UPDATED 9/6/14 with links to further information and reportage, including statements from Quentin Tarantino, all of which can be found at the end of this post.
UPDATED WITH MORE LINKS 9/7/14
"Don't it always seem to go/That you don't know what
you've got till it's gone" – Joni Mitchell
I sat down this morning to write about what essentially
feels the end of an era, and as dramatic as that may sound to those on the
outside looking in, I suppose it really is. Last evening, August 31, 2014, marked
the final screening at the New Beverly Cinema to have been overseen by the
theater's manager, programmer and all-around heart and soul Michael Torgan, the son of the New Beverly's original owner, the late Sherman Torgan, who died suddenly while riding his bike in Santa Monica in 2007. The elder Torgan had been running the theater on very thin margins since
1978, and when Michael took over day-to-day operations after his father's
death, and after the generous financial intercession of Quentin Tarantino, there was a sense of relief that the legacy and tradition of repertory cinema
as envisioned and executed by Sherman would continue.
And continue it did for seven years, until last night's
screening of William Wyler's Funny Girl. Ironically,
the film was shown in a brand-new 4K digital restoration, a concession undertaken
by Michael to the march of progress and the marketplace meant to ensure the
theater's livelihood against the reality of the dwindling availability of 35mm
rentals and the ascendance of digital cinema packages (DCP) as the primary
format of exhibition in this age of ever-altering modernity. As of this
writing, no details regarding the facts of Michael Torgan's departure have yet
emerged, though Michael did speak at last night's screening to the crowd that
came out to wish him a fond farewell. (I
was not among them, unfortunately, so I cannot relate anything of what he said.
I am hoping that someone will report on it soon, and when they do I will link
to it here.)
It is not hard to imagine, whether correct or not, that Tarantino
might not have been happy about the digital invasion into the New Beverly,
given his increasingly strident 35mm-or-bust position. And it might not have been the best strategy to purchase the equipment, given
that position, without Tarantino’s approval, if that’s the way it happened. But
whatever the story is, there is no escaping the fact that when the New Beverly
reopens its doors in October, after a dark September, Torgan and his vision,
and his sense of film history, and the things he learned about the repertory
business from his dad, will no longer be in play. The first screening in
October, under a new management team likely to be closely monitored by
Tarantino himself, will mark the first time since 1978—36 years-- that the Torgan family will not be involved
in presenting classic, contemporary and foreign films to the city of Los
Angeles. I have no idea how the New Beverly will change moving forward, but it
seems naïve to think that it won't, and perhaps significantly.
I heard about Michael's final evening late yesterday
afternoon, far too late for me to rearrange a previous commitment, and so I
wasn't among those who were able to spend last night in his company and that of
the community of New Beverly faithful, the people who have made my own renewed
relationship with the theater such a joy over the past eight years. So I did
the only thing I could do—I conceded to my sadness, and I drank some beer, and
I thought a lot about what the New Beverly
Cinema has meant to me, in the Sherman Torgan era, of course, but primarily in
the Michael Torgan era.
As I wrote on Facebook yesterday, when I first heard the
news, Michael has honored his dad's memory in the best way possible—by
tirelessly, and sometimes not so tirelessly carrying on, in the face of
changing habits of his audience and any number of other
technological wrinkles in the way we watch films in the 21st
century, most of which amount to a series of hurdles placed squarely between
the desire to present repertory cinema for an increasingly distracted audience
and actually getting asses in seats and pictures on the screen. When I think
about what the continued existence of the New Beverly has meant, I think about things
that have less to do with what the theater means for how we still see the
movies, in a general sense, and more to do with reasons that are very selfish,
very personal.
The number one thing that I will miss about Michael Torgan
not tearing my ticket at the box office is that sense of community which he
engendered, for which he was undoubtedly the core. As I began showing up to the
theater more regularly again, beginning in 2007, and making what was happening
at the New Beverly an important aspect of what I wrote about on this site, I
started becoming aware of seeing the same faces every time I'd see a film
there. As a result, I met a lot of people, many of whom have become good
friends, and we frequently had just as good a time talking about what we’d seen
in the lobby afterward as we did watching the films themselves. But even more
importantly, Michael always somehow made me and my family feel so very much at
home whenever we would go there, either all together or just a couple of us at
a time – and we went there a lot. I
took my daughter Emma there so often during the years 2009 through 2012, for
everything from screwball comedies to film noir to westerns, that we not only
established our own favorite seat, but Emma also drew pictures depicting the
outside of the theater and the two of us standing with Michael and Julia
Marchese, the theater’s director of event programming, which for several years
held a place of honor at the entrance of the theater, taped to the inside
window of the box office.
So as I continue to worry about that which is out of my
control—the future of the New Beverly Cinema—I thought it would be at least a
more positive distribution of my energy to think about my favorite moments at
the theater and remember the generous vibe, the film school in a popcorn bag
atmosphere that Michael Torgan, unexpectedly handed the reins in 2007, managed
to cultivate there. Here then are several reasons why I’ll miss the New Beverly
Cinema as it once was.
THE FIRST MOVIES I
EVER SAW IN LOS ANGELES WERE… Less
than a year after I graduated from college, a friend and I ventured south
from Oregon to Los Angeles with vague hopes of trying to find work in the movie
business-- #1 piece of advice: Don’t try
to break into the movie business during what amounts to an extended two-week
vacation. Though we did manage to wrangle an audience with producer Mary Anne Fisher at the old Venice location of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures (we even showed
her some super-8 movies we’d made), the trip was basically a chance to screw
off and see movies. And the first ones we saw were a double bill of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Eraserhead (1977) at—where else?—the New
Beverly Cinema. Especially for two hayseed boys from small-town Southern
Oregon, the theater had a strange, sinister run-down vibe that was, of course,
exacerbated by the skeevy terror of the films themselves, and I remember being
constantly aware of my surroundings, as if I seriously questioned whether we’d
make it out of there alive. We did. But if you’d have told me in the spring of
1982 that I’d be taking my own daughter to see movies there some 37 years
later, I might have suggested driving to the nearest hospital for an emergency
vasectomy. Especially after seeing Eraserhead.
UPON RETURNING TO LOS
ANGELES FOR GOOD IN 1987, the New Beverly became a favored destination for me
and my best pal Bruce, as well as other friends I would quickly make. I
remember a screening of Nicolas Roeg’s Eureka
(1983) during which Bruce and I discovered the one section in the middle of the
auditorium from which the foul reek of stale piss was inescapable. The fact that
the house was packed (Packed! On a Wednesday night! For a notorious Nicolas
Roeg flop! This place must be some sort of heaven!) meant that we had to sit
tight and stick our heads in our popcorn bags for any hope of relief. Avoiding
that section in the future, I saw greats like Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), Manhattan (1979), Red River
(1948) and Ride the High Country (1962)
with other friends, including the woman who would soon become my wife. And one
night I faced up to one of my major bucket-list fears and bought a ticket for Salo: the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Like the horrific stench of stale piss, there was no escape from
Pasolini’s tortured vision either. (Fear not, motif hounds—I shall return to
the urine theme a bit later, though, believe it or not, in a much happier
context. And by the way, just for the record, that smell has long since been vanquished from the auditorium!)
FOR TEN YEARS FROM
APPROXIMATELY 1997 to 2007, I FELL OUT OF THE HABIT OF GOING TO THE NEW BEVERLY
CINEMA. But I had a pal at work who was becoming a regular and who was
constantly encouraging me to attend the occasional Grindhouse Night with her, those
special sojourns into the scurrilous world of low-rent genre cinema that would
soon become a twice-monthly staple of New Beverly Tuesday nights. I was
constantly begging off, having recently had two daughters of my own and
experiencing firsthand the life- and scheduling-altering effects of parenthood.
I’d been writing this blog for three years when she finally talked me into it.
The first Grindhouse Festival, designed by Quentin Tarantino as a simultaneous
homage to the trash classics he loved but also as a cross-promotional
opportunity for the upcoming Grindhouse
(2007) double feature, got under way in March of 2007. I seized the chance to
write about the event for this site, specifically about the two double features
I managed to attend-- John Flynn’s Rolling Thunder (1977) and Charles B. Pierce’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown
(1976), and then a few weeks
later Roger Vadim’s Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971) doubled with Richard Lerner’s Revenge
of the Cheerleaders (1976)-- in a piece entitled "Sex and Violence x 2: Grindhouse Report 2007." And I was off, again, and running.
IF WE’RE LUCKY, WE
GET TO HAVE A HANDFUL OF GREAT THEATRICAL EXPERIENCES IN OUR MOVIEGOING LIVES, and
during that stretch from 2007, when I started my habit anew, to this year,
2014, the New Beverly has afforded me seemingly more than my share. There was
the night, during Edgar Wright’s second “Wright Stuff” festival, when John
Landis, who replaced Wright at the last minute, hosted a screening of National
Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) and,
to my initial horror, called me out during his introduction to talk about my
experience as an extra on that film in front the whole house. (He asked if I
thought he’d been a nice guy to work for, and when I answered in the positive
he proclaimed, “Well, then I can reveal now that you’re the main reason for the movie’s success!”)
During that stretch I also had the chance to see several of
my favorite Robert Altman films projected, including Brewster McCloud, Thieves Like Us and The Long Goodbye. Most thrilling, however, were the exquisite
prints I saw on a M*A*S*H (1970)/California Split (1974) double feature about three years ago,
bested only by the chance to see Nashville (1975) again last fall,
just prior to Criterion’s gorgeous Blu-ray release, after a long period of not
seeing it theatrically. It was even more exciting because I saw the film with
two friends who had never seen it before. And yes, we spent some time in the
lobby afterwards, with Michael, talking about just how astonishing the movie
remains nearly 40 years after it was released, and how even more prescient it
seems in the current light of day.
I’ll never forget seeing Haxan: Witchcraft through the
Ages (1922) on a double feature with Carl Theodore Dreyer’s Day
of Wrath (1943) a few years ago , just weeks before Halloween. The
hallucinatory brilliance of the double feature (how many more programs like this can we reasonably expect without
Michael Torgan’s influence?) was capped perfectly when I made my way out into
the lobby afterward, only to see Julia stumbling down the stairs from the projection
booth, a dazed look on her face. When she saw me she muttered, “That’s the
freakiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Did you like that?!” Equally memorable, the transcendent Sansho
the Bailiff (1954; Kenji Mizoguchi), which I’d never seen before, and
which unspooled in its haunted splendor before me and about 10 other paying
customers on a Friday night. When I stopped to thank Michael for showing it, he
could not hide his disappointment that so few patrons, even among the New
Beverly faithful, seemed willing to give the movie a chance.
AND THERE WERE THE
GREAT, LO-O-O-O-O-O-O-ONG SITS that made me forever grateful for the
theater’s seat replacement program, in which the tiny, beat-up fold-down seats
were replaced by much nicer, cushier, back-friendly ones—with cup holders!—in 2008. It was a real privilege to spend my first
riveting and unforgettable experience with Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976; Chantal Akerman) in the company of my pal Maria, on whose urging I decided to finally
come to terms with this unique and brilliant film myself.
Slighty longer than that,
though considerably more action-packed, was a midnight screening of Tarantino’s
own personal answer print of Inglorious Basterds (2009), hosted
by the loquacious director himself, which started a half-hour late and was
preceded by 45 minutes worth of WWII movie trailers also brought in by the
director—which meant that the nearly three-hour feature didn’t get started
until about 1:00 a.m. The usual gathering in the lobby to hash out the
experience got under way at about 4:00 a.m., and I didn’t leave for home for
another half-hour, remembering all the way to my car and all the way home how I used
to do this sort of thing all the time in college, and it never seemed as devastating
to my system, or my need for sleep, as it did in this moment.
However, easily the longest and
the most pleasurable of all was the opportunity I took a couple years ago to
avail myself of a New Beverly pre-New Year’s tradition: a seven-hour (with
bathroom break between features) double bill of The Godfather (1972) and The
Godfather Part II (1974), perhaps the most devastating and thrilling of
all American epics. To see it unspool in such close proximity, at full
attention, was a singular thrill. I’d pulled this stunt once in the VHS days as
a particularly perverse Thanksgiving treat to myself, but there’s nothing like
the power of Coppola’s films unleashed in a theater, sans distractions—not even
a peep from a cell phone, as I recall--
to make you appreciate their true, unforgiving power.
BUT AS GREAT
EXPERIENCES IN A MOVIE THEATER GO, whether at the New Beverly or anywhere
else, it’s hard to beat these three in my personal book. In April of 2008 I
topped off the first of two interviews with director Joe Dante, who has always
been one of my favorites, with a cornucopia of treats he offered at his first
“Dante’s Inferno” Film Festival at the New Beverly. There were several
highlights, of course, including Dante’s superb Matinee (1993) and his
hilarious, politically astute satire The Second Civil War (1997), but
nothing could possibly top the first screening in 40 years of Dante’s
legendary, lunatic masterwork The Movie Orgy (1968), compiled with
producer/friend Jon Davison during their college days. The screening was free
thanks to the multiple rights violations within the program itself, making it
illegal to charge admission, and it was packed to the gills, taking on the feel
of a true underground phenomenon. More an experience than a movie, The Movie Orgy almost defies
description, which as you’ll see in my piece "Joe Dante's New Beverly Movie Orgy" in no way stopped me from
trying. (This was the evening during which I was first introduced to Michael Torgan as
well. A big night indeed!)
Only about six months later, it was time for another one of
those “I never thought I’d ever see this” kinds of nights that the New Beverly
was becoming very generous in providing. Staged in part as a tribute to actress
Wendie Jo Sperber, who died in 2005 from breast cancer, and an fund- and awareness-raiser
for WeSpark, the breast cancer foundation, the New Beverly staged a double bill
of epic proportions featuring Sperber and many, many others-- I Wanna
Hold Your Hand! (1978) and
one of my favorite films of all time, Steven Spielberg's unjustly maligned 1941
(1979), both of which were written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. (The former
was also Zemeckis’ first directing gig.) The stage was packed with veterans of
the Zemeckis/Gale stock company, including Gale himself, actress Nancy Allen
and actor-director Perry Lang, who staged a great Q&A before 1941 that was worthy of its own DVD
audio commentary track. I was especially thrilled to be able to participate in
that Q&A and express my unalloyed love for both movies, but Spielberg’s in particular.
In my piece "Fire at That Large Industrial Structure: A 1941 Postscript," I talk about the night, which had both an unexpected beginning and a transcendent
grace note of a finish.
Those were brilliant nights to be sure, but I don't think anything could match
what my friend Don Mancini and I managed to pull off two years later, just
before Halloween 2010. The one and only time the name of this blog was ever
attached to a movie event was this one, and it was a real honor to have had a
hand in making it happen. We commandeered two nights on the New Beverly schedule for what, in
our eyes at least, was a terrific double bill— Jaume Collett-Serra’s genuinely
frightening Orphan (2009) coupled
with Don’s very own misunderstood orphan, Seed of Chucky (2005). The first
night was dedicated to the cast and crew of Orphan,
including the film’s screenwriter David Leslie Johnson and the unnervingly
self-possessed and talented star of the film, Esther herself, Isabelle Fuhrmann,
all featured in a Q&A hosted by Don. Night two was dedicated to the
spawn of Charles Lee Ray, with Don, actors Jennifer Tilly, Steve West and
Debbie Lee Carrington, and producer Corey Sienega all on stage for a Q&A
moderated by Face/Off screenwriter Mike
Werb. It was a chance to stand up for a couple of horror movies that are much
better, more frightening and, in the case of Seed more deliberately funny and satirically sharp than they are
usually given credit for, and I think we took 100% advantage of the opportunity
to kick-start the buffing-up of both their reputations with this event—and I
got to meet (and sit down for dinner with) Jennifer Tilly! Read all about it,
and see the Q&As themselves, in my piece The Seed of Chucky/Orphan Q&As."
OVER THE PAST SEVEN
YEARS I’VE MADE MUCH IN THESE PAGES ABOUT THE NEW BEVERLY FAMILY AFFAIR,
and though it might sound like a sentimental cliché it really is true, in a
couple of different ways. I’ve never felt the sense of bonding over movie love
as strongly anywhere else as I have at this theater, and that has everything to
do with seeing the same engaged, excited faces at screening after screening,
ready to soak up whatever unknown or happily familiar sights and sounds that
would be spilling off the screen on any given night. And I’ve met so many people
who have become an important, indispensable part of the Los Angeles filmgoing scene
that I’ve been welcomed into since 2007. I introduced myself to Anne Thompson for the first time
at a screening of Richard Brooks’ Wrong is
Right in 2008— astoundingly, she knew about my blog already and has been an
ardent supporter of my writing ever since.
Among the other people I’ve become acquainted with at
the New Beverly include fellow writers
Peter Avellino, Jeremy Smith and Jen Yamato, filmmakers Brian Crewe, Joe Dante,
Matt Dinan, Marion Kerr, Julia Marchese, Peter Podgursky and Edgar Wright, extraordinary
and erudite film fanatics like John Damer, Marc Edward Heuck, Cathie Horlick, Jeff
McMahon, Brian Quinn and producer/classic film specialist Michael Schlesinger, film
archivist Ariel Schudson (my TCM Film Festival pal), as well as all-around good
souls and New Bev fixtures like Corky Baines , Freddie, and of course Clu
Gulager. If ever one needed and coveted a family of like-minded filmheads, this
is a pretty glorious group with which to start.
And as I stated earlier, Michael and the New Beverly always
found a way to make my family feel as though the place was our second home. One
evening we found ourselves on the way home from the Westside and my youngest daughter
Nonie, as often happens to young kids, was seized by an urgent need to take a
whiz. We just happened to be passing the theater on Beverly Boulevard, so I
whipped around, pulled in front of the theater and asked if she could use the
pottie. While I waited for her to finish, I talked with some of the staff and
Michael even gave Nonie a hot dog for the ride home. Try pulling that off at
your local AMC mall-tiplex. (See how I returned to that urine motif? Told you I
would.)
BUT FOR US THE FAMILY CONNECTION GOES DEEPER than the
well-timed availability of the ladies’ room. Round about 2008 I began making a concerted
effort to encourage my kids’ interest in classic films, and the New Beverly played
a hugely important role in that time and aspect of their young lives. As a dad
hoping to instill reverence and love for all sorts of movies in his kids, the
theater provided an opportunity that was just too rich and varied to pass up. I
started them both off with a kiddie Halloween matinee of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966), and we
were off to the races. Nonie joined us on occasion, but more often it was Emma
accompanying me for a wide variety of great double features, including Kansas City Confidential (1952) and 99 River Street (1953), during which she
cultivated a short-lived Jack Elam impersonation, Sullivan’s
Travels (1941) and Christmas in July,
(1940), The Fearless Vampire Killers
(1967) and Dracula Has Risen from the
Grave (1968), from which Nonie’s popular head shot was cultivated, Modern Times (1936) and The General (1926), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and Coogan’s Bluff (1968), and
other great movies like Ace in the Hole
(1950), The Blue Dahlia (1946), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
(1941), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), and
The Palm Beach Story (1942).
Emma had a personal revelation with the hilarity of the Marx
Brothers when I took her to see a double feature of Duck Soup (1933) and Animal
Crackers (1931)—I wrote about it in a piece entitled "Duck Soup-- Funniest Movie Ever?", and another one when director Rian Johnson, working on a theme of cons in
the movies, introduced her to the ostensibly strange but beautifully modulated
double bill of The Lady Eve (1941)
and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). (I thanked Johnson, and received a
nice response back, in a post entitled "An Open Letter to Rian Johnson".)
And we had a great time together as a family for two Halloweens
running, with me dressing up in totally white vampire egghead mode the first
year for The Invisible Man (1933) and
The Wolf Man (1941), and then the
next year working a subtle variation on the bald, totally red-headed Satan, Nonie
as his unaccountably lovely daughter/minion, for a double feature of Island of Lost Souls (1932) and Them! (1954). The second year’s bonus is that we entered the New Beverly Halloween Costume Contest, judged by the
audience and emcee Joe Dante, and Nonie and I kicked ass, taking first prize, a
pass card worth 16 free admissions! It was worth the Karen Silkwood-style Lava
soap scrub-down I had to endure to get myself clean when we finally made it home.
But Michael and the New Beverly saved the best for a couple
of birthday celebrations. For my 50th birthday in 2010, Michael
generously offered to let me program the double feature to be shown on my
birthday date that year, and the pairing I chose—You Only Live Twice (1967), my favorite of all the Bond movies,
alongside Ken Russell’s Billion Dollar
Brain (1967), the third in the Michael Caine/Harry Palmer series, which I’d
never seen projected, was the perfect combination.
And earlier that same year,
through Michael’s seemingly endless generosity, we threw Emma’s 10th birthday
party in the theater on a rainy Saturday morning, with a magician, free
popcorn and sodas, pizzas hauled over from Domino’s by Michael and myself, and
a screening of Emma’s movie choice, Cats
and Dogs (2001). To this day I can’t think of this party and how much it
meant to me and my family without getting emotionally overwhelmed. We carved out
a one-of-a-kind memory for my movie-crazy daughter that day, and I will be
forever in Michael’s debt for facilitating such an amazing experience for her.
You can read all about it in my post entitled "Wanna Be the Daughter of Dracula..."
So after 36 years of the New Beverly Cinema under the
tutelage and guidance of the Torgan family, I’m left with these sweet memories—yours
are certainly different, but just as plentiful— an ache in my heart for what
has passed, and trepidation for what form the theater will take, what function
it will fulfill in the Los Angeles movie community when it reopens in October.
I don’t hold out much realistic hope that Michael will continue in the
repertory theater game—he’s made his mark, and I wouldn’t begrudge him or be at
all surprised if he takes this opportunity to make a new path for himself. I
just hope he sleeps well, knowing what he and his family have meant to those
who hold the movies dear. To paraphrase and reposition the words of one Steve
Judd, played by Joel McCrea at the end of a movie I first saw at the New Beverly
Cinema, Michael Torgan deserves to rest easy and know that, once and for all, he can most certainly
leave this house justified.
Thanks, Michael, for everything.
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(Some photos courtesy of Ariel Schudson)
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