This was not planned in advance. I had pre-purchased tickets to several screenings for the upcoming weekend. I didn’t have any plans and thought it a good opportunity to see at least a movie a day. I suppose I was looking at screening calendars and thought, “Well, maybe I could see a double feature at two different theaters one day.” How that thought escalated to triple features for four days in a row I don’t know.
I bought all the tickets Tuesday night, announced the official MovieTown Cinema Crawl to the world Wednesday and showed up to The New Beverly at 2pm on Friday afternoon for the first movie. Much of the next four days would be spent wondering why I did this.
FRIDAY MAY 16
The crawl would kick off with a 2pm matinee at The New Beverly of GRAVITY, Alfonso Cuaron's 2013, space-real-time-anxiety-fest-Sandra Bullock-one-woman-show. I started going to New Beverly screenings in the mid 2000s when I moved to LA for film school. This was the pre-Quentin Tarantino owned days, the seats were ragged, the floors a bit dirty, the clientele - overwhelming male, but the programming pretty much the same: a double feature each night, midnight shows on Friday and Saturday, maybe weekend matinees.
The typical pairing would either be two movies from a director’s filmography, say Hal Ashby’s HAROLD & MAUDE (1971) with SHAMPOO (1975) or maybe a pairing to feature a particular actor or actress like Katherine Hepburn’s BRINGING UP BABY (1938) with WOMAN OF THE YEAR (1942). Tarantino purchased the theater in 2007 to save it from real estate redevelopment, funded a rehab of the theater’s seats and lighting fixtures but left Michael Torgan, son of the previous owner to run the day to day programming and operations.
In 2014 Tarantino announced he’d be taking over programming duties. His first step was to promptly rip out the recently installed 4K digital projector and declare that The New Beverly would henceforth only ever screen movies on film.
As I took my seat and some sunlight from the front lobby windows leaked into the theater it dawned on me that I’d never actually seen a movie during the day here. A crowd of 50 or so people trickled in and more shocking than people showing up to a 2pm screening of GRAVITY was the distinct mix of ages, genders, and demographics that made up the attendees.
The pre-show music faded and an employee stepped in front of the screen to address the audience. Turns out GRAVITY is part of a Best Oscar Editing series they’ve had going on. Did GRAVITY win Best Picture that year as well, it seemed like it had. I looked up later what film won the Best Picture Oscar that year, 12 YEARS A SLAVE, though Cuaron did take home Best Director.
One of the pleasures at The New Beverly are the tailored pre-show trailer/shorts programs that play before the feature. Rather than taking the time to simply promote upcoming screenings you are treated to trailers and material to match the movie you’re about to see. I’m going to list all of them here because it really was a superb way to start off the crawl.
Kicking us off were back-to-back 50s NASA newsreels. The first about Project Gemini launching astronauts into orbit around earth and the second someting to do with satellites. Quite germane to Sandra Bullock’s conundrum we were about to watch.
The first trailer was APOLLO 13 (1995), but this was not the plucky Tom Hanks movie I remember, the trailer painted the film as a dark and brooding thriller - would liked to have seen that version! DePalma’s MISSION TO MARS (2000), a pleasurable Kubrick 2001 take-off, played next.
Finishing out the pre-show trailers was Soderbergh’s remake of the Tarkovsky classic SOLARIS from 2002 with George Clooney. “Oh yeah,” I thought, “Clooney’s in the movie I’m about to watch, good segue.”
I saw GRAVITY in 3D during its original release in 2013. I wasn’t all that impressed by it the first time I saw it (even if technically it was a marvel and some of the 3D interesting), thinking it was too straightforward for me and that the Clooney hallucinatory visit late in the movie felt too easy.
I remember catching most of it on HBO a year later in a hotel and finding it hard to stop watching. My experience seeing it on 35mm film ten years later was like I had never seen the movie before.
Was the 3D of it all and the cultural response at the time a turn off that bled into the viewing experience? This is a great movie. My memory of the film had gotten jumbled with the other mother mourning a dead child space movie of the 2010s, Denis Villeneuve’s ARRIVAL (2016) such that I was positive Sandra Bullock’s character in GRAVITY has flashbacks of her daughter, but no, that girl and those flashbacks belonged to Amy Adams.
The catharsis of Bullock crash landing back to earth and planting her feet on the ground hit me. I have no desire to orbit the earth anytime soon. The crawl was off to a good start.
The break till my next film stop would be the longest of the entire cinema crawl. The only time I would find myself stopping back at my place during the day to walk the dog and relax a bit. At 7:30pm I was back at it, showing up to Whammy! Analog in Silver Lake, site of MovieTown Episode 2.
Owner, Erik Varho, was behind the counter to greet me and we chatted a bit about the STUCK ON VHS Wings Hauser double feature for the night, THE ART OF DYING (1991) and LIVING TO DIE (1990), neither of which I had ever seen or even heard of till that week. Whammy’s Stuck on VHS series is just that, movies that were released to VHS in the 80s or 90s but never got a transfer to DVD/Blu-Ray/4K etc.
Wings Hauser is the prolific character actor who starred in both of the 90s action films we were to watch as well as having directed them. Fifteen or so people filled the 25 seat microcinema at the back of Whammy when Erik got up to introduce the films.
I got a good straight to video history lesson here learning about PM Entertainment one of its key players and the only company to ever hand over the directorial reins to Wings during his career. Wings died this past March after appearing in over 100 films and TV shows.
His son, actor Cole Hauser, followed him into Hollywood and continues on the legacy most recognizably as Rip Wheeler in “Yellowstone.”
Wings had made tonight’s films during a small uptick in the neo-noir genre of the late 80s/early 90s, though as Erik assured us, attempting to pin a genre to these works is a journey that folds back in on itself and out the other side too many times to capture in words.
Erik hit play on the 30 year-old VHS rental tape and we were treated to a PM Entertainment trailer for QUIET FIRE (1991) printed on the tape ahead of the feature. It was for another actor/director effort, this time by Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (not to be confused with the 1990 PM Entertainment release COLDFIRE, Wings Hauser’s directorial debut).
The stakes were raised and THE ART OF DYING did not disappoint. This is an absolutely bat shit insane entertaining to the core 90 minutes that begs to be seen with a crowd lapping up all of its ridiculousness in unison.
The basics are that a serial killer is on the loose in Hollywood who happens to be a self-stylized auteur filmmaker staging famous movie deaths on camera the way they were meant to be seen… as snuff films capturing the moment the light goes out in the character’s eyes.
This is dark, but don’t let that cast a pallor over the film, Wings love interest likes showing up at his Malibu beach house on horseback before their kitchen grocery fetishistic love making sessions.
Could LIVING TO DIE hold its own following such a work? Like any great double feature, the second film, if it is thematically aligned with the first film, needs to be tonally in a different space than the first film if it’s not to bore the audience and simply feel like a retread.
Most of the crowd stuck around for the second movie and while not touching the heights of THE ART OF DYING, LIVING TO DIE succeeded in being its own thing and enjoyable to boot.
It’s a more straight ahead neo-noir exercise that hits every beat of the genre you’d want. Ex-cop with a past, check, love interest who’s not who she claims to be, check, trying to play both sides and end up with the bag of cash at the end, check.
Throw in an EASY RIDER style ending transposed to the Vegas strip with our protagonist having his chest exploded whilst piloting a Harley and then one of the great dark ending lines I have ever seen, “Nice,” and you’ve got one solid 84 minute video on your hands.
SATURDAY MAY 17
The Saturday crawl was to be the latest start time of any of the four days. I showed up to the 4pm Vidiots screening in 35mm of THE STRAIGHT STORY (1999) a good half hour early, perused the video store, rented a couple disks, grabbed a soda and some red vines and grabbed an aisle seat in the spacious Eagle Theater.
I was surprised that it looked like a hundred people were there for the movie and gobsmacked when the theater filled to just about its 270 seat capacity by the time the lights went down. Film composer and host of the Song Exploder podcast, Hrishikesh Hirway, gave an intro to the film somewhat centered around director David Lynch’s work with composer Angelo Badalamenti but also just what an odd entry this G-Rated Disney feature is in the filmography of Lynch.
The crowd was asked how many people were seeing the movie for the first time and a good two-thirds of the people there raised their hands. I was shocked, the power or Lynch six months on from his death I suppose.
I own THE STRAIGHT STORY on DVD and certainly count Lynch as one of the important filmmakers in my life even if I haven’t revisited the work much of late. And certainly hadn’t watched THE STRAIGHT STORY itself in probably fifteen years.
This is something I would contemplate as the day of the crawl went on but I don’t know if it was seeing this movie on film, seeing it with a full crowd at a great theater or just the sheer force of the film itself, but this was a high watermark cinematic experience for myself.
The film was more Lynchian than I remembered and the laughs and awkwardness play throughout. Of course, it’s that emotional heft at the end that ultimately gets you and stays. Even though it’s a Disney movie and rated G it's hard for me to see kids falling for it that much.
Sandwiched between LOST HIGHWAY and MULHOLLAND DRIVE it is truly an oddity in the Lynch filmography and while lacking the sex and crime intrigue of those other two features it feels no less weighty and adult. In my first episode of MovieTown, guest Sam Wasson and I touched on Lynch as it was a month or so since he’d died.
Sam brought up THE STRAIGHT STORY as one of his personal favorites and wondered what Lynch’s career would have been like had he followed this instinct further versus returning to familiar ground in MULHOLLAND DRIVE and INLAND EMPIRE. Impossible to say, but at least he gave us one STRAIGHT STORY.
My one mistake is scheduling occurred between THE STRAIGHT STORY and my next movie, Francis Ford Coppola’s RUMBLE FISH (1983), at Brain Dead Studios. With the Vidiots pre film intro I had to rush out immediately as the credits rolled and still was a couple minutes late to Brain Dead. I was familiar with S.E. Hinton's novel it’s based on from reading it as a kid so I didn’t miss much and wasn’t confused when I sat down.
Coppola made RUMBLE FISH immediately after THE OUTSIDERS, a bigger hit adaptation of a different S.E. Hinton young adult novel. The black and white aesthetic and stylized presentation didn’t take with audiences of the time and it was one of Coppola’s biggest bombs. He’s stuck by his guns for all these years though, often calling it his favorite and most personal film.
The sequence of Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke and Dillon’s straight edged friend going across the river to the black neighborhood for a night of carousing is something to see. Every frame is overloaded with movement and life and vibrancy and you get swept up right along with it. The other magnificent thing about the movie is the cast - it’s just wild how many faces you recognize from this movie - of course Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke in the lead roles but also Nic Cage, Diane Lane, Chris Penn, Dennis Hopper, Tom Waits and Laurence Fishburne.
The ending of the film keeps it in the mixed reputation file with the off screen shooting of Mickey Rourke feeling like a baffling choice. And Rourke’s performance, while intoxicating, starts to feel one-note before the film shifts into him deciding to set all the animals in the pet shop free and return the fighting fish to the Arkansas River.
I need to look up how Coppola pulled off the fast moving clouds in store front windows he kept returning to throughout. And will be interesting to see THE OUTSIDERS again at some point to see how he handled the very similar material (and much of the same cast ) in a different way.
I had a decent chunk of time to kill between RUMBLE FISH and the next movie, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW at the Landmark Nuart. I hit up Cafe 50s on Santa Monica Blvd. down from the Nuart for some coffee and food, watched the first couple minutes of RUMBLE FISH that I had missed on my phone (streaming on Amazon Prime) and pondered the cinematic arts.
Cinefile Video still occupies the space next to the Nuart. I arrived over there a half hour early before the 11pm show and browsed the aisles. Then joined up the ROCKY HORROR line forming outside the theater.
I’ve been to the full-on ROCKY HORROR experience with shadow cast three times in my life. The last time being over thirty years ago. My first (virginal) viewing was in San Antonio, Texas when I was 12 or 13. We were there for our regular summer trip visiting my dad’s family and my older cousin Ron took me late one night to do something different.
The oversexed, overstuffed atmosphere has never left my mind. The second viewing took place when my parents took me and friends to the show at the Loft Cinema in Tucson for my 14th birthday and then a couple of years later I went sans adult guardian just with high school friends.
I watched the movie once on VHS in a college dorm setting with someone who was a massive fan and that was my last experience with the movie. I had fond memories of that initial time discovering it but it wasn’t anything I’d thought about seeking out during my film immersion time in LA. I thought its long running stature and place in theater-going deserved another look at least.
The whole show didn’t actually start till midnight and it was a long build up till the movie actually started playing. I was tired from minute one. I gave it a go to participate in the first “Time Warp” group dance but I was done after that.
I stuck it out to the end and have to admit some sequences in the filmmaking are pretty outstanding but the experience overall felt too juvenile, too rote and was definitely not something to attend alone and for the 50 or so of us in attendance the constant harangues to tip the shadow cast actors after having spent $20 on the ticket and $5 on a “Prop bag” consisting of a plastic glove, single sheet of newsprint and a glow stick grated on the nerves to say the least.
On the drive back I wondered about the origins of the ROCKY HORROR experience, when and how did the first shadowcast happen, how long did it take to become a staple of American moviegoing? Arriving back home at 2:30am knowing I had scheduled the crawl for its earliest start the next day at 10am I had officially hit the crawl nadir.
This was a rough morning (and not in the hangover sense, no alcohol was consumed on the crawl, it would have ended after day one had that been the case) - the 10am Vista screening of THUNDERBALL in 35mm did not seem like a wise decision. I took a brief cold shower to wake up and hit the road.
Once settled in with a Pam’s Coffy coffee from next door the warm environs of the Vista theater did their thing and this seemed like maybe the best idea of the whole crawl after all!Tarantino bought the Vista theater after it shut down during COVID and announced plans for it to be a first run/repertory theater.
It seemed like it took an extra year or two to open than planned but now that it’s here it’s hard to imagine the LA film scene without it. Like with Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema, the Vista only screens movies on film. If a first run movie wants to play here it’s got to be on film.
There is a 20 seat microcinema tucked away in a corner that plays movies on VHS, DVD and 16mm but in the main majestic hall of the Vista it’s film only.I’ve seen every James Bond film though the showing of THUNDERBALL (1965) would be the first time I had seen any of the pre Timothy Dalton films on the big screen.
My primary Bond memories of the Connery and Moore eras are James Bond marathons that would run on the USA cable channel every summer during the 90s. Between that and filling out the holes with an occasional VHS rental I saw every single one of them, but can safely say it had been twenty years since I’d seen one with Sean Connery in any fashion.
THUNDERBALL is the fourth film in the Bond series and I didn’t have too big of expectations for the thing, I thought it probably would feel quite dated and not hold up as a great entertainment. I was, of course, wrong. Quite wrong.
Like at The New Beverly, movies at the Vista get their own tailor made pre-show of old trailers and specific to this venue, a Looney Tunes cartoon short that ties thematically into the film of the day. The cartoon was a Woody Woodpecker spy vs. spy sort of thing. I’ve yet to be at a screening (first run or repertory) where the Looney Tunes selection didn’t eerily match the feature.
For the trailers we got a stylistic teaser for the 2000 version of CHARLIE’S ANGEL directed by McG and then two Roger Moore as Bond trailers, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981) and the aquatic themed OCTOPUSSY (1983). Rough estimate of the crowd is in the 200s or about half the capacity of this large single screen mecca.
And this movie had all 200 or so of us just supping from its open hand. What is it with the screenings on film for this Cinema Crawl? I’d rank this and THE STRAIGHT STORY as the tops with GRAVITY pulling along next. It’s crazy to me that THUNDERBALL is sixty years old. Its wit and ability to carry you through the whole movie is just not something I come across with contemporary movies.
The palpable relief of the crowd (tons of women as well) to laugh at the sex jokes and raconteur Bondness of it all made it so clear why these kinds of movies are pulling in crowds. The biggest laugh was after Bond seduces/backs into the sauna his fetching masseuse and then exits post-coital under a sign that reads “IRRIGATION CONTROL.” I know myself and a good chunk of that crowd will be back for the next Bond Sunday morning matinee.
Have you seen a silent film with a live accompaniment before? My first experience was just a few months ago at the Old Town Music Hall for Hitchcock’s THE LODGER (1927), it floored me. That I had never heard of the Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo before or knew they have professional organists playing a Wurlitzer organ to silent films seems unfathomable.
When I saw that Douglas Fairbanks’ THE BLACK PIRATE (1926) was showing with live accompaniment I knew it was a must for the CInema Crawl. I was very intrigued to see what sort of crowd the theater pulled in for a non-Hitchcock movie and while it wasn’t the sold out affair that THE LODGER was it was still a strong showing.
It’s definitely the oldest crowd I saw a movie with over the four days and that in its own way is kind of interesting, I mean none of the people in the theater with me were alive in the 1920s and probably not the 1930s either. I wondered if it was a nostalgia for experiences their parents might have told them about or just a crowd more able to suss out the visual language of the era.
I can say with complete honesty that I think the experience at the Old Town Music Hall would disappoint very few moviegoers. Much of this owes to the virtuosos sitting at the organ.
Each show opens with a medley of songs from the 1920s and a sort of mini scale Disney light show representing the different keys and elements of the organ. A Douglas Fairbanks’ historian gave a rather long intro to the film and did provide some good stuff to know. The biggest element being that the film was shot in color. I had no idea any silent films were shot in color.
Turns out THE BLACK PIRATE was the first full length film to be shot in Techni-Color. The historian bemoaned the version we were about to watch, saying that a newer restoration had taken place that was miraculous but alas this was the best we were going to get. I was shocked at the quality, it really is a color film, yes, dully saturated for the most part but you never think you’re watching black and white.
The film will feel comfortable to most any film goer that’s seen even one pirate movie that came after it, that’s how seminal all the tropes are in Fairbanks’ film. The hidden treasure, walking the plank, sliding down a ship’s mast with a knife, sword battles on the deck, it has it all.
The early start to the day and the long drive from Los Feliz to El Segundo had me pretty wiped out by the time the movie started and I worried I’d be falling asleep in my second row seat but the music and movie carried the day and I walked out of there having seen every frame.
I underestimated the drive from El Segundo to Santa Ana. I had been dreaming of a car nap between the movies, but that was not to be the case. Still, I had enough time to grab some food and fountain diet coke refills before my 7pm screening of Scorsese’s CASINO (1995) at The Frida Cinema. With the calories, caffeine and cinema I caught my second wind.
The Frida is overall the best revival/arthouse experience going right now in Southern California. The amount of people coming to the theater wearing Frida Cinema hats, t-shirts and other swag is not something I’ve ever seen in LA. Its support by the city and members is unrivaled. So, of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the theater fill up at least halfway for a three hour movie from the 90s on a Sunday eve.
I’m not sure if I saw CASINO in the theater in ‘95 nor how many times I watched it after that. I’m fairly certain I never saw it more than twice and many years had passed since I’d seen it. My general feelings about it were positive, and in my mind I always placed it on a similar tier as GOODFELLAS (1990).
Let me just get this out of the way right off the bat, it’s good, but it’s not GOODFELLAS. I spent the first hour transfixed as to how Scorsese even conceives of these sort of movies - the combination of voiceover, music, montage and very few typical “movie scenes” seems impossible to write.
That said the back half of the movie is long and once Sharon Stone’s character turns full alcoholic/drug addict every scene of fighting with Robert DeNiro felt like a rehash of what I’d just seen to the point that it felt like a lot of bluster and bickering. During the film I thought about how tied GOODFELLAS, CASINO and THE IRISHMAN are to one another, stylistically and thematically.
THE DEPARTED, also a mobster movie, really does feel apart from these three. Robert DeNiro ties them together in a big way but it really does feel like a painter grabbing a bigger and bigger canvas for works on the same landscape. Even the runtimes reflect it, the 2.5 hour GOODFELLAS, the 3 hour CASINO, the 3.5 hour THE IRISHMAN. I wonder in time if it will be looked at as the definitive Scorsese work in toto or if the more one off efforts of RAGING BULL and TAXI DRIVER still hold their place atop the hierarchy.
MONDAY MAY 19
Three days of the Cinema Crawl was plenty. 9 movies, 8 theaters. Tacking on an extra day, a Monday at that, was beyond reasonable. But I wasn’t in this for a reasonable experience so I think it does make sense I pushed past my limits.
The 12:20pm Alamo Drafthouse DTLA start time for DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975) wasn’t horrible but I didn’t hesitate to order a coffee as soon as my Drafthouse usher/waiter came by to take my order. Oh yeah, I’d completely forgotten the Alamo Drafthouse experience till I was in my seat there. It’s a real luxury, the seats are super nice, the little tables for the food, even the subtle light that you can peruse the menu with (or take notes during the movie) is placed just right.
The entrees people around me were ordering looked great, but I had done breakfast at home and stuck with a black coffee. A promo of the 1975 Time Capsule Series that DOG DAY was a part of played after the lights went down and then a real shock to the system, new movie trailers rolled. I’d sat through nine movies the last three days and had forgotten what it was like to be in a contemporary theater showing new movies.
A trailer for a reboot of THE FANTASTIC FOUR played, followed by SMASHING MACHINE, THE MATERIALISTS (a lot of Pedro Pascal, he stars in Fantastic Four as well), LIFE OF CHUCK, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER and THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME. Thankfully this wasn’t to be an AMC theater run of 8 or 9 trailers pre-feature and after the 6th we moved back into 1975 for DOG DAY AFTERNOON.
Much of the reason I did the Monday, 4th day of the crawl, was to see this specific movie. On my recently launched Substack the first post I sent to the Chat was asking what old movies people most wished to see on the big screen anew. My dad surprised me by being the first person to respond, writing simply, “Dog Day Afternoon.”
Seeing it on the calendar that Monday I knew I needed to make it part of the crawl. I had only ever seen it on VHS at his bidding when I became a full cinephile in high school. One of his favorites he always told me. I was excited to revisit it, it was an Oscar Best Picture Winner after all (no it wasn’t, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST won that year, in fact becoming the first film in 41 years to sweep the best picture, director, actor and actress awards).
Al Pacino is in a lot of great movies and has given us a lot of great performances, but this is the one, this is the peak. The movie exhausts you, his performance exhausts you, he’s exhausted up there, it is a true dog day afternoon in every sense of the expression. The reveal in the movie that Sonny’s wife is actually a man is handled with perfection.
Pacino’s the same character you like from the beginning with this new twist, it’s played straight ahead, that this is life, no big deal. My favorite part of the film is the cadre of female bank tellers who can’t help but try and make the most of the odd circumstances and have some laughs along the way.
Their silence and shock when a young Lance Henriksen puts a bullet straight through John Cazale’s head leaves a sinking feeling with you, the weight of what those women in the car with him are going to face tomorrow when they wake up is about as good of a summation of American 1970s filmmaking as one can hope to get.
Maybe it was the DeNiro/Stone bickering hanging over me from the night before but my only complaint was I did tire of the overlapping constant yelling it spirals through as the movie goes on. The phone call between Pacino and his lover/wife Leon (played by Chris Sarandon) is so much longer than you’d expect at that point in the movie and all the more affecting because of it.
I was rooting for Sonny to make it onto that plane and on to Algeria, I kept thinking about the opening hostage sequence in SHOOT TO KILL (1988) when the hostages are brought out under a large blanket with the hostage-taker underneath as well so that it’s impossible to tell who’s who. If only Sonny and Sal had waited thirteen years to learn that technique.
Heading up the 101 to Hollywood and the Egyptian theater a lot of filmgoing memories flooded over me. After the New Beverly this was the theater I’d seen the most revival screenings at in my life. All of those had been American Cinematheque events.
Really the preeminent revival calendar of the 2000s, it’s where you’d go for week long director retrospectives, a Czech New Wave series, old Hollywood underappreciated screwball gems - it was the refined lounge to the New Beverly’s dive bar. Netflix bought the Egyptian in the early days of the 2020 COVID shutdown.
The American Cinematheque moved its screenings to the main theater at the Los Feliz 3. Neftlix completely remodeled the Egyptian, taking three and a half years to reopen it in November 2023. The American Cinematheque restarted screenings there but was shares the calendar now with a separate Egyptian theater entity and Netflix film and series screenings. I hadn’t been since before the pandemic and really had no idea what to expect from the remodel. It’s stunning.
The theater wasn’t bad before, it was a big screen, but its seating layout was odd, and oddly cramped for a large theater at that. It had this weird little valley indentation where the lowest point in the theater was where about the tenth row was and from there the rows rose upwards so that if you were in the tenth row, you had nine rows of heads in front of you that dipped into your view.
The renovation now harkens back to the single screen palaces of old. The screen is enormous and the space feels cavernous. It felt weird to walk down the aisle knowing I was there for the intimate Maysles brothers documentary GREY GARDENS (1975).
This was not an American Cinematheque screening but actually a series from the “Egyptian’s” programming team and without planning had set myself up for a 1975 double feature as GREY GARDENS was part of the Egypitan’s own 1975 film series celebrating the 50th anniversary or seminal films or “Fifty is the New Hollywood.”
The Netflix of it all is weird. The pre-show material consisted of promos for Netflix shows and movies in the form of a “Six Degrees of Netflix” riff on the Kevin Bacon parlor game.
An Egyptian employee gave a little introduction to the movie and 1975 series and was sure to inform us that we got a 15% discount with our ticket at the Netflix store on our way out if we wanted (mostly Stranger Things merch with some stuff from the knockoff Downtown Abbey show (whatever it’s called) as well).
A CHINATOWN trailer played to promote it’s upcoming screening and we were straight into GREY GARDENS. At this point I looked around the theater - there were ten people total there including myself. The theater seats 516. The emptiness after ten movies of mostly full, good crowds was hard not to think about it.
I could see the movie playing really well with a big crowd as the laughs become contagious and the more joyous elements of LIttle Edie come through but in the cavernous hall the sadness of it was what really hit me.
The mental illness, the self delusion and yes, more bickering. I’m not going to disparage the movie, it’s still great, but the screening in this gorgeous empty theater was depressing and only added to the undeniable element an audience adds to any moviegoing experience. I’d love to get back for a packed American Cinematheque screening, I’ll be eyeing the calendar for a good one.
The final film on my four day Cinema Crawl was also my shortest distance between theaters of the entire affair. Heading east from Hollywood a few short miles to the Los Feliz 3 where I would be closing things out with American Cinematheque’s Cinematic Void series screening of WHIRLPOOL (1970). This was a film and director, Jose Ramon Larraz, I knew nothing about. From the film’s poster I gleaned it was rated X, that boded well in the mind.
I had time to grab a quick coffee and bite to eat at Fred 62 down the block from the theater and ran into the man behind Cinematic Void and MovieTown Episode 3 guest, Jim Branscome. We talked my Cinema Crawl and a bit about the movie.
He said if my mind was mush from the prior 11 crawl movies the good thing was WHIRPOOL wouldn’t be challenging the brain with a complex plot, it was as straight ahead as they get. It was a bit smaller crowd than the typical Cinematic Void screening, just about half full, but raring to go.
Ultimately, the film couldn’t match the enthusiasm of the crowd. The X rating turned out to be for several long soft core sex scenes, but the horror/thriller of it didn’t pack much of a punch and the last thirty minutes was a placid wait for the deranged photographer kid to stab the british model chick in the stomach.
The Cinematic Void theme for the month was Behind the Lens and featured movies about photographers, the other two being Antonioni’s BLOW UP (1966) and Lamberto Bava’s DELIRIUM (1966). Yeah, it would have been great to see how one of those ended the Cinema Crawl but the revival scene isn’t about batting a hundred and out of 12 movies seen over 4 days having 10 of them be great feels pretty lucky.
If there’s any takeaway from the Cinema Crawl it builds on that stat, that it’s hard to screw up going to revival movie screenings in the aggregate and I don’t know what the future of moviegoing holds, but if there’s any clue it’s somewhere at these theaters and in these films I saw over four days in May 2025.
