Academy Awards at Theater With No Name? Kodak, Seeking Bankruptcy Protection, Wants Out

By Dennis Romero Wed., Feb. 1 2012 at 4:25 PM

Rajiv Patel

This year's Academy Awards are loaded with controversy, and they haven't even been handed out yet.

Brett Ratner pulled out of producing the show after uttering an anti-gay slur. Then onetime friend-of-the-tranny Eddie Murphy followed him out the door (irony?). Now it looks like The Help is poised to take home many a statuette, even though some (some?) African Americans aren't happy with a film by white folks, for white folks, about demeaning black work.

Who said bad news comes in threes?

Eastman Kodak Co., which filed for bankruptcy protection last month, wants out of its naming rights deal that puts its name atop the theater where the Academy Awards have been held since 2002.

Way to celebrate 10 years.

The company, understandably, wants to save the "significant annual fee" it pays to keep its brand on the venue, which is attached to the architecturally atrocious Hollywood+Highland complex in Hollywood, according to The Wall Street Journal.

(The same day that the city's Community Redevelopment Agency was officially put out of business, the Kodak, owned by CIM Group, a developer that got tens of millions of CRA public money to get its hands on Hollywood+Highland and other developments, is no longer the Kodak. Perhaps. Discuss.)

City Councilman Eric Garcetti has already called for ideas for new names.

Seeing how digital photography helped put Kodak in its position, how about:

-Hipstamatic Theater.

-Don't Allow Location Theater.

-Grainy iPhone Video Theater.

-Cop, Give Me My Damn Phone Back, And Don't Delete My Pics Theater.

-And, of course, You Better Not Show Your Friends (I Promise I Won't) Theater.

What do you think?

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

Tags:

Academy Awards, Hollywood, Hollywood and Highland, Kodak Theater

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jillkennedy

Here's a great story from a disgruntled movie executive. The Motion Picture Academy can go F itself...

http://mankabros.com/blogs/cha...

Rick Abrams

The developers may love Garcetti for all the loot he has steered their way, but in so doing, Garcetti has incurred so much public wrath that he should top the CRA/LA Developers' Enemies List. But for Garcetti's outrageous hubris, the CRA/LA would still be alive.

Nonetheless, the developers appear to have just dumped $1 Million into Garcetti’s “I Can Destroy The Rest of LA” campaign fund. Even if 100% of the $1 M came from CIM Group, that would be 1/454 of what they "made" on the Hollywood-Highland deal. It cost $625 M to construct, but CIM Group bought it for $201 M and then Garcetti helped the City to throw in an additional $30 M.

Where's the District Attorney, when $454 Million just goes poof and disappears -- who knows where it went? Oh, that's right trust fund baby Garcetti's daddy is the ex DA. Gee whiz, I wonder if there could be some illicit connection between all the missing cash in Hollywood and Cooley's blindness. Maybe mayor wannabe Garcetti knows where the moolah is stashed. While he's at it, Garcetti might also tell us about the missing $1.4 M in the appraisal fraud on the CRA's Cesspool on Vine Project, which he so vociferously championed.

Two years ago the big wigs never ever envisioned that Garcetti’s grandiose arrogance would kill their beloved cash cow, the CRA/LA. I wonder if two years from now if these looters of the public treasury will be saying, "In 2012, it never occurred to us that we'd actually end up in Folsom." We can hope . . . . and plan.