibitor regulations prevent him from showing a movie that is playing within a three-mile radius.

But he doesn’t really mind the competition. “I’m too busy to worry about them. They don’t bother me. I don’t bother them.”

And while the Vine, which used to be owned by the Pacific Theatres chain, has seen better days, it has outlasted other single-screen theaters on the boulevard such as the long-shuttered Fox and the Vogue. Other former movie houses such as the Pantages and the Pix -- now the Henry Fonda Theater -- host stage productions and concerts.

Barmaan says he has spent thousands of dollars renovating and cleaning the theater. Still, with its graffiti-scratched doors, unpolished floors and cluttered snack bar less than half the size of its counterpart at the Chinese, the Vine almost dares customers to come inside. Its location doesn’t help. It is just doors away from a tattoo parlor, porn theater and strip club. Even in the daytime the block, shadowed by several trees, has an ominous atmosphere. Parking is scarce.

Those who do venture inside find a spacious narrow auditorium, with none of the musty smell that invades other older movie houses. The screen is large and the facility has a Dolby stereo system. It has become a haven for undemanding moviegoers who don’t place a priority on stadium seating or cup holders.

David Mendoza, 69 and retired, says he has visited the Vine about once a month over the past two years. “I usually come for both movies, even though I may have seen one or both,” he says as he exits the “Troy”-”Day After Tomorrow” duo.

Patrick Hume and Laura Renault are drawn to the Vine on a recent evening by the double bill and the coupon (one free small popcorn and an orange soda) that comes in a local weekly.

“We like to come here more than the New Beverly,” says Hume, a caddy at the Wilshire Country Club. “It’s fine. It’s clean.”

Still, the Vine doesn’t survive solely through walk-up customers. Most of the theater’s revenue comes from exhibitors that rent the theater for screenings and studios that use it as a filming location for $3,000 a day. (Barmaan says it was used in DiCaprio’s “Catch Me If You Can.”)

He also makes ends meet by keeping electrical and other bills down. “If I light up the snack bar, I use up 700 watts,” he explains. “My brain works at how to save money. It would cost me $100 a seat to replace all the seats in the auditorium, so I don’t want to do that.”

Despite its shortcomings, Barmaan thinks the Vine is a palace, one that he plans to turn over to his 4-year-old son, Joseph, when the boy grows up.

“He is a movie fan, just like me,” Barmaan says. “It’s the perfect thing.”