Entertainment
Heavy new investments in the arts promise to lift Bunker Hill
With two major expansions of downtown Los Angeles cultural institutions in the works, Bunker Hill is primed to elevate its status as the region’s leading arts center even as the area around it struggles with persistent homelessness and post-pandemic losses of office tenants.
Bunker Hill will soon have the largest concentration of buildings designed by Frank Gehry in the world and promises to become a cultural center “like no other place,” the architect told the Los Angeles Times.
The Broad recently announced a $100-million project that will increase gallery space at one of the city’s most popular museums by 70%, and the Colburn School for performing arts just broke ground on a $335-million expansion that will include a mid-size concert hall — designed by Gehry — that is expected to be in near-constant use for events put on by students, professional artists and academics.
Gehry has been a key player in the decades-long comeback of Bunker Hill, a former residential neighborhood that is now home to cultural institutions, office skyscrapers, apartment towers and hotels. With the coming additions, Gehry said, Bunker Hill stands to surpass the vision he, museum founder Eli Broad and other civic leaders had in the 1990s when work got underway on Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the government-led Grand Avenue Project to revitalize the neighborhood.
Planners at the time hoped to build on the appeal of the Music Center, which was built in the 1960s and served as a popular destination for arts patrons who typically drove in and out without stepping outside its boundaries.
A rendering of the future Broad expansion as viewed from Hope Street.
(Courtesy of the Broad. © Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R))
“We have come a long way since the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the other Music Center venues opened,” Gehry said. “So much great energy has come to the fore.”
Bunker Hill is still unlikely to feel similar to cultural centers in other big cities, he acknowledged, and laughed off a reminder that Broad had suggested Grand Avenue could become L.A.’s version of Paris’ Champs-Elysees.
“Los Angeles cannot be compared to anywhere else in the world. It’s different than other cities,” Gehry said.
Bunker Hill is slightly removed from the homelessness and safety concerns that trouble the financial district just south of it, said John Sischo, who has worked in the real estate business downtown since the 1980s.
“Homelessness is a big problem that keeps office tenants from coming downtown,” he said. Safety issues are both “real and perceived.”
In the two decades before the COVID-19 pandemic, civic leaders and landlords pushed to elevate the financial district that Sischo recalled as a “doughnut hole” between Bunker Hill — with its highbrow cultural scene — and the booming new neighborhood of South Park near Crypto.com Arena and L.A. Live, where sports and entertainment ruled.
Thousands of apartments and condominiums were added to the financial district — followed by bars, restaurants and stores that thrived on the residents and office workers whose bosses took advantage of comparatively low rents in gleaming towers that were being upgraded by their owners.
The drop in street life from workers staying at home during the pandemic and continuing to work remotely has been a drain on the vibrancy and sense of security in the financial district, which is depressing office leasing and hampering the neighborhood’s comeback, Sischo said.
Falling office values have led to foreclosures on some prominent office towers, including 444 S. Flower St., which was owned by Sischo’s company, Coretrust Capital Partners.
Acclaimed architect Frank Gehry stands in an outdoor lounge area of the bar Sed, part of Conrad Los Angeles, a luxury hotel across from Walt Disney Concert Hall, which Gehry also designed.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
“Pre-COVID, it was really jelling,” he said of the financial district.
The most transformative addition to Bunker Hill in recent years was the Grand, a $1-billion hotel, apartment and retail complex designed by Gehry that stands across Grand Avenue from Walt Disney Concert hall, which he also designed.
“Now Disney has context,” Gehry said in 2022 on a balcony at the Grand overlooking the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “For me, it all fits now. Disney Hall doesn’t look like an outlier.”
In the nearly two years since the Grand opened, its 45-story apartment tower has been nearly fully leased, owner Related Cos. said.
The Conrad Los Angeles hotel there is “outperforming the market,” Nicholas Vanderboom, chief operating officer of Related California, said, in part by “catering to growing interest in L.A’.s arts institutions.”
Spanish chef José Andrés operates restaurants at the Grand and more places to eat are coming in a part of the complex that has been dark since it opened, to the dismay of neighbors who have been waiting for long-promised retail venues on Grand Avenue. One of the features Gehry designed was space for stores and restaurants on the avenue and on terraces above that overlook the Disney Concert Hall, but it’s still mostly unoccupied.
Later this year, Andrés will open a Bazaar Meat, his high-end steakhouse that originated in Las Vegas, on the second level. Santa Monica Italian, French and & Moroccan restaurant Massilia will also open a branch on Grand Avenue this year, and other tenants will be announced in 2024, Related said.
The additions to the Broad and the Colburn promise to boost foot traffic on Grand Avenue, said Sel Kardan, president of the Colburn School, which opened on Bunker Hill in 1998 and has around 2,000 students.
The Broad Museum on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles in April 2019.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Construction began recently on the expansion of the Colburn School that includes a mid-size concert hall Kardan expects to be in near-constant use for events put on by students, professional artists and academics. It is the third Gehry-designed building on Bunker Hill, which gives downtown L.A. the highest concentration of Gehry buildings anywhere, his firm said.
Colburn Center, as the addition will be called, will include a 1,000-seat concert hall with an in-the-round design meant to create intimacy between the performers and the audience. The hall will have an orchestra pit and a stage large enough to accommodate “the grandest works,” Kardan said, making it suitable for orchestra, opera and dance.
He expects the new hall will host more than 200 events a year at various times of day. The Colburn Center will also more than double facilities for the school’s Trudl Zipper Dance Institute, creating what the school called “one of the most comprehensive dance education complexes in Southern California.” The dance facilities will include a 100-seat theater for dance and four professional-size studios for dance instruction and rehearsal.
With the new addition, “there could be three or four performances going on on our campus on any given night,” Kardan said, a combination of educational performances, guest artists and events put on by local arts organizations.
The Colburn Center is set for completion in 2027. The Broad expansion should open a year later, museum President Joanne Heyler said, and add to street life on Grand Avenue.
A model of architect Frank Gehry’s design of an addition for Colburn School, a private performing arts school in downtown Los Angeles, which will make Bunker Hill the only place with three Gehry-designed buildings in close proximity, on January 31, 2024.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Attendance at the Broad returned to pre-pandemic highs of more than 900,000 annual visitors, she said, with a new daily record of more than 6,000 visitors set in March.
With the expansion,”we’re simply responding to the tremendous enthusiasm of our audience that is now consistent with pre-pandemic levels and and seemingly growing,” she said.
“I am under no illusion that downtown in general is free of challenges,” Heyler said. “We in the entire area have a lot to work on, but as a meeting point, a place to enjoy a cultural destination, our experience with the Broad is that things are vibrant. And I know that goes against the typical narrative of downtown.”
The Grand was “the next-to-the-last piece of the puzzle” for Bunker Hill, said landlord Christopher Rising, whose firm Rising Realty Partners owns two office buildings there. The final piece will be Angels Landing, he said, a $1.6-billion hotel-housing-retail complex set to rise next to Bunker Hill’s historic Angels Flight railway in time for the 2028 Olympics.
Rising laments that office attendance is still below pre-pandemic levels, especially among nearby government buildings that were packed with public employees who helped bring a sense of activity to Grand Avenue and other downtown streets.
“There are years of vision that are coming to fruition” on Bunker Hill, Rising said, “but the vision was heavily dependent on synergies with government workers. Without them, it’s slowing things down.”
More can be done to improve Bunker Hill, Gehry said, and the streets near Grand Avenue that are thick with parking lots are now ripe for development. The Colburn addition is going up next to the existing school on a former asphalt lot at 2nd and Olive streets.
“To keep upping the ante, we still have work to do,” Gehry said, such as “fixing” the Chandler Pavilion to make it a better venue for opera performances.
“There are also opportunities to connect down to the arts district, the civic center, and Little Tokyo on the east-west streets,” he said. “That is very exciting to me.”
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Is This Thing On?
Cinematic stories of disintegrating marriages are fairly commonplace—and often depressing emotional endurance tests, besides—so it’s interesting to see co-writer/director Bradley Cooper take this variation on the theme in a fresher direction. The unhappy couple in this place is Alex and Tess Novak (Will Arnett and Laura Dern), who decide matter-of-factly to separate. Then Alex impulsively decides to get up on stage at an open-mic comedy night, and starts turning their relationship issues into material. The premise would seem to suggest an uneven balance towards Alex’s perspective, but the script is just as interested in Tess—a former Olympic-level volleyball player who retired to focus on motherhood—searching for her own purpose. And the narrative takes a provocative twist when their individual sparks of renewed happiness lead them towards something resembling an affair with their own spouse. The screenplay faces a challenge common to movies about comedians in that Alex’s material, even once he’s supposed to be actively working on it, isn’t particularly good, and Cooper isn’t particularly restrained in his own supporting performance as the comic-relief buddy character (who is called “Balls,” if that provides any hints). Yet the two lead performances are terrific—particularly Dern, who nails complex facial expressions upon her first encounter with Alex’s act—as Cooper and company turn this narrative into an exploration of how it can seem that you’ve fallen out of love with your partner, when what you’ve really fallen out of love with is the rest of your life. Available Jan. 9 in theaters. (R)
JANUARY SPECIAL SCREENINGS
KRCL’s Music Meets Movies: Dig! XX @ Brewvies: As part of a farewell to Sundance, Brewvies/KRCL’s regular Music Meets Movies series presents the extended 20th anniversary edition of the 2004 Sundance documentary about the rivalry between the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre as they chart different music-biz paths. The screening takes place at Brewvies (677 S. 200 West) on Jan. 8 @ 7:30 p.m., $10 at the door or 2-for-1 with KRCL shirt. brewvies.com
Trent Harris weekend @ SLFS: Utah’s own Trent Harris has charted a singular course as an independent filmmaker, and you can catch two of his most (in)famous works at Salt Lake Film Society. In 1991’s Rubin & Ed, two mismatched souls—one an eccentric, isolated young man (Crispin Glover), the other a middle-aged financial scammer—wind up on a comedic road trip through the Utah desert; 1995’s Plan 10 from Outer Space turns Mormon theology into a crazy science-fiction parody. Get a double dose of uncut Trent Harris weirdness on Friday, Jan. 9, with Rubin & Ed at 7 p.m. and Plan 10 from Outer Space at 9 p.m. Tickets are $13.75 for each screening. slfs.org
Rob Reiner retrospective @ Brewvies Sunday Brunch: Last month’s tragic passing of actor/director Rob Reiner reminded people of his extraordinary work, particularly his first handful of features. Brewvies’ regular “Sunday Brunch” series showcases three of these films this month with This Is Spinal Tap (Jan. 11), The Princess Bride (Jan. 18) and Stand By Me (Jan. 25). All screenings are free with no reservations, on a first-come first-served basis, at noon each day. brewvies.com
David Lynch retrospective @ SLFS: It’s been a year since the passing of groundbreaking artist David Lynch, and Salt Lake Film Society’s Broadway Centre Cinemas marks the occasion with some of his greatest filmed work. In addition to theatrical features Eraserhead (Jan. 11), Inland Empire (Jan. 11), Mulholland Dr. (Jan. 12), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Jan. 14), Blue Velvet (Jan. 19) and Lost Highway (Jan. 19), you can experience the entirety of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return on the big screen in two-episode blocs Jan. 16 – 18. The programming also includes the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life. slfs.org
Death by Numbers @ Utah Film Center: Directed by Kim A. Snyder (the 2025 Sundance feature documentary The Librarians), this 2024 Oscar-nominated documentary short focuses on Sam Fuentes, survivor of a school shooting who attempts to process her experience through poetry. This special screening features a live Q&A with Terri Gilfillan and Nancy Farrar-Halden of Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, with Zoom participation by Sam Fuentes. The screening on Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m. at Utah Film Center (375 W. 400 North) is free with registration at the website.
Just down the street from Roc Nation, SiriusXM and Sony Music, Spotify is joining Hollywood’s Sycamore media district with a brand-new podcast studio facility.
The new, invitation-only space will be the company’s second studio location in Los Angeles and will cater mostly to video podcasts.
When Spotify moved into its campus in the Arts District in 2021, podcasting was primarily an audio experience, and the DTLA studios reflected that. But as the listening format began to evolve into a visual one, Roman Wasenmüller, Spotify’s vice president of podcast and video, said the company needed to revamp and expand its facilities to meet the growing demand.
The Arts District studios will remain open and focus on audio content while the new Hollywood location will provide a “video-first environment.” The nearly 11,000-square-foot space includes five different studio areas that can accommodate a variety of setups, including cozier interview settings and vast recording spaces for big groups. And unlike other rentable studios around L.A., the space will be staffed by Spotify employees, who can help produce the show.
“It was just clear to us that we need more facilities than we had before, but also at the same time, we just need to figure out what the right setup would be so that we can succeed in this new world of podcasting,” said Wasenmüller.
The Hollywood location will partially function as a homebase for the Ringer, an L.A.-based media brand focused on sports and pop culture. The company was founded by sportswriter Bill Simmons and was bought by Spotify in 2020.
Recently, Spotify announced that several of the Ringer’s video podcasts will start streaming on Netflix in early 2026. Shows like “The Rewatchables,” “Ringer-Verse” and “The Hottest Take” will soon be recorded at the new outpost.
These studios won’t be exclusive to the Ringer. Wasenmüller said the space provides the opportunity for creators of all kinds to host interviews and guests while they are in Los Angeles.
Traveling while podcasting has always been a challenge for Chris Williamson, the host of the self-improvement and philosophy podcast “Modern Wisdom.” The 37-year-old recalls struggling alongside his producer to make filming possible in various Airbnbs and warehouses.
“There’s been a number of times where I’m passing through L.A. and I’ve desperately needed a spot to record with someone. This new space would have been perfect. I would have made a lot of use of it,” said Williamson. “It’s just another indication that [Spotify is] putting their money where the priorities are. If I’m in town, I imagine that I’ll be dropping into [the studios] regularly.”
Williamson is a member of the Spotify Partner Program, which is also seeing a sizable expansion, as the platform continues to invest in the podcasting industry. The monetization program was launched last year, and it allows creators to directly monetize their content on the streaming platform with ads and revenue from video podcasts. Spaces like the new Spotify Sycamore Studios are also available exclusively to members of the Spotify Partner Program. Since its introduction, monthly podcast consumption on the platform has nearly doubled.
As a member of the program since it began, Williamson said he’s seen a significant increase in revenue, adding that he was able to make more than seven figures in 2025, with an average of six figures monthly.
“It was like a human centipede where Spotify paid us to put more video on Spotify, which meant that we got bigger on Spotify and that meant they paid us more money,” said Williamson. “It was this sort of self-reinforcing circuit, and it helped.”
Over the last five years, the company estimates that its investments in the podcast industry have generated more than $10 billion in revenue. There are nearly 7 million podcast titles available for streaming, with some of the company’s most popular shows including Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang” and “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Though Spotify has continued to invest in podcasts, it has not been immune to volatility in the business. The company’s podcast division has previously undergone restructuring, including layoffs, cutting back shows and dissolving previously purchased production companies like Gimlet.
Founded in 2006, Spotify has become the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service with over 713 million users. The streamer, based in Sweden, is available in more than 180 markets and has a library of over 100 million tracks and 350,000 audiobooks. Spotify shares closed at $571 on Tuesday, down 3.7%.
“Podcasts are now absolutely in main culture. When we started in podcasting, it was a very niche medium,” said Wasenmüller. “But now you look at where it is [today] and podcasting is a main medium across all big platforms like Netflix and YouTube. Even the [Golden] Globes are having a podcast category for the first time. There’s something big happening. To a certain extent, it’s the future of entertainment.”
Movie Reviews
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Home’ on Starz, a paranoid thriller where Pete Davidson gets trapped in a creepy retirement home
The Home (now streaming on Starz) pits Pete Davidson against the residents of a creepy retirement community, and it isn’t exactly a Millennials-vs.-Boomers clash for the ages. “Best generation, my f—in’ dick,” our headliner mutters under his breath at one point, and that’s an accurate representation of this quasi-horror movie’s level of articulation. Filmmaker James DeMonaco (director of the first three The Purge movies, writer of all of them) takes a halfway decent idea and turns it into an uninspired, vaguely brownish-colored movie version of the stew you make out of all the leftovers in the fridge, and that you can’t revive with just a little more salt.
THE HOME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Hurricane Greta is about to slam into this community, and this movie would love you to come to the conclusion that it’s the result of the collective might of boomers’ farts after they ate too many Wagyu tenderloins basted in the metaphorical gravies wrung from the pores of younger generations. Maybe that’s why Max (Davidson) is so skinny, but it’s definitely why he’s so P.O.’d. He breaks into a building and expresses his angst via some elaborate graffiti art that gets him arrested – again. His foster father finagles a deal for him to avoid jail time by performing community service at the Green Meadows Retirement Home and that doesn’t seem too bad since he’ll be a janitor and not a nurse on diaper duty. And at this point it’s established that Max has some trauma stemming from his foster brother’s suicide, the type of trauma that’s requisite to pile atop any and all protagonists of crappo horror movies at this point in the 21st century.
It’s worth noting that Green Meadows is a halfway-decent retirement community – not as posh as the one in The Thursday Murder Club, and not as repugnant as you might expect for a low-rung horror flick. BUT. There’s always a BUT. He arrives at the home and looks up and sees peering out a window the face of a gaunt old man with eyes that ain’t quite right. I’m sure it’s nothing! Management gives him the nickel tour, and gives him the first rule of The Friday the 13th Murder Club: DON’T GO ON THE FOURTH FLOOR. And yes, that’s also the second rule of The Friday the 13th Murder Club. Max will stay in a room at the home so he can be available 24/7 in case the job requires a 2 a.m. mop-up, and also so he can have lucid dreams that may or may not actually be dreams about weird shit happening around these here parts.
But everything goes fine and Max quietly manages his trauma and nothing incredibly gross and/or violent happens and he lives happily ever after the end. No! Actually, he catches a glimpse of old people in bizarre masks having miserable sex, and hears horrible screams of agony coming from, yes, the fourth floor. Max seems to be getting along OK, and even makes a couple of friends, like Lou (John Glover), who summons Max to clean up a big mess of feces when it’s actually a little welcome party for the new super. Ha! Max also has conversations about Real Stuff with Norma (Mary Beth Peil), both sharing the pain of the people they’ve lost. Eventually the fourth floor misery noises get to be too much and Max picks the lock and investigates, and it’s full of wheelchair-bound elderlies in states of drooling, semi-comatose madness. After Max gets his hand slapped for violating the first/second rule, that’s when the bullshit ramps up. Let’s just say this bullshit has some Satanic vibes, and poor Norma doesn’t deserve what happens to her, although Max seems ready to do something about all this.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The Home is sub-Blumhouse drivel nominally referencing things like Rosemary’s Baby, Eyes Wide Shut, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in order to make it seem smarter than it is. Other recent scary movies set in nursing homes: The Manor, The Rule of Jenny Pen.
Performance Worth Watching: A moment of praise for the makeup and practical effects people, who provide The Home with more memorable elements than any of the cast performances.
Sex And Skin: A bit. Nothing extensive. But definitely unpleasant.
Our Take: In The Home, DeMarco tries a little bit of everything: flashbacks, dream-sequence fakeouts, jump scares, body horror, surveillance-tech POVs, occult gobbledygook, creepy sex, conspiracies, climate change dread, generational divide, paranoia, deepfake-ish dark-web weirdness… it goes on, and none of it is particularly compelling or original. It’s most effective in its grisly imagery, with a couple of memorable deaths that might tickle the cockles of horror connoisseurs, and DeMarco’s generous deployment of pus and eyeball gloop shows a variation on the usual bodily fluids that’s, well, I don’t know if “satisfying” is the right word, but at least we’re not drenched in the same ol’ blood and barf. Small victories, I guess.
Most will take issue with the casting of Davidson, who in the majority of his roles to date has yet to show the intensity that anchoring a thriller like The Home demands. He puts in some diligent effort in the role of the guy who routinely goes what the eff is going on around here?, and his work is a cut above merely cashing a paycheck, which isn’t to say he’s necessarily good. Miscast, maybe. The victim of half-assed writing, more likely, this being a paranoid creepout that never gets under our skin, with attempts at cheeky comedy that fizzle out and social commentary that dead-ends into obviousness. Having Davidson piss and moan about “F—ing boomers” ain’t enough.
The plot works its way through its hodgepodge of this ‘n’ that plot mechanisms to get to a conclusion that’ underwhelming and over the top at the same time; the initial bit of exhilaration quickly dissipates and we’re left with the sense that the movie just hasn’t been good or diligent enough in its storytelling and character development to earn this catharsis. It’s just spectacle for its own gory sake. This mediocrity might just inspire Davidson to retire from horror movies.
Our Call: Hate to say it, but 1.7 decent kills does not a horror movie make. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
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