An interesting article from the San Francisco Chronicle on the decline of repertory film programming. Much of this probably isn't exactly news to anyone who's been paying attention, but it's sure to nevertheless provoke bittersweet feelings from those who are old enough to remember when multiple rep houses flourished in practically every major city.

Audience fading for repertory movie theaters

(An early morning off-the-top-of-my-head response)

I think one of the problems here is the issue of building an audience for rep houses among young people. Young movie buffs just aren't that interested in 1) old movies or 2) seeing them in theaters. There needs to be a concerted effort in the public school system to make film a part of the curriculum and expand film classes in colleges, including community colleges and technical schools and the like.

When I was in college, there were two places to see old movies: television and rep houses. TV was a way of familiarizing interested viewers with certain movies; the big screen was a way to see them properly. TV prints and broadcast quality back then were not what they are today. So if you liked something on TV, you then waited for the opportunity to see it on the big screen. Today's film buffs have Criterion-quality DVDs, with all kinds of "film school" extras, so they're not left hungry for a better big-screen experience.

Also, judging from the examples given in the article, I'm not sure the programmers in San Francisco are really thinking of how to draw in new audiences. Some of their ideas are simply out of touch with modern audiences. Instead of a Karloff retrospective, why not a Mario Bava retrospective and then when they show BLACK SABBATH, do a brief sidebar of Karloff films. When KILL BILL VOL. 1 came out, they could have programmed some of the films that inspired that film, including some Italian westerns, Yakuza movies, anime and LADY SNOWBLOOD. When GRINDHOUSE came out, show some original GRINDHOUSE movies, like INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS or HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD or a new print of the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Who cares about James Toback?

There's things you can do. Find movies that aren't yet on DVD. Find genres that people are buzzing about for some reason or other and get prints of those films, e.g. some of the "Pinky Violence" films from Japan that have been coming out in box sets. Do the programmers in S.F. even know what those are? Leave the Bette Davis weepies to TCM for now.

Yeah Bette Davis, up yours! :huh:

Just kiddin'!

Actually, I think that the advent of home theatre systems (HDTV, advance stereo set-ups, region free DVD players, etc.) and boutique DVD label releases (Criterion, Blue Underground, No-Shame, Synapse, Dark Sky, Fantoma, etc.) along with the major studios' catalogues, have, unfortunately, made the wonderful experience of seeing an older film, a cult film, a black & white film with subtitles, a you fill-in-the-blank film, on the big screen nearly obsolete.

When I lived in Cincinnati, from the late 70s to the early 90s, we had a rep cinema, Movieola (later Reel Movies), which presented a rotating daily schedule of foreign, independent, classics, and genre films, along with new art film releases.

Now, I can go and watch WALKABOUT, THE BIG SILENCE, RASHOMON and BLUE VELVET, back-to-back-to-back-to-back if I want to. Or PERFORMANCE, THE 36th CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN, NOSFERATU and AKIRA.

or .... ad infinitum.

That wasn't possible in the past.

I'm curious about the current state of college/university film screenings. Do they even rent prints anymore? The school near me will run something like THE DEPARTED on DVD on a large screen TV for five or six students on a Friday night, and that's pretty much it. Granted, the school doesn't have a film department, but they do have an excellent collection of film books in their library so someone at the school cares.

A year or two ago I provided some trailer/music/interview clips on DVD as intros for a cult series of midnight movie showings at our local art theater. Needless to say I was disappointed when, on the first night, I saw that the features themselves were shown as DVD projections also. I was really hyped to finally see, say GOODFELLAS and ERASERHEAD on 35mm film, even though I've seen them on a TV monitor countless times. I think it's important to stress the superiority of seeing a movie projected from film; it can make even a tedious narrative bearable, if the cinematography's nice.

So right.

Film Forum can still sell out a mid-afternoon screening of Charlie Varrick, which has lulled them into a terrible complacency. They used to always run some type of horror program in the summer, but they haven’t done that in many, many years. They just finished a Preminger retrospective and left out stuff like Hurry Sundown and Rosebud (I understand they were strong-armed into ditching Skidoo by his estate) in order to show all the stuff that’s easily available on DVD. Ditto the current Lumet fest – no one will argue that he deserves it, but why not a director whose films are actually difficult to see, rather than ones you trip over almost every day while changing channels.

With all those NYU students only steps away, I was stunned that there was no attempt to cash in on any of the Tarantino movies, particularly Kill Bill. Instead we get Pre-Code Clara Bow for a month.

I wish I had pre-Code Clara Bow for a month. Oh wait, did you mean something else? Anyway...

I used to book films for the University of Florida's movie theater 1991-1994, and we still rented prints back then. Since moving to New York, I've been to a couple things at NYU's Cantor Film Center, and they've always been DVD projections in a largish classroom. That could just be a function of the difference in space and real estate between the two colleges, but given NYU's pomposity regarding its film school, you'd think there would be something more substantial.

At the same time, I reckon it helps avoid what I ran into when we had people drive from all over Florida to see HARD BOILED, only to find out that the third reel was actually the third reel of ALIENS.

That's actually the Paracinematic experience at its best! :rolleyes:

I had some friends buy a copy of WILD AT HEART off of ebay - before the R1 DVD release - and they showed it at midnight before a packed house of friends at a local art cinema, where one of them was the manager. Unfortunately, at about the third reel change, the reel projecting hadn't been rewound, so it started with Harry Dean Stanton talking backwards. After about a 10 minute delay, the film restarted, but a few minutes later, the film began projecting backwards again, which caused a mass hiatus from the theatre. It was late, people had to work the next day.

I think younger people will certainly see older movies in a theater...but it does have to be pitched to them and packaged right. Exhumed sometimes gets large crowds for their horror shows, and I expect a big one in March for KNIGHTRIDERS and 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS.

I haven't read the article -- I hate those doom and gloom articles, they're always so doomy and gloomy -- but I think rep cinema is becoming a highbrow pastime, which is necessarily circumventing their potential audience. For example, here in Philly there's one pure rep house, and when they're not hosting Exhumed 80% of their stuff is explicitly arthouse -- and heavily so. Nothing wrong with that, I plan on going there this Saturday to see SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, in fact, but it's probably gonna be an audience of me and ten other diehards.

So in fact I would program Bette Davis weepies. That sounds great, actually, I'd love to see that stuff on the big screen. I would program at least more Hollywood stuff and vary the season around -- because that's where the general audience is. I don't think you'd made gajillions of dollars, but I think people would come. Of course you have to pitch it right, attune yourself to local audiences and the like. But a couple of years ago, when the rep house did TROUBLE MAN and BLACK CAESAR all sorts of people showed up who obviously had never been there before -- and likely haven't been there again.

In other words, I think Mr. Camp and Mr. Fitzpatrick have it right, basically. It's a marketing problem -- or at least in large part a marketing problem. People are still interested in going because it's a certain experience that can't be replicated elsewhere. But in order to serve this audience, you need to cater to their interests, and a pure diet of Tarkovsky's STALKER, as much as I love STALKER, ain't gonna do it.

(I don't agree that dvds replace this experience -- they have their place, and I'm not knocking them, but I firmly believe they're no substitute. In fact, I hate, and will never go, to any rep showing of a projected dvd -- period, end of story. I think that somehow combines the worst of both worlds in an unholy package of yuck. )

doug

To be fair, Preminger's FF retrospective included the delightful rarity THE FAN, a film I didn't even know existed till I read Hirsch's book. And the Lumet fest includes the difficult-to-see THE OFFENCE, THE SEAGULL, and A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE. Titles like DANIEL and BYE BYE BRAVERMAN weren't exactly b.o. barnburners either.* I'm not sure THE ANDERSON TAPES and THE DEADLY AFFAIR, a double bill next week, are all that easy to see unless you're really scanning the cable listings or hoping a fellow Mobian does. :)

I would've liked to have seen ROSEBUD (not much worth rediscovering; I saw it on VHS, but would give it a second chance) and HURRY SUNDOWN, too, but prints of these and other hard-to-sees may not be easily available. I'm sure curiosity seekers would have turned out, but if the goods can't be gotten there's not much to be done.

It'll be interesting to see how CONTEMPT fares at FF on its upcoming engagement. It ran for months the last time, about a decade (!) ago; but the easily available Criterion DVD may have trumped it in the meantime. Oh, well, if it bombs they can always show DR. STRANGELOVE again.

What's scary is that Eighties indies like BLOOD SIMPLE, STRANGER THAN PARADISE, and BLUE VELVET are now showcased as repertory gems. I'm not as old as my brethren in the seats at FF...but clearly I ain't young no more, either. (And the cranky codgers who do turn up can alas be as much a deterrent to enjoying the rep experience as noisy kids with cellphones can be at multiplexes.)

*A missed opportunity along the lines of our discussion: Not showing 1988's RUNNING ON EMPTY, which would have drawn younger audiences interested in River Phoenix. I'm sure co-star Martha Plimpton would have dropped in for a discussion. But again, dredging up a print may have been difficult.

Film Forum's rep programming is run as a for-profit institution, whereas their screen devoted to new films is non-profit. The former subsidizes the latter, which explains why they don't take many chances. It doesn't explain why they dropped their summer genre series, but I'd assume Melville, Godard and Truffaut revivals are more profitable (especially since FF's rep programmer owns Rialto Films.)

I'm surprised by how much of an audience there is in New York for things like Apichatpong Weerasethakul's non-narrative shorts. Someone mocked the idea of finding an audience for STALKER in this thread, but in New York, Tarkovsky is actually a pretty big draw.

Well, more precisely, I mocked the notion that a large sustainable audience can be built for rep houses with 100% stuff like STALKER. Or Apichatpong Weerasethakul --which, coincidentally, the local rep house is showing a festival of in March. This sort of stuff seems to me to predetermine a certain kind of audience -- in number as much as anything else. And I'm not just speaking out of my hat -- I mean, I go to these things a fair amount, certainly enough to make a judgement of who's there with me. Anecdotal evidence isn't science, but it ain't horseradish, either.

I have no doubt that this stuff sells like gangbusters in NYC, but I think that's mainly because NYC has a lot of highbrow film fans up for it. That's to the city's credit, but it doesn't really tell me much about Philly. Similarly I don't know, but I would think older Hollywood stuff probably does fairly well in Hollywood, for the obvious reasons of industry interest, etc. (But who knows?) If so, that's to the city's credit, but doesn't tell me much about Philly, either.

Like I said, you gotta sell to the crowd you got.

doug

Not being an Angelino, I frequently look at the American Cinematheque schedule with great envy as well as admiration. They haven't been mentioned at all in this discussion or the article and I wonder what their attendance figures look like.

The programmers seem to go out of their way to program titles that are distinctly "not on DVD"--in fact, the films are often shrewdly marketed this way. Additionally, their schedule seems to be completely independent of the Film Forum schedule. Often you will see the retrospectives and long-runs that begin at FF migrate around the country to other rep/art houses such as the Music Box in Chicago and others.

As a former card carrying FF member (I'm not a member anymore because I've moved, not due to dissatisfaction), I've had many wonderful repertory experiences there (though I concur with Bob about the frequent distractions of some of the more surly, older clientele), however I've always felt that the predominant art house bent could and should be balanced by more titles from outside of the canon.

American Cinematheque, and also the New Beverly Cinema, seem to cater other demographics with their frequent mix of genre and exploitation titles as well as oddball Hollywood titles, particularly from the 70s-80s, that NEVER hit the New York screens. I have all of these sites bookmarked and regularly check the schedules and am often struck by the differences in programming strategy. I may be idealizing the LA screens, but it seems as if they remain truer to the repertory circuit heyday than their NY counterparts.

What you describe is pretty much what the New York rep market lacks. Lincoln Center, FF, and Anthology Film Archives just don't go there as a matter of course (but when they do, as LC did with its lauded horror film series a few years back, it pays off handsomely in press and audience interest).

I guess we in Omaha, Nebraska are fortunate to have a very nice non profit theater that doesn't have a problem with repertory series. The current run of 20 Hitchcock Films is a good example.

One of the things they do is to have some excellent first run films in one theater and the repertory series in the other. They draw in the younger crowd for the first run shows, who are then exposed through osmosis to the other older movie that is showing.

I'm pleasantly surprised anytime I see a group of young folks experiencing some of these old treasures for the first time.

Another thing they do to promote is to have free showings for local schools. I really like this idea, particularly when a visiting film arts professor shows up to discuss the film in detail.

All in all, while it may be a dinosaur in some places, here in Omaha, we are just beginning.

By the way, I am referring to Filmstreams

While Repertory theaters in Austin aren't what they were in the 70's/80's we're still doing ok. Every summer the Paramount's summer series runs double or triple features every day (admittedly, alot of them do repeat every summer). And then there's the sundry Alamos around town that show a mixture of first run/old exploitation and a smattering of foreign movies; the more traditional rep stuff is at the Paramount.