Month: September 2019

“Going Attractions” and Coming Distractions: The Coney Island Film Festival

Outside of the biggies like Sundance, Toronto and Cannes—with their star power and acquisition deals—film festivals are usually fun but rather sedate affairs. You go and see an indie movie or shorts collection, be supportive during the Q&A afterwards, maybe go to a wine and cheese reception and hobnob a bit. This is the kind of film fest I go to and there are plenty to choose from. But the one I attended in mid-September in Coney Island was a breed apart. It’s even smaller than most; situated in one building on Surf Ave. (parallel to the boardwalk) and run by the non-profit arts organization Coney Island USA. Inside they have two venues: bleacher seating downstairs at Sideshows-by-the-Seashore performance space and upstairs at the Coney Island Museum with seating set up in the main room.


Upstairs at the Coney Island Museum (All photos by author)

The Coney Island Festival emphasizes local filmmakers and this year’s program had many works that took place in the immediate vicinity of the venue itself. Moreover, Coney Island USA integrates the screenings with the larger subculture promoted in their mission statement. That is, to extol and carry on many traditional forms of popular entertainment (as we will see in a minute). It was fitting then that the opening night film was “Going Attractions:The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace.” This documentary is an engaging and thorough look (past, present and future) at the classic American “picture palace” which, at the height of their success in the Twenties and Thirties, were among the most opulent buildings ever constructed for a clientele of the average person coming in off the street.


Click to see the trailer!

These theaters, many of them extraordinary in their scale and richness of architectural detail, once crowded together in the entertainment districts of major urban centers and, in a more solitary fashion, graced the main streets of medium-sized cities and even small towns. Director April Wright has steered this project, obviously a labor of love, with a sure hand. The backstory is presented clearly but not ponderously, with most commentators (from star movie critic Leonard Matlin on down) beginning with personal anecdotes of their first visits to one of these amazing venues. Of course, times change and eventually the movie palace business model declined, post-WW2. Suburbanization and the rise of TV were two big reasons and the scale of these theaters were a big problem, they required big staffs and upkeep costs proved prohibitive.


Renovation or more neglect?: The Everett Sq. Theater in Boston is one of hundreds old movie theaters in limbo.

“Going Attractions” gives significant space to those who have played major roles in saving these now-treasured buildings from neglect and maybe a date with the wrecking ball, several of these good folks can be see in the trailer. Probably the most astounding rescue tale is told by former ballerina turned activist and author Rosemary Novellino-Mearns. It is hard to imagine that Radio City Music Hall, the exquisite Art Deco landmark known for the Rockettes and its stupendously popular holiday shows, was threatened with demolition in 1978. In an inspiring David-and-Goliath story, Rosemary and her future husband started a save-Radio-City campaign with their fellow employees. They attracted publicity and powerful allies in what ended up being a major embarrassment for the Rockefellers, who had to cancel plans for a lucrative office skyscraper on the family-owned site. Novellino-Means was blackballed out of her job as a full-time dancer within a year but in the Q&A afterward unsurprisingly told us she had no regrets.


Rosemary Novellino-Mearns, second from left, standing next to director April Wright after the screening of “Going Attractions.”


Another featured commentator for “Going Attractions” is photographer Matt Lambros. His book “After the Final Curtain: The Fall of the American Movie Theater” is a must-have for anybody with an abiding interest in this subject. Lambros has criss-crossed the country photographing the current, usually abandoned, state of these magnificent venues. Their beauty is typically still evident despite years of neglect, via Lambros’ vivid large-format photography. A new volume of “After the Final Curtain” is due out this fall. See his website for more details: https://afterthefinalcurtain.net/books/

Radio City Music Hall had been known for their elaborate dance numbers performed on its enormous stage before the movie. This inter-disciplinary spirit continues in film palaces that were saved (which often double as performing-arts centers) and was also on display at this festival. Vaudeville acts were also popular attractions at the old movie palaces and Coney Island USA has for years fostered this spirit. They put on the crowd-favorite Mermaid Parade on Surf Ave. every June and stage many sideshow-type events, including at the opening night party. For a reasonable fee, you got an open bar (topped by almost topless dancers) a generous buffet and a real live revivalist show, featuring an MC who doubled as a cigarette-swallower, a contortionist, and a few burlesque dancers before I was obliged to catch the Q train back to my Manhattan hotel.


This ain’t your granny’s cine club: Opening night party at the Coney Island Film Fest.


I had to head back to Boston on Sunday that weekend so I couldn’t catch the block of animation shorts. The festival’s local flavor continued here with this half-minute clip of the delightful-looking “Brooklyn Breeze”

The following night, inspired by the film, I took a stroll down that once-notorious stretch of West 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. The dense concentration of movie houses and theaters there were mostly pornos before being condemned and transformed into the “Disneyfied” Times Square that people like to complain about today. I’m not sure who really misses those places: I’m not a big fan of the Harry Potter plays, tip-seeking Elmos and distracted/compulsive selfie-takers that dominate now, but the danger and seediness are not exactly to be mourned. I wandered into a couple of multiplexes to see if there were any remnants of the glorious past. At the Regal Cinema, on the old site of the infamous XXX Harem Theater, the new decor features a beautiful retro-Deco mural, a nice surprise. (See detail below).

Across the street I hit the jackpot at the AMC Empire. Over the voluminous lobby of a multiplex, where escalators zipped you up to the latest blockbuster, was a gorgeous old-time dome where Egyptian and classical Greek themes intermingled. People don’t know what they have, it was only after some of them noticed me pointing my Nikon up at the ceiling that they looked themselves. Baby steps. I found out later that the original Empire Theater was located a little further up the street and that the entire cinema was moved 170 feet to its present location, with giant balloon figures of Abbott and Costello made to look like they were tugging it along (the duo performed at the old Empire). The the main part of the theater was pushed up towards the street to be the lobby while the modern multiple screens were built behind. Hey, whatever it takes! I love American ingenuity and American movie palaces. Find out where there is one close to you and support them, keep the tradition alive.
—Rick Ouellette

AMC Empire theater lobby, two details below.


“New Killer Star”: David Bowie’s astute 9/11 testament

9/11/01 “See the great white scar over Battery Park.” So begins “New Killer Star” the outstanding lead-off track to David Bowie’s 2004 Reality album. Reality, indeed. In the wake of history’s worst terrorist attack, musicians naturally jumped into the rhetorical fray soon after the initial wave of shock, anger and profound sadness in the following weeks. These songs ranged from chauvinistic revenge fantasies like Charlie Daniels’ “This Ain’t no Rag, It’s a Flag” (awesome title, huh?) to Neil Young’s Flight 93 re-enactment “Let’s Roll” to the thoughtful human dramas on Bruce Springsteen’s album The Rising.

Bowie, a long-time New York City resident, came out with this lyrically subtle and musically uplifting tribute three years after the fact. It certainly has a carry-on vibe to it (“Let’s face the music and dance”) and a keen sense of the lasting dread in the 9/11 aftermath, reflected in the song title. But its vision its expansive. It touches upon the elusive concept of universal understanding (“I never said I was better than you”) and a look ahead to a time beyond our own (“All the corners of the buildings/Who but we remember these?”). Sure, all this was probably flying over the heads of many in the audience when Bowie and his crackerjack band performed “New Killer Star” on the subsequent tour (the only time I got to see him in concert). But the incremental enlightenment of great art works in mysterious ways, building up over extended periods of time to inspire people to become fully engaged in the world, instead of settling for the unfocused rage and bigotry of the Charlie Daniels’ song, attitudes more recently fermented in your typical Donald Trump rally. As David sings it himself here “I got a better way/Ready, Set, Go!.”

–Rick Ouellette, 9/11/2019

Jack DeJohnette Trio: Musical Heaven on the Harbor

On August 11th, two days after he turned 77 years old, jazz drummer/legend Jack DeJohnette and his trio gave one of the best musical performances I’ve ever seen at the Shalin Liu Center in Rockport, Mass. His two partners here are saxophonist Ravi Coltrane (son of John) and bassist Matt Garrison, son of Coltrane classic-quartet bassist Jimmy Garrison. This inter-generational/progeny combo has been a side project for about five years now and the anticipation was palatable as the veteran drummer-pianist, whose first solo LP (and his appearance on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew) date back a half-century, ambled onstage followed by Ravi with three saxophones strapped to his neck and Matt clutching his five-string electric bass.

The Shalin Liu Center has become quite the marquee venue since it opened in 2010, just as much for its dramatic location as for its exemplary acoustics. The building is squeezed in between the shops and art galleries of this destination seaport and behind the stage is a two-story window overlooking Rockport’s Back Harbor (the main harbor is on the other side of a little peninsula where sits Motif #1). The atmospherics could not have been any greater as the group settled in under an otherworldly green-gray twilight sky. DeJohnette started an extraordinary half-hour suite of songs by sitting down at the house Steinway, playing a soft melody. He ended it an extended and dramatic flourish on his drum kit to climax the group’s dramatic rendition of John Coltrane’s 1963 civil-rights eulogy “Alabama.”

It was a sublime thirty minutes of sensual, exploratory interplay that was as exultant as it was daring. DeJohnette’s sterling reputation precedes him by five decades of course, and his powerful and unique style has not dimmed with the years: the audience got the full complement of his tom-tom smashes, cymbal washes and the geometric patterns and rolls that never seem to land in the same place twice. Before this night I had not been familiar with Matt Garrison (who is also DeJohnette’s godson); he was the group’s link to our technological present. He is an exceptionally nimble player, even a little show-offy a la Jaco Pastorius. His bass guitar was fed into any number of effects thru his onstage laptop and his loops and overlays were a continual source of enjoyment.


Here’s a great 9-minute piece from 2016, promoting the release of the trio’s “In Movement” album but also showing the deep inter-generational connections that has made this project so special. Nice interviews and good snippets of the album, which is not up on YouTube. So buy it!

It was Ravi Coltrane who was the evening’s wild card. He was the only of the three that I had seen live before, as part of an ace quintet led by another John Coltrane alumnus: pianist McCoy Tyner, the only one of that classic quartet that is still with us. I knew Ravi (who looks just like the old man) to be a talented but somewhat subdued saxophonist, as if he were careful not to be seen mimicking his father’s outsized legacy. But all that went out the two-story window that night and he channeled his dad’s intense and passionate playing style that always emanated from a deep spiritual center. Switching throughout the night between tenor, soprano and sopranino, he shined on “In Movement,” gliding over the tune’s metronomic rhythm and he impressively cut loose on “Cop-Out,” the set’s one foray into traditional up-tempo bebop.

Ravi Coltrane (left) performing with Matthew Garrison (center) and Jack DeJohnette (right) in October. Coltrane is nominated for Best Improvised Jazz Solo at the 2017 Grammy Awards for the title track from In Movement, recorded with Garrison and DeJohnette

The cathartic applause by the rather upscale audience (big plus: no up-raised smart phones!) at the end of the first set said a lot about the impact of this music. We repaired to the 3rd floor reception room for drinks and a chance to catch our collective breath. Early on after the intermission, as darkness descended on the Back Harbor backdrop, came another musical peak in an evening filled with them. The trio started into the ethereal Miles Davis ballad “Blue in Green,” from his landmark album Kind of Blue, on which John Coltrane first gained widespread recognition. Here, with DeJohnette back on piano, the band magnified the popular original with a new fluid arrangement over which Ravi blew a magnificently expressive solo on soprano sax, honoring his father’s presence (on tenor sax) from the 1959 original recording. The room seemed to be in a state of suspended animation—to the point where, for a few precious out-of-body moments, I felt I was watching John Coltrane himself (what did they put in my beer?).

After I was eased off the wing of a musical angel and back into my seat the show went on in a slightly more earthbound manner. Matt Garrison got a solo showcase that was giddy with virtuosic excitement and Jack ended the proceedings with a definitive smack on his snare drum that put a full-stop exclamation point on an enchanting ride that had to end somewhere. As the trio stood at center stage, the septuagenarian leader flanked by his two surrogate sons gracefully acknowledging the standing ovation, the whole spirit of this night came together in a late-breaking attestation to the everlasting virtue of both music and family. Not necessarily just kinfolk of course, but as DeJohnette put it in the liner notes to the group’s 2016 album In Movement, “we are connected at a very high and extremely personal level.” And as with all great art, that feeling extends to the beholder of it as well, and to the artist’s contemporaries, too. This is the great paying forward of world culture and is needed now more than ever, in this pitiless planet that grows more uncertain by the day, even hour.

Of course, we all had to walk back into that world after the show, but I tempered that disappointment by picking up In Movement on CD a week later. This is not only a great keepsake of a show that will live well in my memory (yes, their versions of “Blue in Green” and “Alabama” are on it) but for that ineffable spirit I described, of a work that spreads its love around: there are titles like “Lydia” (for DeJohnette’s wife), “Two Jimmys” (Garrison and Hendrix), and “Rashied” for Rashied Ali, Coltrane’s drummer from 1966 until John died the year later (Ravi’s mom, pianist Alice Coltrane, was also in that band). A beautiful album by beautiful people in a time when it is so sorely needed.


A boat’s-eye view of the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport, Mass.