Breaking News! Since this article was published yesterday, Tom Charity has reported that Days of Heaven and The Parallax View have been added to the lineup. Both are recommended experiences, but Days of Heaven, I've found, is a film that PARTICULARLY benefits from being seen projected. Its colours and compositions are gorgeous on the big screen and underwhelming on the small. See it screened if you can (see the VIFF website for dates, etc).
Part One: Al's Picks
1. Harold and Maude: screening this weekend, this is an amazing, life-affirming cult movie about a death-obsessed kid (Bud Cort) and his love affair with a vibrant senior citizen (Ruth Gordon). It's quite dark in some places, very sweet and touching in others, and consistently quite funny and startling, but it is also a film, believe it or not, that I have only ever seen once; it's so singular an accomplishment that I think I've kind of been kind of afraid to revisit it. It's not a film to be taken lightly. My wife Erika, however, hasn't seen it, ever, so here's a great opportunity to bring her. In fact, everyone should bring everyone they know who has not seen this film to the VIFF Centre, either this Friday or Sunday (but catch the screenings in the main auditorium if you can, the ones listed as the "Vancity Theatre," more on which below. The seats are much, much better than the little studio theatre, the image is bigger, the overall experience much more immersive. Tom speaks to the contrast in theatres below).
2. McCabe and Mrs. Miller: Robert Altman's Vancouver-shot, quasi-western parable about capitalism, with some great early Leonard Cohen songs on the soundtrack. Funny, sad, smart, profound and with great performances by Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, Shelley Duvall, and a very young Keith Carradine, it tells the story about a small-timer (Beatty) whose business improves vastly when he starts taking advice from the Madam of the brothel he's building (Christie), with whom he also falls in love. Sadly, it's only playing in the studio theatre, but if you haven't seen it, pack a pillow: even if you think you don't like Altman - and I'm not a huge Altman fan myself - if you love cinema, this is one of the greatest American movies ever made. My other favourite Altman appears later in this very top 10...
3. Minnie and Moskowitz: Damn, I love that Tom has programmed this film. It's exactly the Cassavetes I would have picked, because it hasn't screened locally in ages, because it's Cassavetes best "lightest" film - essentially a screwball comedy about a ponytailed hippie (Seymour Cassell) who becomes romantically involved with a slightly older but MUCH straighter woman (Gena Rowlands); and because my wife hasn't seen it, and I'm trying to ease her into Cassavetes without scaring her off (A Woman Under the Influence did not go over so well with her). Also, Timothy Carey is in it (see below). This is one of those films that (disgraced? controversial? difficult?) Cassavetes scholar Ray Carney used to gripe about, because apparently there's a love scene that got trimmed from the movie, maybe even - I'd have to look it up - a bit of uncharacteristic nudity? There appear to be prudish forces at work behind the scenes in the Cassavetes' estate that have resulted in things like a bit of boob being excised from Love Streams and a lot of puking, farting and bullying being cut from the VHS release of Husbands (but restored to the DVD and blu). I've only ever seen the old Anchor Bay version of Minnie and Moskowitz, which is long out of print, but I believe Ray that bits of the film were missing. Like Gloria, it's a great film to show people who cannot take the harrowing emotional intensity of, say, A Woman Under the Influence (also screening, if harrowing emotional intensity is your cuppa), but who still like gritty, real, emotionally potent cinema. And it's a comedy! A wise, funny, cheeky, brash comedy. Cassavetes for beginners? Why not?
Note: speaking of farting, Timothy Carey, the Jesus Christ of public flatulence and the only actor to appear repeatedly in the films of Stanley Kubrick and John Cassavetes - who I guess were the only directors able to cope with his shameless, defiant tooting, since most other filmmakers only worked with him once - also has a major role in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, which is screening in this series. I haven't looked into which cut Tom is playing of that; the short version is maybe a bit too short and the long version is a bit too sprawling, but both elide certain plot points that a more conventional filmmaker would emphasize. I have no clue which I prefer! Either way, it's a noirish tale of the compromises artists have to make to survive; it's also filled with some truly absurd burlesque routines (this is the film in the series I'd suggest to Betty Bathory). But I have a different Ben Gazzara film to recommend, a bit later, so...
BTW, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is Lars von Trier's favourite Cassavetes film, but just in terms of a well-told, moving story, for Cassavetes' content, I would recommend Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky over Bookie, if you were only going to see one of the two. More on her later too.
4. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: Another Western parable, this one about freedom, capitalism, and aging. A fascinating, potent, slightly bitter film, one of the most profound films about the American experience, tho' as one expects of Peckinpah, it's a violent, hypermasculine, insensitive affair (people highly attuned to animal rights probably should steer clear, because it sure does look like chickens are getting their heads blown off in one scene). Starring Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, and BOB DYLAN, whose score for this is essential listening (and the source of "Knocking on Heaven's Door") - as well as a host of unforgettable 70's character actors, including LQ Jones, Slim Pickens, Charlie Martin Smith, RG Armstrong, Chill Wills, and many more - the film has Coburn as a world-weary outlaw-turned-sheriff who sells out to landowners and makes a deal to kill his former best friend in the interests of business. Except he is in no rush, has some inner conflicts to surmount, and the friend - Kris Kristofferson in his greatest film role - has some ideas of his own. It would easily be the greatest film Sam Peckinpah ever made, if only he had actually finished it! The catch here is that Peckinpah was growing steadily more difficult at this point in his career and had various substance abuse issues, so was removed from the film before the final cut could be prepared. As it stands, there are three versions of the film in existence - a studio-produced cut that played theatrically, that I haven't seen since the days of VHS; a sprawling, uneven, shamelessly self-indulgent rough cut that has been, at times, described as Peckinpah's "director's cut," because it was the one he would show visiting friends, presumably while pouring them whiskey after whiskey; and a posthumous edit made by Peckinpah scholars that cleans up a lot of the self-indulgence, restores the vocal version of "Knocking on Heaven's Door" to its proper place - and crucially omits a line ("What you want and what you get are two different things") that should (I rise to ire) NEVER HAVE BEEN OMITTED. I still fume about that, because it is the only reason I can't give their version of the film my full, enthusiastic endorsement; mostly, a few tiny quibbles aside, they did a great job. I guess you can just imagine Coburn THINKING it - you will know when that line should be, even if you haven't seen the rough cut (it's very near the end of the film). It is this cleaned up posthumous version that will screen, which makes sense; there's no better way to see it that is available, especially if you're a noob, though people who enjoy it sufficiently are advised to ALSO seek out that old rough cut (which did come out on DVD awhile back; the film isn't even on blu-ray yet, in any cut). Seize the opportunity, but just remember: with the Peckinpets cut and in life in general, What you want and what you get are two different things!
5. Deliverance. Have I ever seen Deliverance projected? I don't think so. This is, seriously, one of the greatest, most profound works of filmed homophobia ever, but you might never even clue into how deeply, profoundly homophobic it is, since there are no slurs, no overt references to homosexuality (except the gay rape centerpiece), no overtly gay characters (the hillbilly rapists don't read as gay, they're just angry, violent poorfolk with a grudge against city folks; Anderson Cooper they ain't). Unless you keep a sharp eye out for one brief, longing glance that Jon Voight casts in the direction of Burt Reynolds (or have read James Dickey's novel, which is a bit less subtle) you might not even think, on emerging from the film, that Deliverance has anything to do with homosexuality at all. But oh, it does, it does. The story is pretty simple (there are some mild spoilers here but I will try to be vague where possible): four male friends from the city go on a canoe trip in rural America, on a river that is about to be dammed up and destroyed. Fairly or not, they are seen by the locals as representing an incursion of the city that is "raping" the land. Some less-than-welcoming backwoods types ambush them and rape one member of the party in a profoundly ugly, disturbing scene (you've all heard the "squeeeeal like a pig" jokes in standup comedy; this film is where they come from). The city folks rally, and are then subjected to an outdoor ordeal, which the surviving members, on emerging, vow to keep a secret forevermore; this ordeal serves as a sort of rite of passage into full-fledged manhood for one member of the group, who, despite ultimately "winning" the contest, is forever haunted by what happened and regarded with great suspicion by the film's final voice of male authority (the sheriff who greets them at the other end of the river, played by Dickey himself). Voight has been "delivered" at great cost of his homosexual tendencies, traumatized out of ever looking at a man "that way" again. And while I realize it may seem perverse of me to praise a film for its profound homophobia - in a culture more likely to picket or cancel films that can be described in such terms - in fact it's why I admire the film: while being complicit in the homophobia - it isn't blameless! - it nonetheless lays bear the ways in which heteronormative manhood is traumatically induced in men, through violence, through suspicion, through shame and guilt and fear. I can recall - being maybe just a bit queer myself - how these processes worked for me in suburban Maple Ridge, where I *was* beaten and labelled with slurs. None of this happened in the backwoods or involved hillbillies, but I still find Deliverance a deeply fascinating, unsettling film, as well as being one of the greatest outdoor ordeal movies ever.
Carol J. Clover talks about the folkloric and economic aspects of the film in Men, Women and Chainsaws, which I recommend for further reading - the whole chapter on rape-revenge films is essential - but she misses out on the ways in which the film is a homophobic rite of passage, presumably because she was never punched in the head and called a - am I allowed to use the word "faggot," here, when talking about having the term hurled at me, sometimes accompanying physical violence? It feels unfair to my own experience to censor myself. This film speaks to that violence, the process of suppression, in a way no other film I've seen does - so I admire it greatly, even though it is possibly problematic.
People sensitive about slurs, by the way, especially when it comes to race, should probably skip The French Connection. Still a great film, but the race relations stuff in the first half sure is uncomfortable. Hackman-wise, I would also recommend the sunny Florida neo-noir Night Moves, though it just narrowly misses being on my list.
6. The Long Goodbye: While I think Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller is probably objectively his greatest film, this is my personal favourite, the film that brings me the most joy as a viewer (it also has what is likely the funniest, truest cat scene in cinema history). It's a smartass counterculture private eye film starring Elliott Gould as a comically laconic, smartass Philip Marlowe, damp cigarette dangling from his lower lip as he wisecracks his way through a vastly corrupt, compromised, and decadent Hollywood, shrugging off almost anything he comes across with an oft-repeated refrain of "it's all right with me"... until he finally runs into something that isn't. The film is profoundly meta-level, a film about film, without ever actually dealing with the making of a movie. Music is used in the interests of ironic distanciation, including a theme song that repeats itself in a different form in almost every context Gould is placed in and a rather staggering use of "Hooray for Hollywood" that conveys a mood of anything but. It also has some very inspired casting, including, most memorably, Sterling Hayden - an actor badly screwed over during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the 1950's, left with lasting psychic scars over his ill-advised cooperation (I forget if he calls himself a "rat" or a "fink" or a "stoolie" or such - but there's an interview with him on the Criterion edition of The Killing where he uses this sort of language). He's great. I have sometimes been known to say "love me, love my dog" in various contexts, in homage to this film, often after doing something gross or questionable.
7. The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3. Before I proceed, a note on my criteria. There are lots of films on this program - The Godfather (parts one AND two), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Nashville, MASH, Chinatown, The Exorcist, The Deer Hunter - that are acknowledged masterpieces of cinema, had huge cultural impact, that I've been drawn to see more than one time just because of their sheer import - but that I have no great personal concern for, that don't leave me bursting with excitement, that I wouldn't be inclined to drag my friends to, that are more associated with feelings of obligation than pleasure. Great films, maybe, and there's not a film playing that I would advise skipping. I've seen almost all of them at least once. There are even some films on the bill that I love unequivocally, like Dawn of the Dead, but that I'm leaving off my list because I figure everyone has seen them, knows about them, will have other opportunities to see them. etc. What I'm focusing on here is films that I LOVE, that I would drag anyone I considered a friend to see and sit through again with great pleasure, films I watch every few years but in some cases I have never seen screened, regardless of how weighty or "important" or generally masterpiece-level they are seen as being....
That understood, it's very possible that The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 - and we're not talking the Tony Scott remake - would top my list, if I were putting the movies here in order of my love for them. It's also possibly the film in the series that I've seen most often, though it is hard for me to be sure, since I've seen several of these films a dozen or more times, especially Deliverance and The Long Goodbye. In any event, it's a gripping, gritty thriller, the author of which apparently was a NY subway insider, about a gang of heavily armed men (led by Robert Shaw, who played Quint in Jaws) who hijack a subway. Walter Matthau (who is also superb in Charley Varrick and A New Leaf) is a transit cop dealing with them. One cheap hyuk aside where Matthau is casually racist to a group of Japanese visitors touring the control room, which would probably be filmed differently now, it's aged superbly, is as gripping today as it was in 1974; Tony Scott's remake is okay, but has nothing on the original. Trivially, noir enthusiasts should re-watch the 1949 thriller Criss Cross to see Tom Pedi - who steals the show as the quintessential New Yawker, Fat Caz Dolowicz - in a much earlier role!
The Yakuza: One peeve, if you've lived in Japan, is that almost every single movie made in America that attempts to represent Japanese culture gets it very wrong (especially Ridley Scott's Black Rain, which is almost offensive in how dopey it is, especially since it steals its title from a movie about the after-effects of the bombing of Hiroshima, almost like it's trying to replace that film in the annals of cinema). There are plenty of great Japanese Yakuza films, but that I've seen, there's only one good American one - this. I wrote about it at some length before, here, so I'm going to leave it at that, but if you've never seen the films of Kinji Fukasaku, Takashi Miike, or Takeshi Kitano, and are looking for a nice American introduction to the Yakuza subgenre, this is it. Plus I think it's the only Robert Mitchum film in the series? (Y'all should see The Friends of Eddie Coyle, too, Mitchum-wise, but it's not screening).
Saint Jack: Now: this is a film I've only seen once, a long time ago, on a VHS tape. But I remember loving it, almost as much as I loved Peter Bogdanovich's Targets (my fave Bogdanovich, but if it had a rival among his films, if my past impressions hold up, this would be it). I can't really speak about it - it's been long enough since I've seen it that I have only the foggiest memory - but I'm excited that it's screening. It's a thriller about a sympathetic, stylish, affable American pimp in Singapore, who I recall getting into a hassle with bigger, meaner pimps. I liked it more than The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, also starring Ben Gazzara, but I'm pretty sure Bogdanovich was riffing on the Cosmo Vitelli character with this film, released one year later. Anyhow, I'm really glad to get a chance to see it on the big screen.
And now we're down to the number ten spot, and I have to pick between a bunch of movies that I really love, a few that I haven't seen (even a couple I've never heard of!), and a bunch that are acknowledged masterpieces that I don't feel all that personally excited about (Mean Streets is a great film, I'm just not in the mood!). My inclination is to try to cop out and pick the Mystery Movie, the identity of which I neither know nor want to know in advance of the screening, because, like, how to I weigh Klute against Taxi Driver, or Network against All The President's Men, or Dog Day Afternoon against Phantom of the Paradise...? But a pass and see them all!
I'm also excited as heck about the three Elaine May movies, especially The Heartbreak Kid, which I don't have and don't think I've seen since I caught it on TV in the 1980's - I have dutifully inspected the box for the damned Ben Stiller remake about a hundred times, hoping it might be the original film - but I can't really put a film that I haven't seen in 30+ years and barely remember on my list of most-loved films.
Instead, I must reveal my flank, expose my weakness: I quite love some of the movies of Steven Spielberg.
I quite hate some of them, too. I'm of a camp with Robin Wood (cf. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan) that Spielberg (and George Lucas) did more to damage American cinema than any other filmmakers, replacing the sort of gritty, realistic, downbeat movies of the 1970's with the feelgood thrillers and vacuous, crowd-pleasing spectacles that came to dominate the American market. I would maybe have left them off the program altogether, if this were me - except holy crap, I do enjoy AND EVEN RESPECT some Spielberg movies - especially Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A movie about how having weird personal obsessions can affect your life and your relationships, as much as it is about UFOs, it is one of my top three Spielbergs, vying with Jaws and the SECOND Jurassic Park film (which just doesn't get enough love). It also has the best use of mashed potatoes in cinema history, at least that I've seen. Who among us has not been here?
I dunno - it's either that or the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but I just watched that a few months ago (fans of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai should note, the screenplay is by WD Richter). Tom tells me, below, that you can actually see them both in a double bill. I mean, seriously, buy a pass. See them all. It's a super deal - only $70 if you're a VIFF+ member, but very affordable even if you aren't (the "buy a pass" button is right on the series homepage).
Part Two: Tom Charity interview
Allan (in italics, below): Correct me if I'm wrong - I think it was Robin Williams who said that being a Canadian is like living in a really nice apartment over a meth lab, re: the United States. I assume most of the films you've included on this program were films you first saw when you lived in England. I am sure some more than others raised your eyebrows as a non-American. Has anything changed in how you understand these films since you came to Canada? Is Canada "one step closer" to the US? Is there stuff you remember being culture shocked by, that you no longer feel that way about?
That's a really interesting question! There's a famous (or used-to-be-famous) line in Wim Wenders' mid 70s movie Kings of the Road about how "The Americans have colonized our subconscious". I think that was 100% true for me as young film fan in Britain. I was 14 or 15 when I first saw Apocalypse Now in 1979, ironically on holiday in the US because I wouldn't have been allowed to see an X rated film in the UK, and it was the film that set me on the course that would determine my professional life. So most of these movies I saw later, on VHS or TV, as a student - a few I saw on screen in 16mm at the college film society I helped run for three years. But by that point I understood and experienced the movies as their own realm which was vividly alive and true to me, even though in my life growing up in a village in North Yorkshire, or even in college in Canterbury, I had never encountered... let's see... a private eye, or a mafia hood, or, you know, a cowboy.
But I understood the language of film noir, of gangster films, of westerns. So in a sense they may have populated my subconscious, but equally I felt some ownership over the terms of these narrative conventions. And one of things that I find so rich in these American movies from the 70s, is that the filmmakers were largely in the same boat as I was: They grew up watching Bogart, watching Cagney, watching John Wayne. And then as they came of age to make their own versions of these stories, what they brought to them was at least to some extent rooted in disenchantment, disillusion, scepticism, cynicism. Because the world they found as they became adults was not the one the movies led them to expect. The American Dream which Hollywood had sold around the world, that was palpably false when you look at the fate of the Civil Rights leaders, or at the imperialist war in Vietnam, or the corruption and lies exposed by Watergate.
Yet in a weird way, these revisionist movies of the 70s were just as captivating - just as enchanting - as the 40s films they were interrogating. They just added another layer, another texture to the language of cinema which we shared.
To me in the UK in the 1980s, these things - Vietnam, Watergate - were very real to me, in some ways more real than the reality I experienced in Britain as a teenager in the 70s, certainly more interesting; a reality was all from the movies I had seen and read about. And it was already by that time historical. In 1980, as a 15-year-old, 1970 feels like ancient history... But the movies made it alive for me. And there weren't too many British movies doing that for, you know, Edward Heath's government, or whatever was going on in the UK back then. (Not much, actually.)
And to bring this back to your point about Canada... Despite everything, I think it was the lure of Westerns and anti-westerns which made me excited to move out West, and if Vancouver isn't exactly the Rio Grande, I do get a kick out of knowing that Robert Altman and his Canadian production crew built Presbyterian Church up in West Van for McCabe and Mrs Miller.
That's a really interesting question! There's a famous (or used-to-be-famous) line in Wim Wenders' mid 70s movie Kings of the Road about how "The Americans have colonized our subconscious". I think that was 100% true for me as young film fan in Britain. I was 14 or 15 when I first saw Apocalypse Now in 1979, ironically on holiday in the US because I wouldn't have been allowed to see an X rated film in the UK, and it was the film that set me on the course that would determine my professional life. So most of these movies I saw later, on VHS or TV, as a student - a few I saw on screen in 16mm at the college film society I helped run for three years. But by that point I understood and experienced the movies as their own realm which was vividly alive and true to me, even though in my life growing up in a village in North Yorkshire, or even in college in Canterbury, I had never encountered... let's see... a private eye, or a mafia hood, or, you know, a cowboy.
But I understood the language of film noir, of gangster films, of westerns. So in a sense they may have populated my subconscious, but equally I felt some ownership over the terms of these narrative conventions. And one of things that I find so rich in these American movies from the 70s, is that the filmmakers were largely in the same boat as I was: They grew up watching Bogart, watching Cagney, watching John Wayne. And then as they came of age to make their own versions of these stories, what they brought to them was at least to some extent rooted in disenchantment, disillusion, scepticism, cynicism. Because the world they found as they became adults was not the one the movies led them to expect. The American Dream which Hollywood had sold around the world, that was palpably false when you look at the fate of the Civil Rights leaders, or at the imperialist war in Vietnam, or the corruption and lies exposed by Watergate.
Yet in a weird way, these revisionist movies of the 70s were just as captivating - just as enchanting - as the 40s films they were interrogating. They just added another layer, another texture to the language of cinema which we shared.
To me in the UK in the 1980s, these things - Vietnam, Watergate - were very real to me, in some ways more real than the reality I experienced in Britain as a teenager in the 70s, certainly more interesting; a reality was all from the movies I had seen and read about. And it was already by that time historical. In 1980, as a 15-year-old, 1970 feels like ancient history... But the movies made it alive for me. And there weren't too many British movies doing that for, you know, Edward Heath's government, or whatever was going on in the UK back then. (Not much, actually.)
And to bring this back to your point about Canada... Despite everything, I think it was the lure of Westerns and anti-westerns which made me excited to move out West, and if Vancouver isn't exactly the Rio Grande, I do get a kick out of knowing that Robert Altman and his Canadian production crew built Presbyterian Church up in West Van for McCabe and Mrs Miller.
One thing that I have learned belatedly... even though many westerns even before the 70s espoused respect for Native Americans, that liberal sympathy was largely conceptual for me. And in the last few years I have realized how important it is to remember that these are not just movie tropes, that there is a larger history of white supremacist colonial expansion that entailed dire consequences for the indigenous peoples here, and that as a genre, the western mythologized and romanticized that ugly truth. Which is one of the things that Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie is about, which is why I was glad to be able to play that on day one of the series.
Sorry long answer!
Sorry long answer!
What are the top five most-seen movies on your program, by you - the ones you've watched too many times to count? What are the ones you are most excited to see projected?
Excited to see projected? Well. I regret that we only have a couple of movies on 35mm as opposed to DCP. I am most excited to experience Badlands on 35 and I am sorry they wouldn't supply us with a film print for Days of Heaven. I am old enough that I have experienced most of these films in a cinema - London had a vital repertory scene in the 80s and even in the early 90s and I used to spend my weekends going to cinemas like the Scala and the National Film Theatre and the Everyman catching up on this stuff. I rewatched Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid the other night to write the programme note, and have never seen that on the big screen with an audience - I think Elaine May's movies deserve to be seen and known more widely, so I am excited to be sharing them - but this bring up another regret. We are forced to show The Heartbreak Kid as a rip from a DVD because there's no DCP and the few film prints that exist are in archives, too precious to loan out. (For bizarre reasons the film is owned by a pharma company.)
What are your top ones-that-got-away? You mentioned that The Gambler and Who'll Stop the Rain were not available as DCP; but they ARE out there on blu-ray. Is DCP now the format of choice? Are there any films that you wanted to include that are in neither DCP nor blu?
I do think that the optimal viewing experience - in an ideal world - is from a pristine 35 mm print. In the real world film companies have shifted their catalogue to DCP and often don't make 35mm prints available. When they are available, they are more expensive to ship than digital files, and they may well be in poor condition: scratched, choppy, with poor sound or faded colours. So in some ways, DCP is an improvement - it is certainly the default format. There are titles that I would have shown if they had been available on DCP like the ones you mention. Then there are films which felt important to show - like The Heartbreak Kid - despite the fact that there wasn't an ideal format. So you weigh these things and try to strike a balance. There were other films that just weren't available to us, period. Because the distributor plans to do a re-release in the near future, films like Carnal Knowledge and The Last Waltz, for instance. I am pleased to be showing John Waters' Desperate Living, but that wasn't my original choice. Warner Bros has the rights to Female Trouble, and to Pink Flamingos, but is not currently allowing theatrical booking for what they quaintly call "legal reasons", which I understand relates to their NC-17 classifications (even though the films are available on blu-ray etc). Somehow Desperate Living escaped that rating, which is itself miraculous.
Which were the hardest to include, that required the most time/ effort/ cajoling, that you are proudest of getting in there? What does that aspect of the job look like, now, in the age of DCP?
In some ways this wasn't that hard a season to build and in fact it only took a few weeks. That's because these are American movies, mostly from major studios who have been exploiting this catalogue for a long time, and they have transferred most of the classics from that period to DCP now. And I've been doing this job long enough that I know where to look for the more obscure titles - or who to ask, if I don't. Mostly what I am proud of is the scope and scale of the programme, which is by far the biggest we have ever mounted at VIFF. I think it reflects the arc of American movie making over that decade, and I did my best to bring in voices who perhaps were marginalized in the past: to get in films by Barbara Loden, Joan Micklin Silver, Joan Tewkesbury, as well as Elaine May, all of whom were bucking the system back then. And I am proud of the double bills that are built into the schedule, even though this is really just a programmer's vanity. I get a kick out of the fact that you could watch, say, The Long Goodbye back to back with Chinatown, or Close Encounters followed by Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or Girlfriends then Old Boyfriends... Double bills are wonderful for suggesting counterpoint, which again, seems very on point with the revisionist mode so prevalent in the New American Cinema.
Oh, I am also excited by a subsection of the series. On Thursday nights we will be showing mystery thrillers from the era in a series called Crime Scenes, and to date I have four local mystery writers lined up to do brief introductions to films like Night Moves (Sam Wiebe) and The Yakuza (AJ Devlin), Chinatown (Winona Kent) and Saint Jack (Eric d'Souza). I will introduce Chinese Bookie in this series too. First up is a Mystery Movie, Thurs 21 July. But you won't know what that is til the opening titles roll.
I found the studio theatre a bit hard on the butt the one time I went there. (It's kind of ironic that the VIFF Centre has both the most comfortable and the most uncomfortable seats in the city depending on which theatre one ends up in). Are there plans to put in more comfortable seats? Are pillows encouraged? Any advice to people to maximize their experience of the studio theatre? (Are all films playing in the studio also playing in the main auditorium?).
Personally I think the Studio Theatre is not as bad as its reputation in this regard, but then I grew up chasing down movies in all sorts of shabby venues - I think we're all a bit spoiled by cinemas now. If you go to live theatre you have different expectations. But by all means bring a pillow or a cushion and in fact we have some on order for that screen. I look at this way: if we didn't have it, this season would either be half the size or the movies in it would only be screening once. Not all, but most of the films will screen once in each space, so you will have the opportunity to see it in Vancouver's most comfortable cinema (thank you), and if you miss it, you still have the chance to catch it. I watched Cronenberg's The Fly in the Studio a couple of weeks back, and the truth is, if it's a good movie, you're going to have a good time. I also think that more intimate space is perhaps better suited to some films - and I look forward to how an audience in there might react to something like Desperate Living in there. But of course I have mostly placed the longer, more spectacular epics on the bigger screen.
Since the program was announced, what films have sold the most tickets? Which have sold the least?
Too soon to say, it only went on sale three days ago. We are selling a lot of the $99 passes - which is gratifying but also an insane deal. If you watched all 68 films (admittedly this would be quite a feat) it would work out to $1.45 per film.
In some ways this wasn't that hard a season to build and in fact it only took a few weeks. That's because these are American movies, mostly from major studios who have been exploiting this catalogue for a long time, and they have transferred most of the classics from that period to DCP now. And I've been doing this job long enough that I know where to look for the more obscure titles - or who to ask, if I don't. Mostly what I am proud of is the scope and scale of the programme, which is by far the biggest we have ever mounted at VIFF. I think it reflects the arc of American movie making over that decade, and I did my best to bring in voices who perhaps were marginalized in the past: to get in films by Barbara Loden, Joan Micklin Silver, Joan Tewkesbury, as well as Elaine May, all of whom were bucking the system back then. And I am proud of the double bills that are built into the schedule, even though this is really just a programmer's vanity. I get a kick out of the fact that you could watch, say, The Long Goodbye back to back with Chinatown, or Close Encounters followed by Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or Girlfriends then Old Boyfriends... Double bills are wonderful for suggesting counterpoint, which again, seems very on point with the revisionist mode so prevalent in the New American Cinema.
Oh, I am also excited by a subsection of the series. On Thursday nights we will be showing mystery thrillers from the era in a series called Crime Scenes, and to date I have four local mystery writers lined up to do brief introductions to films like Night Moves (Sam Wiebe) and The Yakuza (AJ Devlin), Chinatown (Winona Kent) and Saint Jack (Eric d'Souza). I will introduce Chinese Bookie in this series too. First up is a Mystery Movie, Thurs 21 July. But you won't know what that is til the opening titles roll.
I found the studio theatre a bit hard on the butt the one time I went there. (It's kind of ironic that the VIFF Centre has both the most comfortable and the most uncomfortable seats in the city depending on which theatre one ends up in). Are there plans to put in more comfortable seats? Are pillows encouraged? Any advice to people to maximize their experience of the studio theatre? (Are all films playing in the studio also playing in the main auditorium?).
Personally I think the Studio Theatre is not as bad as its reputation in this regard, but then I grew up chasing down movies in all sorts of shabby venues - I think we're all a bit spoiled by cinemas now. If you go to live theatre you have different expectations. But by all means bring a pillow or a cushion and in fact we have some on order for that screen. I look at this way: if we didn't have it, this season would either be half the size or the movies in it would only be screening once. Not all, but most of the films will screen once in each space, so you will have the opportunity to see it in Vancouver's most comfortable cinema (thank you), and if you miss it, you still have the chance to catch it. I watched Cronenberg's The Fly in the Studio a couple of weeks back, and the truth is, if it's a good movie, you're going to have a good time. I also think that more intimate space is perhaps better suited to some films - and I look forward to how an audience in there might react to something like Desperate Living in there. But of course I have mostly placed the longer, more spectacular epics on the bigger screen.
Since the program was announced, what films have sold the most tickets? Which have sold the least?
Too soon to say, it only went on sale three days ago. We are selling a lot of the $99 passes - which is gratifying but also an insane deal. If you watched all 68 films (admittedly this would be quite a feat) it would work out to $1.45 per film.
What films do you have the biggest personal investment in getting people out to see - the ones that you fear will not be well-attended, but think SHOULD be...?
I mean, obviously the Cassavetes titles, but there is a special place in my heart for Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (I first saw the latter in a double bill with Raging Bull, which makes no sense at all but I'll never forget it). Or how about John Huston's Fat City? A boxing movie about losers tipping into skid row, based on a terrific novel by Leonard Gardner. Stacy Keach pisses blood. Susan Tyrell redefining the word blowsy. A very young Jeff Bridges playing Ernie, the great white chump. It's got maybe the most memorable use of silence I ever saw (heard?) in a movie.
Anything else we should say about the VIFF Centre or upcoming fare?
Get 'em while they're hot!
I mean, obviously the Cassavetes titles, but there is a special place in my heart for Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (I first saw the latter in a double bill with Raging Bull, which makes no sense at all but I'll never forget it). Or how about John Huston's Fat City? A boxing movie about losers tipping into skid row, based on a terrific novel by Leonard Gardner. Stacy Keach pisses blood. Susan Tyrell redefining the word blowsy. A very young Jeff Bridges playing Ernie, the great white chump. It's got maybe the most memorable use of silence I ever saw (heard?) in a movie.
Anything else we should say about the VIFF Centre or upcoming fare?
Get 'em while they're hot!
Thanks for your interest, Al... These movies mean a lot to me and I have been very heartened by how enthusiastically people are responding to the series so far, just hoping that translates into good houses. One more thing. This afternoon I booked a 69th movie but nobody knows this yet and I think I'm going to hold it back for a little while, but I promise that when it is announced you're going to think, "Aha! That was the one.... The missing piece!"
Thanks, Tom!
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