Good Rep
I’ll be honest with you. With the world where it is, I find it very difficult to write anything, including this rambly-ass newsletter. I’m not even a particularly threatened group. I’m a white, hetero, cis man, living in Brooklyn. He might gut my union or target my totally legal immigrant in-laws or torch my meager stabs at retirement planning, but the only way I’m going to be directly endangered by America’s garbage fire in chief is if he personally notices that I referred to him as “Dick Shitly” and “President Shiteater” on Bluesky and petulantly orders a drone strike.
But President Shiteater is too much of a coward to crawl out of his own Truth Social anus, so… on the most drastic levels? I’m likely fine. But no man is an island and many people I know and love will be hurt, to say nothing of the internal knots I get, watching the folks who should have protected us cower before a human donkey turd, whose biggest qualification is he failed upward hard into job firing people on TV for failing dumbass “business” tests.
But there’s a limit to what I can personally do, since God hasn’t seen fit to give me the power to, in the words of Crow T. Robot, “decide who lives and who dies.” So I try to keep a balance between awareness of reality and awareness of how much reality I can take before I’m forced to remove the word “health” from “mental health,” for accuracy.
Thus, I’ve been spending even more time than usual at the movies. In the words of H. I. McDonough from Raising Arizona, am I “just fleeing reality like I know I'm liable to do?” Perhaps. But we all need some refreshment before rejoining the flames.
These days, more than half of the movies I see in the theater are repertory, or “rep” screenings, i.e. older movies, not new releases. Prior to home video, such screenings were the only way to see certain movies – other than waiting and hoping that they’d show up on TV, and often, for various rights reasons, they wouldn’t. However, in the age of 4K home theaters and streaming and TV sets that (even at their most basic model) dwarf the screens of yore in size, quality, or both, I’m sure plenty of folks are wrinkling their noses at the idea of leaving their couch-cocoon to PAY to see an OLD movie in the theater. In a word: “Why?”
Well, imaginary objector, I’ll try to explain. For one, there’s the communal aspect of moviegoing – to enter a pact with strangers to have an emotional experience together (horror and comedy work especially well with a crowd, since they both seek to elicit involuntary audience reactions, and both laughter and shrieks tend to be contagious). And even though I mostly want the audience to be quiet and watch the damn movie, occasional participation can be delightful – at a 70mm Museum of the Moving Image screening of Sleeping Beauty, a little girl who’d been silently rapt throughout, exclaimed a crystal-clear “YUCK” when the prince and princess finally kiss, and the audience erupted with laughter.
But that’s just a defense of the theatrical experience in general, and the world has plenty of those. Why old movies, specifically? For me, it tends to be one of three things:
(1) This is my first chance to see an old favorite on the big screen, with big sound, and (hopefully) a big group of friends – and if some of them have never seen it before, I get to see it anew through their eyes.
(2) It’s something I’ve always MEANT to see, but modern life's excess of choice has caused decision paralysis, and I get too flummoxed by everything I could watch to actually settle on one. At a screening, someone else has made the decision for me, and god bless them for taking it off my plate. "Oh, thank you, I will watch Brewster McCloud and Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, two movies by Robert Altman, a guy I consider my favorite American filmmaker while still having several blind spots."* (*example based on a true story)
(3) I’m taking a chance on something I’d never see otherwise. Curation is a wonderful thing. Would I normally pick the zany Indonesian splatter horror film Macabre if left to my own devices? No, but I’ve learned to trust the curators at “Terror Tuesday,” and my life has been zestier for it. (Side note: this is reason #1648 why it sucks that A.I. has been shoved, uninvited, into every corner of our lives – if you only sample stuff that's algorithmically tailored to what you’ve enjoyed before, you’re participating in a system that shoves you into an ever-smaller cultural corner. Letting other folks expose you to new ideas? That's how you grow.)
A tribute to some rep theaters I have known:
1978-1996 - The Lean Years
As I've mentioned in previous newsletters, I’m from rural Illinois, a region not widely celebrated for its vibrant cultural scene. You may know the old vaudeville phrase “Will it play in Peoria?” meaning “Is it broad and/or watered down enough for those cornfield rubes downstate?”
Yeah, I grew up 30 minutes from Peoria.
That said, I have fond memories of The Normal Theater, in Normal, Illinois – a city so named because it is, very. The Normal is a beautiful restoration of a 1937 movie house, with arthouse and rep screenings. Right now it seems focused on Oscar films, and the single repertory program I see is Guy Richie’s Snatch, which… wouldn’t be my first pick. But they were an oasis in my early film desert.
It’s not exactly a repertory theater, but I’d also like to give a shout-out to Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival (now “Ebertfest”), held in Urbana, IL. I feel like there’s been a bit of mission creep since Ebert passed – the festival began to highlight films the legendary (and tremendously influential to me) critic felt were overlooked or underseen, and a way to bring film culture to the downstate Illinois region where he also grew up. Meanwhile, the one movie announced for 2025 so far is The Hangover, which seems to be a decision less about what’s “overlooked” and more about “we can get Todd Phillips.”
However, even back in the old days, Rog stretched the definition when it suited him. I remember driving the 90 minutes from Eureka to Urbana, with my best pal Rusty, to catch 2001: A Space Odyssey – a film which Ebert allowed himself to include because it would screen in 70 mm, an “underseen” format. And you know what? I’m glad. I don’t wanna sound insufferably snobby, but 2001 genuinely feels like a whole different experience in 70mm (and Shakespeare is better in the original Klingon). Plus, Urbana is the fictional birthplace of HAL the computer, and we got a Q&A with Roger Ebert and star Keir Dullea, which is why – to this very day – I know how to pronounce “Keir Dullea.”
1996 - 2000: The College Years
When I left for college, I escaped the rural quietude of Central Illinois for the rural quietude of east-central Indiana.
Richmond (home of Earlham College, my alma mater) was no greater a cinema hub than my hometown, but if you wanted to skip just over the border to Dayton, OH, you could see a picture at The New Neon (now just “The Neon” – presumably because Justin Timberlake told the owners to “lose the new – it’s cleaner”). While it mostly played current arthouse fare, it was also a very specific rep theater, in that it was one of only two or three places in the country equipped to screen Cinerama movies.
What was Cinerama? It was one of the many possibly-questionable, “innovations” meant to help movie theaters compete with TV (see also: 3-D). Three projectors would project three synched images onto a screen that curved around the audience’s field of vision, to provide a larger, more immersive picture – sort of a precursor to IMAX, or more accurately, the curved OMNIMAX domes like they have at Chicago’s Science and Industry Museum.
“But Dan,” you may say. “Surely a 1950’s process where three cameras combine to make one image on a curved screen would mean noticeable lines where the projections meet, and blurring on the edges where everything curves.” To which I say, “Wow, imagined reader! Gosh, but you're smart!” Cinerama did indeed have significant aesthetic drawbacks as well as economic ones, which is probably why only 10 or so movies were made in original 3-strip Cinerama (although plenty of later 70mm films played Cinerama screens) and those that were made were mostly “documentaries” intended to show off Cinerama's spectacle (the most significant narrative exception being the big-budget, mostly-dull How the West Was Won).
At the Neon I caught the most famous of these pseudo-docs, This is Cinerama, a cavalcade of spectacle and experiences. Niagara Falls, up close! A Spanish bullfight! The climax of Aida! A ride on a roller-coaster! Essentially This is Cinerama is a film-length version of any amusement park attraction where a screen covers your field of vision. Sadly, the Neon stopped showing Cinerama films the year I graduated. Now there’s literally no other way to feel what it’s like to ride a roller coaster.
In college I did get to spend a semester in London, where we would get “reimbursed” for cultural experiences (aka, they would give us back a pittance of what we were paying them in tuition), and I used it mostly on movies. I would haunt the Prince Charles Cinema, a Leicester Square institution where you can catch new films, old classics, and fun stuff like sing-along shows, which I mention in part because it’s being threatened by the worst people in the world – landlords, so if you have a chance, sign this petition. I got to see how well A Night at the Opera plays for a crowd at the British Film Institute, and one time I sat in a mysterious room in the middle of the city, with folding chairs and a pull-down screen for what I’m not even sure was a legal showing of 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita, a 5.5 hour (double) feat(ure) of Fellini endurance I doubt I could manage today. God bless you, London.
2000 - 2002: Drifting
After college, I was aimless for a while. I briefly lived in Saint Paul, MN, then at home for a bit, then in my then-fiancee’s hometown, and finally in Savannah, GA for a trimester at the Savannah College of Art and Design where I was studying film production, before realizing it wasn’t the path for me and quickly dropping out.
I was drifting through life, but not completely unhappily. At least Saint Paul/Minneapolis had some solid filmgoing. I can’t recall the name (and Googling leads me to suspect it doesn’t exist anymore), but there was a rep theater in downtown Minneapolis that was my first experience with dine-in moviegoing. ACTUAL food while you got to see a movie?! AND BEER? It felt like magic, and that was even before my first-ever-viewings of both Bride of Frankenstein and the Grant-Hepburn comedy I personally prefer to Bringing Up Baby – the anti-capitalist, pro-backflips delight, Holiday.
Twice, my friend Matt was kind enough to drive us to a bar named Grumpy’s that occasionally screened movies arranged by “City Club Cinema” (once through a Minnesota snowstorm that definitely should have overridden our cinephilia). One of the screenings was for F.W. Murnau’s great silent The Last Laugh, and the other was Steven Spielberg’s TV movie, Duel. When we showed up for the latter, the presenter apologized – apparently the distributor had not sent the 90-minute cut of Duel that had screened theatrically, and not even the original 74-minute cut that played on ABC back in 1971. No, instead they had sent an “abridged” 23-minute version that someone had butchered for reasons unknown.
Years later, while temping at HarperCollins in NYC, I snagged a free copy of Kevin Murphy’s A Year at the Movies, which chronicles the Mystery Science Theater writer and (best) voice of Tom Servo’s quest to watch at least one movie in the theater, per day, for a year – a book pitch that I would happily make now, if Murphy hadn’t gotten there first. The MST3K crew was Minneapolis-based, and on page 18, I was surprised to read him recount a night at Grumpy’s watching the 23-minute abridged Duel. I – who would later make a chunk of my living from bad movie mockery – had unknowingly been in the same room as Tom Servo!
At least I got some redemption when I ran into Frank Conniff in a public restroom, years later. On that occasion, I happened to be wearing my MST3K tee and TV’s Frank pointed at me. "Nice shirt,” he said, with an eye-twinkle brighter than the buzzing men’s room neon.
2002 - Present - Movietopia
These days, I live in New York, and my repertory life is an embarrassment of riches. My beloved Nitehawk Theater’s about 15 minutes away, screening classics, overlooked oddballs, kung fu pictures, movies that straddle the ridiculous and the sublime, and offering special programs filled with cartoons or funny pop culture presentations.
The Spectacle Theater can hook you up with the really weird shit you’d absolutely never see otherwise, and The Roxy’s there if you want to fight through a bar of beautiful people to get to the film nerd dungeon beneath. The Metrograph combines great programming with seats that will send your ass right to sleep, and Quad Cinema also programs some great stuff on its postage-stamp-sized screens. The Film Forum does wonderful classic Hollywood retrospectives, if you’re willing to endure their website’s absolutely bizarre refusal to just put their listings in fucking calendar format. And the Alamo’s there if you like unfair labor practices.
Okay, things got a little snarky towards the end, but (other than the shameful labor shit) it’s meant with love. And now that I live in this theatrical paradise, an odd thing has happened: moviegoing – often one of the more solitary ways you can spend your time – has become an extremely social part of my life.
It kind of started post-divorce, pre-pandemic, when I needed a lot to fill my hours. I discovered that various friends that I’d known through different corners of my life (funny videos, the podcast, movie trivia) had assembled a bad movie watching crew, and I joined them as a regular. When Covid hit, and the group was forced online, we only expanded. Now it contains some of my dearest friends, AND has inspired an ongoing email thread, where we let one another know when we’ve gotten tickets to this or that special screening. These days a showing of, say, the semi-forgotten 1985 cult picture The Legend of Billie Jean or the deliciously silly thriller/peak of Lauren Holly’s film career, Turbulence can turn into an impromptu movie party unexpectedly, when a “yeah, why not, I’ll come!” critical mass is reached.
We’re odd ducks, perhaps. Defying “movie nerd” stereotypes, there are at least as many women as men in the mix (as well as nonbinary folks) – but we're our own flavor of nerd nonetheless, and a fair number of us do look and act a bit like me, sporting either a beard or chunky Brooklyn glasses or both. (I have a rueful laugh at myself every once in a while, remembering the time I thought “Oh shit! Joe Dante’s rarely-screened The Movie Orgy is free at Anthology Film Archives! I’d better get there EARLY to get in!” and then discovering that the audience was about fifteen people, most of them middle-aged bearded dudes, and I thought “Perhaps I overestimated the public’s thirst for a seven-hour comic montage of campy mid-century B-movies and esoterica.”)
Anyway. It’s surprising sometimes, where you find community, but if enough people love a thing, community inevitably springs up. That’s a nice thing to remember.
As for mine? We might have a little trouble talking about emotions, but will happily uncork to discuss Lifeforce’s similarities to Quatermass and the Pit. Eventually the emotions will follow. And we may glare at you if you talk through the movie, but – unlike our president – we’re kind people. We mean you no harm.
For earlier posts, check out the archive. In my other life, I’m a podcaster. Listen to my show The Flop House, here. In my other other life, I’m an Emmy-winning comedy writer. If you’re looking to staff, get in touch! And if you love the newsletter, you can always consider tipping me, by enrolling in the paid tier!