"Don Jon"

"Do you like movies?" Scarlett Johansson asks Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the romcom "Don Jon" (Relativity Media, 2013). It's set in New Jersey but the location they used for a date was the Valley Plaza Theatres in North Hollywood. He likes seducing many different girls but also has a love of porno. 

 

The film, directed by Gordon-Levitt, also features Julianne Moore, Tony Danza, Brie Larson and Glenne Headly. The cinematography was by Thomas Kloss. Thanks to Jared Cowan for identifying the theatre. He included the film in "This Dilapidated Valley Shopping Center Is the Backdrop for Decades of Huge Movies and TV Shows," his fine 2020 article for Los Angeles Magazine. 

 

 

Heading into the lobby. Most people buy tickets at the boxoffice. These two are going to go look at the posters and then decide what to see.   

 

"So Hard So Fast" in 3-D is the movie more to his taste. Yet she's making all the decisions and loves romcoms as well as the two actors in "Special Someone," played by Channing Tatum and Anne Hathaway.

 

He goes along with it and they head into auditorium #3.

 

During the movie she's enthralled but he tells us in voiceover what he thinks of the unrealistic plots and sappy characters of the genre. 

 

For the sake of the romance he pretends to have enjoyed it. Nice to see the seat counts for three of the complex's auditoria. 

 

 

The big moment in the middle of the lobby. He leans in for the first kiss.  

 

 

Of course we get the 360 degree pan around to observe. She turns out to be wonderful but he still needs to creep out of bed and watch porno. Julianne Moore is the one who eventually straightens him out.

 

For more about this six screen complex see the page about the Valley Plaza Theatres on the Los Angeles Theatres site. It opened in 1976 and closed for good in 2020. The building is in NoHo at 6355 Bellingham Ave., just south of Victory Blvd.  

 

 

Later in the film Joseph is out at a joint getting some New Jersey style pizza with his buddies. The location is the 7th St. side of the State Theatre, 7th and Broadway. We see a Metro bus go by. 

On IMDb: "Don Jon"