Variety's move west

I reported last weekend that Variety would move down Wilshire Boulevard to the former People's Bank tower across from the new entrance to LACMA. Today's Times adds the news that Variety's name will go up on top of the building. That's perhaps a little sweet revenge for editor Peter Bart, who will now occupy the top floor high above the offices of Los Angeles magazine, which profiled him unkindly several years back. The magazine's Michael Mullen takes note of the irony in a blog post today:

Well, isn't that awkward, considering Los Angeles magazine now works its journalistic mojo from within the suddenly claustrophobic walls of the VARIETY BUILDING. Seriously, we check eBay all the time, we knew the Ferris wheel on Santa Monica Pier sold, but we were the last to know about this. Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart, whose pursed lips graced our September 2001 cover beside the line "Is this the most hated man in Hollywood?" will now sit enthroned high above us, kind of like Ricardo Montalban in The Wrath of Khan. In the article on Bart, then-senior writer Amy Wallace reported that Bart unethically used his position at Variety to sell a screenplay to Paramount Studios. Bart was quoted as asking if Los Angeles's editor-in-chief was "some kind of professional Jew." Oh, right, and a Variety reporter quoted him as saying, "I'm not hiring anymore fags because they get sick and die."

Is it going to be like Warriors? But instead of swinging chains and baseball bats, are we going to be scalding each other with lattes? Hurling razor-edged bagels and assorted pastries? Who knows, maybe revenge is a dish best served cold.

Variety is leasing the top three floors — and the signage — in an $11.6 million deal.