You got questions?

We got answers. One of our competitors wrote in and asked:

“I have heard in L.A., that the theaters are like shrines and no one talks. And people stay through all the credits?”

The answer is yes. In LA, they’ve built theaters that, as places of worship, exceed anything even the Mormons have attempted. (Contrast that to New York, which has a great tradition of 1 and 2 screen theaters, scattered throughout Manhattan.)

Each of these theaters feature a combination of the following:

• Reserved seats.

• Leather seats, about the same size as the seats on Jet blue.

• Ushers who help you to your seats and stay in the theater after the lights go out.

• Every movie is preceded by an usher - slash - aspiring - actor - slash - UCLA - Film - School - Graduate – paying - off - $60,000 - in-student - loans who stands before the crowd and welcomes everyone to the show, explains the ground rules, and tells them where to find another helpful usher is they have any questions. (Someone please tell that popcorn vendor at Boston Common theaters about this place. He’d make a killing here.)

• People turn off their iPhones. Nobody yells “Racist!” at the guy who turns around and “shusses” the people behind him, because nobody talks during the movies.

• 80% of the people show up on time.

• They applaud at the end of the movie.

• They laugh and/or hiss at every mention of George bush in a movie.

• 80% of the men arrive in form-fitting black sweaters and those thick-framed black glasses favored by stylish lesbians.

• There’s a portrait of Cindy Sheehan hanging in the lobby.

• There's a gift shop in the lobby, on a slightly smaller scale than the gift shop of the MFA in Boston.

• People stay thru the closing credits, even when they know there is no hidden scene at the end. About 65% chance that they know at least one person listed in the credits, even if it's just the caterer.

• The snob quotient is pretty high here, too. Movies you’d expect to see at the Kendall get equal billing with the Transformers and Wild Hogs.

The best place is the Arclight Theaters in Hollywood. It is indeed a shrine for movies, which has all of the above features. (altho we have received complaints about their sparse snack collection.)

Other notables are the new Landmark Theaters. Landmark was dubbed “the Arclight killer” by LAist.com, but they’ve missed the mark. Going to the Landmark after experiencing a movie at the Arclight is a lesson in what happens when people really, really get it, and those that are just trying to please the crowd. Landmark had big leather seats - but not enough legroom. The rooms were small. The staff of ushers were unhelpful, not yet trained on the seating charts, waited to be asked for help, and disappeared as soon as the movie began (when they would be most needed, as people inevitably arrive after the lights go out.) The Arclight is a movie house built and staffed by people who love movies, while the Landmark is a luxury movie house designed and maintained by people who want to sell tickets.

The theaters at the Grove. The Grove is a shopping center that is modeled after the Main Street USA in Disneyworld, except instead of rides there are Apple Stores and J. Crew shops

Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. It’s got none of the features otherwise described in this piece but it is a large, beautiful theater notable for still hosting all the big movie premieres, the celebrity handprints and footprints in the concrete outside, and Wookies attacking tour guides on the sidewalk.