On a recent Saturday around dusk, a dozen people of various ages arrived at Gerhard Bauer's unassuming 2,000-square-foot home.
It was movie night – but there was plenty more to the show than what would soon appear on the screen.
Bauer, 51, is a nationally known stem cell researcher at the UC Davis Medical Center. In his spare time, he is a man in love with movies.
In fact, Bauer bought his Sacramento house two years ago because he could envision how he could install a movie projector precisely 23 feet from a screen. It just so happens, he would have to cut holes in the wall separating the garage from the living room and install what might seem to the typical visitor peculiar windows.
"The house is too big for me, but I needed that setup," he said with a shrug.
These days, the immaculate garage has a shiny tile floor and his authentic, old projectors show movies through the glass to a remote-controlled, sound-permeable screen. He built his own speakers and installed them into the ceiling and behind the screen. He bought used theater seats for $100 each and fastened them to the floor. When he moved to town from St. Louis, he personally drove the projector in his car so it wouldn't be damaged.
Every month, Bauer, 51, invites about a dozen friends and co-workers to a night at the movies. He usually selects something old, often from the 1930s or '40s.
The movie is only part of the entertainment. Bauer, who lives with his three cats, introduces the film to his guests, gives some history about the actors and the director and sometimes tells how he acquired the authentic 35 mm copy of the film. Some were purchased via a network of collectors; many others joined his collection after Dumpster-diving outside Hollywood studios.
The experience, from the moment the doorbell rings until the lights come up at the end of the film, often leaves visitors enthralled.
"It is important that I work at the profession I am in to give people cures for the incurable," said Bauer, who was born and raised in Austria and still speaks with a mild accent. "But it's also important to do what I do with the movies because it gives me so much pleasure."
On a recent Saturday, Bauer selected "The Spiral Staircase," a 1945 suspense thriller about a serial killer starring Dorothy McGuire and George Brent. Beforehand, he showed a musical short film, a period newsreel announcing the end of World War II and a Donald Duck cartoon in Technicolor.
The movies are a regular part of Bauer's world, even though his professional life has been especially busy these days.
On Sept. 26, UC Davis Medical Center will break ground on a 5,000-square-foot facility known as a Good Manufacturing Practice lab, which Bauer has been designing. When completed, it will be a pristine, practically germ-free environment appropriate for the manufacture of clinical-grade cellular therapies to be used in clinical trials.
The lab, which is expected to be completed in late 2009, will be part of the 90,000-square-foot, $60 million UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures.
Bauer says movies offer an after-hours release from his high-pressure, highly detailed work. Yet, he applies the same perfectionist standards to his hobby.
On movie night, he is so busy making sure all the details come together that he has little time to watch what's happening.
Often, he will watch the movie himself hours before the guests arrive.
Bauer's interest in the movies dates to his childhood in Austria. His father worked as a movie projectionist in the 1930s and saved many copies of movies. Bauer was captivated. He even postponed his medical studies so he could try acting and be involved in the technical side of theater.
Not long after he finished medical school, Bauer decided he wanted to pursue a career in research.
His research on HIV brought him to the United States in 1983. In 1995, he moved to Los Angeles, where he was involved in pioneering work on gene therapy for HIV at the University of Southern California.
That job also gave Bauer a direct link to Hollywood. In his off hours, he said he found many of his vintage 35 mm films while searching through studio Dumpsters. In 2001, he took at job at Washington University in St. Louis, where he turned his basement into a movie theater.
In 2006, attracted by UC Davis' plans for stem cell research, Bauer moved to Sacramento. Relocating also meant a chance for a new movie theater – after a few holes in the garage wall. A climate-controlled bedroom upstairs has been converted to a storage room for the sometimes fragile old movies.
His movie nights are so popular that Bauer sometimes has to break up the events into two separate showings. He clearly enjoys the events, his house, his movies and the magic of it all. Visitors are often overwhelmed, confounded.
After the recent showing of "The Spiral Staircase," Bauer laughed and said, "People so enjoyed it. When it was over, they sat there and didn't want to get up and leave."
Call The Bee's Blair Anthony Robertson, (916) 321-1099.
