Ben, the Man who Saved the Cinerama Dome
Proof that if you stick to your dreams, they can come true hear in LA
Ben Steinberg had a simple goal: he wanted his favorite movie theater, the Cinerama Dome to reopen after being closed for several years. Many told him his dream was crazy.
The beautiful Dome, sadly, was owned by a wealthy family. The Formans, who built it near the corner of Sunset & Vine in the early 1960s.
But their role in LA moviegoing dates back even further than that.
It all began with William R. Forman, the visionary who founded Pacific Theatres in 1946 focusing on drive-ins. LA had plenty of space and people were starting to buy cars. Why not?
Pacific eventually operated hundreds of screens and became a titan in the space.
Its jewel was the Cinerama Dome, which Forman completed in just 16 weeks in time for the November 7, 1963 premiere of Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
The concrete geodesic dome, with its enormous curved screen and 70mm capabilities, became one of Hollywood’s most recognizable buildings and destination movie palaces for locals and tourists alike. For decades it became one of the venues big studios fell over themselves to host premieres in.
The family later created ArcLight Cinemas, opening the ArcLight Hollywood complex beside the Dome in 2002. ArcLight helped popularize reserved seating, carefully curated pre-screening presentations, fewer commercials and a more upscale film-focused experience that influenced competitors throughout the theater industry.
COVID crushed many industries and Pacific Theatres and ArcLight were no exceptions. They shuttered their locations in March 2020.
A year later the Forman family’s Decurion Corporation announced that neither chain would reopen. Pacific Theatres subsequently entered Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and many former Pacific and ArcLight locations were taken over by AMC, Regal and other exhibitors.
The family retained ownership of the Cinerama Dome and the adjoining ArcLight Hollywood property, however. But their repeated reopening plans were postponed, leaving the complex dark for more than six years.
During this shut down, 26 year-old Ben Steinberg feared the family would do to the Dome what they had done with the Warner Hollywood Theatre at 6433 Hollywood Boulevard - just let it die.
Warner Bros. sold the 1928 theater property to the Forman family’s Pacific Theatres organization in 1968. Pacific operated it as a major first-run house and later divided it into three auditoriums. But when the 1994 Northridge earthquake damaged the place, it never reopened as a cinema. It does, however remain in The Formans real-estate organization, Robertson Properties.
Not wishing the same fate for his beloved Dome, Steinberg created a petition which garnered more than 30,000 signatures, and he spent years operating the Save Your Cinema campaign - mostly on Twitter, while attending public hearings, organizing supporters, and becoming a very polite but persistent pest.
But his breakthrough came when he began projecting demands to reopen the theater onto the Dome itself and included photos of the Forman family themselves.
After years of not returning Steinberg’s persistent calls and letters, it was this act that got their attention and progress began to get made.
Yesterday Sony Pictures Entertainment announced that its Alamo Drafthouse subsidiary would lease and restore the property.
As part of the deal, The Dome will retain its historic name, screen and non-dining presentation, while the adjoining 14-screen multiplex will become Alamo Drafthouse Hollywood. The complex is scheduled to reopen in early 2028.
The news hit Twitter and spread fast. Even powerhouse directors like Edgar Wright celebrated Ben’s tenacity to reopen the joint.
We were lucky enough to chat it up with Ben on what must have been the busiest and happiest day he’s had in quite a while.
Here is the full interview.
And below are slightly edited excerpts of our convo:
Hear in LA: So, Ben, you lived up to your Twitter handle. You saved a cinema today.
Ben Steinberg: Yeah.
Hear in LA: How are you feeling?
Ben Steinberg: I’m really happy and excited, and I can’t wait to go back inside the Cinerama Dome.
Hear in LA: It feels like when you did the punk rock move of putting pictures of the family who owns the Cinerama Dome onto the Cinerama Dome through a projector, that might have been a key moment. Would you agree?
Ben Steinberg: Yeah, I definitely think that was a turning point in the campaign, and kind of like a blessing in disguise.
Hear in LA: I don’t know these people at all, but I feel like they felt a little embarrassed. People can tweet all they want, but when you put somebody’s picture on something as iconic as the Cinerama Dome, that kind of sends home a message that they might not have been ready for. Right?
Ben Steinberg: Yeah. There was a public hearing for the theater and the their property representative, when she was asked about my projection protest thing, she said that the property ownership family took notice of the extreme public interest in wanting the theater to reopen,
Hear in LA: They’d never believed that people cared about it before?
Ben Steinberg: Ah, I’m not exactly sure what was going on with them because they never responded to any of my emails or phone calls, and they issued zero communication PR stuff. Like they didn’t want to talk to anyone. There have been some other articles that describe them as like maybe they didn’t even realize people wanted to go back in. So no, it was all very mysterious.
Hear in LA: From what I understand, when you did project those pictures onto the Cinerama Dome, they called the police. When the police arrived, were you still there? Did you talk to the police?
Ben Steinberg: Yeah. So when the police arrived, they just told me that the ownership considers it harassment and a form of escalation and that I should shut down.
So I just decided to shut down immediately because I didn’t want to anger the ownership or cause any conflict, so I just stopped right away. The police never threatened me with arrest or a citation. It was just a point of contact.
Hear in LA: Do you believe that is harassment by putting a picture up on a building?
Ben Steinberg: Um. I mean, personally, I don’t think so, but I stopped doing it right away.
Hear in LA: And I think that’s why people really respect you and like you. I think your intention has always been very clear and very wholesome. You just you love movies and you’ve said this is your favorite movie theater and you want it reopened.
Ben Steinberg: Yeah, I would be very happy to just give them my money and watch movies inside.
Hear in LA: Okay, so in your tweet today you said that you’ve talked to a couple of different directors, including Quentin Tarantino, who I think is an interesting person today because his last movie was released by Sony, and I feel like he always wanted his movie shown there because, like you, that cinema was a big deal for him growing up.
Ben Steinberg: Yeah, I he mentioned on the Howard Stern show, like back in 2021, that he wanted to take the Cinerama Dome or like lease or buy it, but he said something along the lines of that the ownership were planning to reopen it themselves and they didn’t want anyone else to do it, which I think was true at the time, but then things changed in 2023.
Hear in LA: He ended up with the Vista, and he’s doing a great job with it, as well as with the New Beverly, but I also remember that one of his movies, he wanted it shown there at the Dome, but for whatever reason, Disney wanted a new Star Wars there, even after it had kind of run its run. Do you remember that at all?
Ben Steinberg: Yeah. So Quentin Tarantino wanted the Hateful Eight to play in the Cinerama Dome. Yes. But Disney wanted their Star Wars to play, and Disney said that if you don’t play Star Wars in the Cinerama Dome, you can’t play it at any of your theaters on any of your screens. And at the time, they had like 30 to 50 different movie theaters.
Hear in LA: So it also sounds like you were in talks with Sony. Did you help them make this happen? What was your relationship with them?
Ben Steinberg: I can’t say much. All I can say is that I was contacted by Sony before it was officially announced, and I’m looking forward to them reopening and restoring it.
Hear in LA: it. Was was it a call to say, “Hey, you’re gonna have a happy day”? Or was it “thank you for bringing this to our attention”?
Ben Steinberg: It was a cryptic LinkedIn and email message.
Hear in LA: Online, a lot of people seemed to have mixed feelings about this deal. They were happy that all your hard work paid off and that we would all be getting the Cinerama Dome and those other theaters back, but they had mixed feelings about Alamo Drafthouse, specifically ordering from your seats. And part of the deal said that’s not going to happen, at least in the Cinerama Dome. Do you have any feelings about Alamo?
Ben Steinberg: I’ve always been a fan of Alamo Drafthouse. I’ve never really had a bad experience there. I think people seem to be forgetting that in the press release it said the Cinerama Dome will not be a dining theater.
I really like how they program their movies, and I really like how they mask their screens to the proper aspect ratio, which is pretty rare now. And they still do like classic screenings and cult movies and foreign films. And I was actually just recently at their downtown LA location, and the waiter, because I don’t think there was like many people in the theater, but the waiter was let me do the old way with the paper. So like I I was kind of surprised by that.
Hear in LA: Tell me a little bit about some of your experiences at the Dome. You say it’s your favorite theater. Was there a specific film that you saw there that got you to love it so much?
Ben Steinberg: Well, my first time there was watching 2001 A Space Odyssey in 2014. They were showing the movies that inspired Interstellar, and that was definitely an amazing experience. I think it was one of my first times in a movie palace, and like seeing like 900 people inside of the auditorium
Hear in LA: Also on your tweet, you said that you sit on a board now?
Ben Steinberg: Yeah, I was invited by the Los Angeles Historic Theater Foundation to join them. This was like a few months ago. They had just told me that if the Cinerama Dome ever does reopen, I would be able to kind of be a part of them, because like anything they do kind of has to go through this foundation. So they would just keep me looped in.
Hear in LA: Well, I can’t think of anyone better than you. Let me ask you about Twitter. I think you have 11,000 followers on Twitter, and I feel like most of your campaign was done through Twitter.
Ben Steinberg: Yeah, I would say maybe 60 or 70% of it was from Twitter. I started posting on Instagram, but I think I got the most amount of attention on Twitter,
Hear in LA: I also think you said Sean Baker contacted you?
Ben Steinberg: Well, I mean, throughout the last five or six years, he’s just been retweeting and reposting all of my posts, and if I needed like help or support, I would just DM him, and he would offer me advice or like contact information.
That’s just part of our chat. Hear the whole deal hear: