Buried treasure: underground film festival

Custom Home, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Bruce D. Snider

It takes a certain kind of vision to look at a basement and see instead a Parisian square, complete with storefronts, lampposts, and a classic 1920s movie house. It takes even more vision when your home does not yet have a basement. To create the space for this Old World fantasy, construction superintendent Jim Schmitz excavated 24 feet below the finish floor of the existing house, removing enough soil to substantially regrade its hilltop site. And while tons of material came out of that hole, just as much imagination seems to have gone back in. The underground street scene, paved in cobblestone and bounded by limestone and stucco building fronts with tile roofs and window boxes, leads to the new home theater. The theater's bronze marquee crowns a carved mahogany facade with twin doors and a windowed ticket booth. Inside, past the concession stand and popcorn machine is a viewing room as ornate as any Jazz Age movie palace. Custom wrought iron railings match the massive chandelier. Cherry trim frames decorative hand-painted panels at the wails and ceiling. The proscenium arch is also of carved cherry. Five millwork shops were involved in this room alone.

All that old-fashioned craftsmanship hides some very sophisticated electronics. Five McIntosh amplifiers supply the sound. The projector, which occupies its own overhead compartment with a dedicated air conditioning unit, is a JVC model normally specified for stadiums and rock concerts. "They adjusted it to a smaller screen so they could get super-high resolution," Schmitz says; this screen is only 12 feet wide.

Equally impressive are the many low-tech features that are just plain clever. Out in the square, conditioned air is ducted through floor grilles that look like storm drains. A trompe l'oeil mural extends the rather modest space down an imaginary side street. The antique limestone fountain operates on the same electrical circuit as the lights and drains down when it is not in use, Schmitz says, "so there's never water sitting in it." And when the owner requested a touchscreen control panel that would disappear into a wooden console by his theater seat--something not yet available on the market--Schmitz rigged his own solution, using an electric car-window lift he found in a junkyard.

Project Credits: Builder: Wardell Builders, Solana Beach, Calif.; Designer: The Home Theater Store, Solana Beach; Decorative painting: Lost Arts, San Diego; Photographer: Matt Brown.