August 1st 2013. Pick Of The Day.
New York City's premiere resource for classic film screenings in the metropolitan area. Offering reviews, recommendations, venues and a host of links keeping classic film and the silver screens alive.
SUMMER!!! SLOW THE HELL DOWN ALREADY!!!
Hello Stockahz and welcome to August 2013. I'm not any happier about this season's swift pace than you, so let's just get to the wonderful classic screenings we can indulge in this warm and sunny day and not even think about January, my cursed foe. There's not a lot going on concerning rep cinema today, but three vastly different types of musical vie for your attention.
Jean-Luc Godard's A WOMAN IS A WOMAN screens for its second and last day as part of MoMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film series. The frogteur's homage to Hollywood musicals of the studio era features a winsome Anna Karina, who would soon become her director's spouse, so it's worth catching her on the big screen while she still remembered how to smile. Can't make Jean-Luc my Pick. Besides, an even more eccentric specialist performs the one-two-kick-turn tonight.
Director Morton De Costa and star Robert Preston recreated their great Broadway success for the cameras with 1962's THE MUSIC MAN. Preston's flim-flam man poses as a music teacher in order to swindle a small Iowa town out of a small bundle of lettuce. Of course his growing affections for Shirley Jones' piano teacher threatens to undo his elaborate scam. But how does it end? Screening tonight at Cunningham Park in scenic Fresh Meadows, and might have taken my Pick this day were a different provocateur not strutting his musical stuff this evening in another outdoor venue, a conniver who I believe has become more iconic and imbedded in the cultural zeitgeist.
Actor Richard O'Brien's love affair with the sci-fi and horror B-movies of the 40's, 50's and 60's germinated into a theater project he worked on when employment and cash were scarce. Eager for some input he showed his incomplete work to director Jim Sharman, for whom he'd briefly played Herod in a production of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR while it was being previewed at the experimental upstairs space in the Royal Court Theatre, which turned out to be the same venue Sharman would premiere O'Brien's work-in-progress once he'd been wowed by the concept. Tim Curry assumed the lead role, that of a cross dressing mad scientist feverishly committed to the task of creating his perfect man. The resulting stage work was a smash that moved from its original 68-seat home to the 230-seat Chelsea Classic Cinema to the 500-seat Kings Row Theatre all within 6 months, and the cast recording became a huge best seller. Something about this gleefully anarchic genre mashup had clicked with audiences you could no longer refer to as fringe, so naturally this movie-mad musical's next step was a celluoid incarnation.
Filmed at Hammer Studio's Bray House and adding Americans Barry Bostwick, Susan Sarandon and a future phenom going by the monicker Meat Loaf to the original production's O'Brien, Curry and Patricia Quinn, both distributor 20th Century Fox and producer Michael White were surprised by the utter rejection the resulting film production recieved. Judged a flop but attempting a salvage effort it was paired later on a double bill with fellow box office disappointment PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, Brian De Palma's own musical mashup of penny dreadful genre cinema. That too failed to generate any interest. It wasn't until someone at Fox decided to take advantage of the then-new Midnight Movie phenomenon, specializing in Psychotronic fare old and new like 1936's REEFER MADNESS or John Waters' PINK FLAMINGOS, that the film's cinematic legacy took root. Booked at the Waverly Theater somewhat inauspiciously on April 1 1976, disenfranchised moviegoers claimed the unique flick as their own and gradually banded together to form its cult, creating a whole set of rituals to be performed during the screening that separated the newcomer from the devotee, and a completely new interactive moviegoing experience was born, one which survives to this day and helped make the film the longest continuously booked in movie history. Beloved, influential, judged by the National Film Registry to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically signifigant." And it all started with a jump to the left.
Jim Sharman and Richard O'Brien's THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW screens tonight at Tompkins Square Park, which once upon a time looked a lot like the Transylvanian proceedings onscreen. Get there early with a soft blanket to avoid the baby carriages. Change sucks.
Follow me on Twitter @NitrateStock.
Like the FB page at Facebook.com/NitrateStock.
The folks over at Occupy Sandy could still use your help by donating and volunteering. Some NY'ers still havne't been made whole.
Be safe and sound and make sure the next knucklehead is too! August Overview coming in the next couple of days. In the meantime dig into the new interactive calendar update for all the exacts on classic film screenings in NYC! It's one year old today after all, so wish it a Happy Birthday ya bastidz!
-Joe Walsh
