It: Chapter Two

It: Chapter Two
seen @ Squire Great Neck Cinemas, Great Neck, NY

After witnessing so many movie theaters close within the past several years (the latest casualty: the Beekman on the east side of Manhattan), it’s nice to write about a new theater, one that’s independent and affordable! As I mentioned in this month’s links roundup, the staff of Movieworld, formerly in Douglaston, Queens, have found a new home on the other side of the border. The Squire Great Neck Cinemas opened in Great Neck, in Nassau County, back in April—I found out about it a couple of weeks ago—and I went there this week to see It: Chapter Two.

I knew the trip would be much longer than when I would visit Movieworld; indeed, I took two LONG bus rides plus a lot of walking—a short walk to the first bus and a much longer walk after the second bus. All told, it took me around two and a quarter hours to get to the Squire. Movieworld was about a half hour to forty-five minutes less.

It was my first time in Great Neck. It’s a nice neighborhood. Middle Neck Road, the street where the Squire resides, is made up of two and three-story Tudor-style buildings with a variety of shops. The Long Island Rail Road stops there, as does at least one bus. The road was narrow, so traffic didn’t speed everywhere. It seemed racially mixed, but mostly Jewish.

The Squire itself was small but well integrated into the neighborhood, with an old-fashioned marquee, not digital. Inside it looks much like any other multiplex—the previous owners kept it well maintained, from what I could see. The auditorium seats were comfortable and the bathroom was clean. So far, it doesn’t have a distinct identity, like Movieworld did—not just the fact that you had to access it underneath a mall parking lot, but the old school (as in Classic Hollywood) posters and portraits, the neon, the concession stand hub. It’s still kind of generic, but it’s very early. Movieworld had their space for over thirty years.

According to the guy I talked to, attracting crowds on weekends was tricky because many of the Jews in Great Neck are observant, so the crowds on Friday nights and Saturdays aren’t as big as they could be yet, but they’re gonna do things like upgrade the seating and hold contests—I saw some from earlier this summer on their Facebook page—so I expect them to grow into their niche in time.

As for the movie: I never read the Stephen King book, but I know he approved of the changes to accommodate the modern audience. Chapter One didn’t leave a great impression on me, but I thought it was sufficiently scary, and I feel mostly the same way about the second half. It was nice to recognize Freddy from Shazam as part of the kid cast—he better be careful or he’ll be typecast as the cripple kid!

I wouldn’t rule out returning to the Squire, but the journey there is killer. I’m reminded of the even longer trek to the Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers. Both places are worth the trip for different reasons, but I don’t need to visit either one; I still have options closer to home. I just wanted to see the Squire for myself and know that Movieworld’s spirit lives on.

The Squire Great Neck Cinemas

Marty

Marty
TCM viewing

I don’t think it matters who you are or where you’re from; on some level, everybody can relate to Marty: coming up short in certain people’s eyes, feeling pressured to be something you’re not, fearing your luck will never change. If you wanna talk romance, I have a friend in his sixties who got married a few years ago. Sweetest guy you’d ever wanna meet: witty, smart, extremely talented.

When I learned, secondhand, that he was lonely, I wished I could hook him up with someone, but he doesn’t live in the New York area. Several years ago, he began posting pictures of himself and his new girlfriend on Facebook, and I was pleasantly surprised. When they got married, I was thrilled for him, in part because if he could find love at his age, there was hope for me, right? And then I met Virginia and here we are.

Fade to black: Movieworld goes out in style

After 35 years in business, Movieworld said goodbye to Eastern Queens (and Nassau County) yesterday, but not before throwing a sweet party.

Ant-sized links

So Virginia and I spent last Sunday, which was gorgeous, on Governors Island, in New York's East River, near Ellis Island. There was a folk music festival going on, and though we didn't see as much of it as we had planned, what we did see was nice.

She talked me into trying a free yoga class, one of a bunch of smaller events taking place on the island that day. I had never done it before, believing I didn't have the body for it (to put it mildly). Even though I've lost a little weight recently, I'm still convinced I don't have the body for it! She was more experienced, but I think it was still a bit of a challenge for her too. If there weren't little kids taking part, I probably would've been more embarrassed than I already was!

That evening, after dinner, we went to a free screening of Blade Runner at a hotel in Manhattan. She had never seen it and was curious. She liked it a lot. I hadn't seen it in years; looking at it again now, I was struck by how little "action" there was in comparison with today's SF flicks. There's a much bigger emphasis on atmosphere and setting - and of course, so much of it is on real sets, not CGI ones. I can imagine how big a contrast it is to the recent sequel.

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The novel revision is going well, though I've hit a patch in which I'm doing much more rewriting than I had anticipated. I'm cutting stuff but also adding details the previous draft didn't have — more the cause-and-effect type than anything else. I'm more aware of story mechanics: if I want so-and-so to happen, what all must happen first? And how much of that do I need to show?

My critiquers still like the story, though I had to revise a chapter a second time when it received some hard, not harsh, reviews. You think you've written good stuff and you feel good about it, then you're told it doesn't make sense and you're ready to chuck the whole thing: that's fiction writing. Still, I do feel I'm on the right track.

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It would be silly to say I'm taking next week off for the holiday, like I usually do at this time, so I won't say it. I plan to stop by the Movieworld farewell party next week and take pictures, so you'll actually see me again sooner than expected.

In the meantime, your links after the jump:

Movieworld, the jewel of Eastern Queens, to close

From the Facebook page of Movieworld Douglaston, dated June 11:

...The landlord has exercised a clause in the lease that requires us to vacate within 30 days.  We are not closing for any other reason than we are being required to under the terms of our original lease.  A Lowes store will be taking the entire lower level of the shopping center and construction will start right away.... It has been an amazing experience being able to bring movies to all of you.  We encourage everyone to keep going to the movies!

(Thanks to Andrew for the tip)

Man, I hate writing these posts. It seems like I've written too many of them in the not-quite eight years this blog has been active. Some hurt more than others. This isn't that painful, but only because I'm not as familiar with this theater as with others. Still, I feel this loss, too.

Movieworld might have provided the best bargain for first-run films in Queens, if not all of New York: $11 full price for 2D films, $7 matinee before four PM, and $6 all day Wednesdays.

A proudly independent, community-based cinema located near the border of Queens and Nassau County, in Douglaston, MW had been around for over thirty years. At one point, it was operated by UA until 2004. It shut its doors in April 2008, only to reopen two months later with new owners, and it remained local and independent ever since. MW went digital in 2012, and luxury seats were added a year later.

People complained about the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas being located below street level; well, try running a theater located underneath a mall, inside a parking lot! It was a turn-off for me when I first went there, until I stepped inside and saw it was much like other theaters. In addition to the usual movie food for sale, they have a small cafe with a slightly better class of food and drink. It won't make anyone forget the Alamo Drafthouse, but it's a cozy place to wait for your auditorium to seat.

Reading the FB comments gave me a much better sense of what MW meant to the Eastern Queens/Nassau faithful. When MW was threatened with closure in 2017, the fans, like those of the Lincoln Plaza, started a petition to save the theater.

It proved fruitless in February of this year when the local community board voted in favor of bringing in a Lowes on the former site of Macy's, above MW, in order to bring in more business and preserve the mall. The only way Lowes said they could fit, though, was if they also took the space occupied by MW, a claim disputed by the MW defenders. Read more about it here. (Apropos of nothing: I find it very interesting that the debate is compared in this article to a dispute over bike lanes.)

While there are other movie options nearby, such as AMC theaters in Bayside and Fresh Meadows, neither of them are as affordable, nor as diverse (MW also screens Filipino movies from time to time), nor as quirky (you have to admit, its unusual location makes it unlike other cinemas).

I intend to see Incredibles 2 at MW; also, a going-away party is planned for July 2. If I can make it, I'll stop by. MW has said they'll search for a new location, so hope remains alive for now, but like I said, I'm tired of writing these post-mortems, especially for theaters in Queens.

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Movies I've seen at Movieworld:
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Guardians of the Galaxy
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Finding Dory
Wonder Woman
Pacific Rim: Uprising

Ready link one

So here's an editorial Lynn shared with our filmgoing group on Facebook, in which the author eulogizes the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas as a place that brought the Upper West Side community (of Manhattan, that is) together socially. He wants to keep the art-house theater alive, which I agree with, but he suspects the affluent boomers west of Central Park won't bother going to the Angelika or the IFC or the Film Forum because they "notoriously do not go below 59th street [sic] and certainly not below 14th."

I was going to write about how contradictory this attitude is (these people can afford to take an Uber to Houston Street), but then I thought about the Kew Gardens Cinemas here in Queens, and how I'd feel if it went out of business. Like the Lincoln, it specializes in independent cinema for an older, tasteful audience. I don't live in Kew Gardens, but I live close enough to it that I feel like that theater is "mine," in a sense.

Still, I'm a crazy movie fan who will go anywhere for a movie, so I'm the exception. For a quiet, off-the-beaten-path neighborhood like Kew Gardens, I'm convinced the author's statement is much more true. MOMI screens indie films, of course, but really, the Kew is the place in all of Queens for indie cinema (they have more screens, for one thing), and I can totally see the neighborhood there turn to Netflix in the absence of the Kew much more than the UWS, who still have multiple options (relatively) close at hand, unlike Kew Gardens.

So maybe I am challenging the UWS attitude after all. The closing of the Lincoln is a great tragedy, but they were not the only game in town. I understand the loss of the social atmosphere, but UWS residents aren't the only ones who love indie films, and if they were to take that trip downtown (Google Maps estimates it takes 27 minutes to drive from the site of the Lincoln to the Angelika), they might meet some more.

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I saw The Shape of Water a second time last month, with Sandi. She pointed out something I didn't realize (mild spoiler alert, I guess): the musical sequence late in the movie is an anachronism: the dance is a homage to an Astaire/Rogers movie (I forget which) from the 30s, but the song is from the 40s. You probably knew that already, but I didn't, so let me have this moment, okay?

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Still time to get in on the Time Travel Blogathon with Ruth and me next weekend. We've got a terrific lineup of films on tap, so I'm looking forward to this one a lot.

The Queens World Film Festival is this month; if you're in town, do yourself a favor and stop by for a night or two if you can.

Links after the jump.

More NYC theaters facing the wrecking ball

...Landmark — which opened in 2001 in the 1898 building that had been a Yiddish vaudeville house — struggled to keep up with rising rents and hoped to reinvent itself a few years back as a dining destination like Williamsburg’s Nitehawk Cinema. Locals, however, fought those plans, with Community Board 3 rejecting the theater’s liquor license application.The art house theater's lease ends January 2018, and it will likely be pushed out, though, Pagoda said he'd be open to negotiating with Landmark.

I've been writing way too much lately about movie theaters in the New York metropolitan area dying off. When they are replaced, they're usually pricey Alamo Drafthouse-style luxury joints in Manhattan (and occasionally Brooklyn). I'm thinking of possibly putting together a guide evaluating the best first-run theaters in the other four boroughs (maybe beyond) and where they are, while we still have them. For now, here's the last rites for the latest batch:

- Landmark Sunshine. While it's a good theater, it's on Houston Street, which is well-serviced by the Angelika and the Film Forum, not to mention the IFC Center a few blocks north on Sixth Avenue, and even some newer venues across the river in Williamsburg, almost all of them catering to the same indy crowd. Sunshine had a decent run, given that heavy competition, but I tend to think this won't be a great loss. Moviegoers on the Lower East Side are still spoilt for choice.
What I saw there: 127 Hours, The Room, The Contender


RKO Keith's

- RKO Keith's. I recently had a nice Twitter conversation about the Keith's with Debbie from Moon in Gemini. Turns out she's from Flushing, though she doesn't live in NYC anymore. It's hard to believe such a primo piece of real estate, in a busy part of Queens, has lain fallow for over thirty years (!), but now they got somebody who wants to turn it into condos. Yay. From the looks of the design, it'll be the tallest building east of CitiField. Can't say I care for the way this will change the character of the neighborhood, but then, my Flushing vanished with the Keith's.
What I saw there: Rocky IV

- Brooklyn Heights Cinema. Never made it there. As I recall, it was a fairly small venue. It would've benefited greatly from the sprucing up of the surrounding area.

- Pavilion Theater. If Nitehawk Cinemas is indeed expanding south from Williamsburg to Park Slope, that will be the best thing to happen to this perpetually shat-upon theater. I never felt bedbugs in any of the times I went there, though there's no denying it had (has?) a run-down feeling about it. The last time I was there, a few years ago, they were in the middle of some renovations. This is an area starving for a quality theater. The Brooklyn Academy of Music is great for the art-house crowd, but there should be a place for the blockbusters east of Court Street. If only the renovated Kings Theater showed movies.
What I saw there: Sin City, Precious, The Lost World

Center Cinemas

- Sunnyside Center Cinemas. Never liked this place much. The seats were tiny, the décor threadbare. It was in a great location, however: right under the 7 train in a growing neighborhood. Its sister theater in Kew Gardens Hills (not to be confused with Kew Gardens) is still hanging in there, perhaps because it's in a part of town in no danger of gentrifying anytime soon. With a little love and investment, this could've been another Cinemart. Sunnysiders probably schlep to the UA Kaufman in Astoria now.
What I saw there: The Town, Drive, The Hunger Games

- Ridgewood Theater. Before my time. I don't go to this part of town often. I imagine if you live in Ridgewood, you have to go all the way to Williamsburg for a movie.

Maybe this only amounts to changing deck chairs on the Titanic - Netflix, VOD and streaming video are as popular as ever - but I still believe in the communal experience that comes from seeing movies in theaters. I'm not ready to let that go yet.

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Related:
What if more theaters were non-profit?
To save the drive-in, you must destroy it
My dream movie theater

A Bronx Tale

A Bronx Tale
Showtime viewing

I don't know much about the Boogie Down Bronx. I hardly ever go there, for one thing. To get there, I'd have to either go through Manhattan or take a really long bus ride. Even if I were to go there, I wouldn't know where to go besides the spots everyone knows: the Zoo, Y-nk-- Stadium, the Botanical Gardens.

I don't have many friends who live there, either. Andi does. John used to live there, before I met him in high school. Jen is from there, too. In fact, when she first met her husband Alex, it was a bonding thing for them. He's also from the Bronx, and he's very proud of his old neighborhood.

City Island is considered part of the Bronx. You may remember I was part of a gallery exhibit there several years ago. It's nice. It's kinda like a New England fishing town. A few hours there and you can easily forget you're still in New York City. They have a great ice cream parlor, too. I wouldn't want to live there, though. It's a bit too far away from the city proper for my taste.

The Bronx of A Bronx Tale is of the 60s. I like that Robert De Niro and Chazz Palminteri didn't sugarcoat the period. They present the bad alongside the good. Sonny may be a mobster, a killer of men, but he cares for Calogero, in his own way. Cee's father Lorenzo may try to do right by his son, but he's not exactly comfortable with Cee dating Jane, a black girl.

Cee has to find a middle ground between these two extremes, one that works for him. In the end, he does, but at a price. Such ambiguous characters strengthen this story and make it compelling to watch.

I knew Chazz wrote the play upon which the movie, and subsequent Broadway musical, is based. I suspected it was semi-autobiographical. I did not know it was a one-man show. The idea of such performances amaze me. Does the performer converse with themselves on stage, or is it a series of extended monologues, or what? I suppose it depends on who does it and how. I wouldn't know how to write something like that. Chazz, apparently, did it without any playwriting experience. That's impressive.

De Niro has only directed one other film in his long and celebrated career, the 2006 CIA thriller The Good Shepherd. That strikes me as a bit surprising; given the caliber of directors he's worked with, plus his familiarity with the stage, he strikes me as the kind of actor who would make a good director. He is credited as co-director (with Jerry Zaks) of the Bronx Tale musical. If this interview is any indication, though, his contributions were minimal.

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
seen @ Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, New York NY

I noticed the change in New York very quickly, days after I returned from living in Columbus. I took the subway to Williamsburg. I had worked in that neighborhood for over two years, and I was aware of its growing status as the new cool place to live. When I stepped outside, I noticed something right away: an increased presence of bicyclists. Not just for sport, either, but regular people too, mostly young, their bikes chained to racks in large clusters.

That wasn't all. I had heard talk about how Times Square had been drastically reconfigured. Suddenly there was all this room for people to walk around. I couldn't believe my ears. Times Square was notorious for its traffic gridlock and the way people were overstuffed onto the sidewalks. I went there, though, and I saw it for myself. Broadway and Seventh Avenues had been streamlined - several blocks of Broadway were closed to traffic - and there was all this space in the streets for people to loiter. There were actually beach chairs scattered about the area! I had to laugh.

Like many New Yorkers, I had always believed traffic - whether it meant bumper-to-bumper cars clogging the roads, making travel difficult at best, or the other extreme, cars going too fast, injuring or even killing pedestrians - was an intractable fact of city life to be struggled against, without any real solution. Living in Columbus, a much smaller town without 24/7 public transit, forced me to get around on a bike. I viewed traffic from a much different perspective, to say the least.

It also made me aware, for the first time, of the value of streets. I associated with other bicyclists. Through them, I understood cars have had a monopoly on streets for decades, here in America and around the world. I learned it doesn't have to stay that way. It wasn't until I returned to New York, though, that I saw that potential for changing the status quo begin to be fulfilled. In many ways, we have Jane Jacobs to thank for that.

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City documents not only the life and work of the journalist, author and activist, it diagrams the history of the changes the automobile wrought upon city streets and neighborhoods everywhere, as well as how and why they need to be opposed.

The film quotes liberally from Jacobs' game-changing 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Through simple observation, Jacobs argued that neighborhoods viewed as "slums" by some have the elements - variety of businesses, day and night; density of housing; people constantly on the street, aware of each other's presence - necessary for growth, an idea that flew in the face of the wave of "urban renewal," i.e., the tearing down of neighborhoods, sweeping the city at the time, led by Jacobs' nemesis, city planner Robert Moses.

Robert Moses

The film goes into the epic battle between Jacobs, favoring people and neighborhoods, and Moses, the champion of autocentrism and wide, long highways - over the future of New York's development. Moses is regarded as a bad guy now, but the truth is, he did a lot for New York: building bridges, beaches, pools and yes, housing. The high-rise I live in was built by Moses.

It was more the way high-rises were made that was the problem: isolated from the surrounding streets, inefficient use of space, discouraging the spontaneity Jacobs saw out her West Village apartment window. The film goes into the popularity of early 20th century architecture that encouraged these kinds of buildings.

Jacobs' ideas are recognized as valid by many city planners today, but putting them into action - doing things like altering street design to slow speeding cars; reconfiguring streets to allow for other means of travel, including bikes; building more pedestrian space - means facing vocal opposition from folks who benefit from and prefer the status quo established by cars. Many of them won't give that up without a fight.

Former NYC transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, in her recent book Streetfight, advocates wedding Moses' persistence and gumption to Jacobs' ideals in order to build more equitable streets and livable neighborhoods:

...Retrofitting our cities for the new urban age and achieving Jane Jacobs's vision today will require Moses-like vision and action for building the next generation of city roads, ones that will accommodate pedestrians, bikes and buses safely and not just single-occupancy vehicles with their diminishing returns for our streets.... Reversing the atrophy afflicting our city streets requires a change-based urbanism that creates short-term results - results that can create new expectations and demand for more projects.

I saw Citizen Jane with Vija on Sunday and then went to my weekly writing group. On my way home, I passed by a live concert held within a pedestrian plaza in Jackson Heights, built several years ago. At the time, the local businesses were vehemently against it, fearing a loss of revenue from the closing of a single block of a street and the rerouting of a bus to facilitate this new open space. For awhile, it looked like the plaza might not survive.

Sunday night, I saw it packed with people, sitting inside and standing all around the perimeter, with a small group near the stage, children as well as adults, dancing to the music. This is far from the first time I've seen the plaza so busy, but it was the first time I saw such a festive atmosphere so early in the season. Imagine how it'll get come the summer!

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Related:
Streetfilms charts the path towards safer streets
Why does car-free = loser in movies and TV?
Woody v. bike lanes: dawn of ignorance

The Talk of the Town

The Talk of the Town
seen @ Greater Astoria Historical Society, Astoria, Queens NY

I've written about a number of George Stevens movies here, but I haven't talked much about the man himself. Thanks to Mark Harris' book Five Came Back, we know Stevens was one of several prominent Hollywood directors who documented World War 2.

He chose to go to war. He enlisted after completing The More The Merrier in 1943 and considered himself retired from film at 38. The things he saw in battle changed him profoundly. His post-war films, as a result, were more somber and reflectful than his fluffier pre-war work. To quote Harris in Five:

...Stevens hoped, more than anything, to find a project that reflected his changed understanding of the world. "Our films should tell the truth and not pat us on the back," he said that year [1946]. Otherwise, he asked, "isn't there the slight chance that we might be revealing America as it is not? Would that be encouraging us in our delusions about ourselves?"

He had already begun to take a step in that direction in 1942 when he made The Talk of the Town. Cary Grant is a political activist framed for arson. During his trial, he escapes and hides out at childhood pal Jean Arthur's place, but she's renting it out for the summer to law professor Ronald Colman. Eventually, Grant and Arthur conspire to get Colman involved in Grant's case to clear his name, as well as to learn more about the world beyond his law books.

There's a very Capraesque quality to the story, in which themes of the dangers of demagoguery and mob justice abound in what's a romantic comedy at heart. Stevens and Capra were colleagues at Columbia, so perhaps that's unsurprising.

Stevens was notorious for his taciturn nature on the set, yet he also drove his actors to plumb the depths of their talent. A quote from him in Five sums it up: "I have often humbled actors, creating stories that will bring a kind of humility out of them, rather than letting them come forth on the screen in their established aura." That explains Grant's Oscar-nominated performance in Penny Serenade. In Talk, he's cast again in an unexpected role, that of a political agitator, verbally jousting with Colman at first before befriending him. Arthur is once again at her lovable, scatterbrained best, but over a decade later, Stevens would get a gentle, touching dramatic performance out of her in Shane.

I saw Talk with Sandi last Saturday at the Greater Astoria Historical Society, an organization devoted to chronicling and preserving the long history of Astoria and the surrounding neighborhoods. They also show old movies from time to time. Their offices include a gallery filled with photos, assorted memorabilia and artifacts from the area. Astoria was settled in 1659, so there's plenty of history to explore. I know the Society mostly through my friend Rich, who's a staff member. He was there briefly. We talked for a bit. I've gone on guided tours led by him through parts of Astoria. 

Lately, Sandi has been paying attention to the treatment of servants in old Hollywood movies. Rex Ingram, the head demon in Cabin in the Sky, plays Colman's valet, whom Colman almost treats as an equal, asking him advice on women and such. Ingram gets strangely emotional when, at one point, Colman shaves his beard, which Grant and Arthur mock as a sign of fuddy-duddy-ness and intellectual intransigence. Stevens gives Ingram a long close-up, in fact. Sandi was unsure whether or not his tears were meant as comedy. Was he sad or happy for Colman? I was unsure myself. I would've guessed it was meant as humor, but it didn't seem to play that way. Odd moment.

Afterwards, we met and had coffee with the only other person to attend the screening (who stayed, anyway), an old Romanian woman named Cleopatra, if you can believe that. She was nice. She's into fitness. She practices yoga and tai chi. I went back with Sandi to her place, we had dinner and watched Doctor Who.

Finding Nemo/Finding Dory

Finding Nemo
seen @ Fort Greene Park, Fort Greene, Brooklyn NY

Finding Dory
seen @ Movieworld, Douglaston, Queens

It had been a long time since I had last seen Finding Nemo, and with the sequel, Finding Dory, due soon, I figured it was a good time to revisit this film. The Alamo Drafthouse sponsored the outdoor screening of the former at Fort Greene Park, which made sense, since the theater chain is opening a new location a short distance away in the downtown Brooklyn area.

I've written about Fort Greene before, but not about its park. It's largish; its most distinctive feature being the great column at the top, the Prison Ship Martyr's Monument, a Revolutionary War memorial standing 149 feet high. The park is basically one big hill, and it is steep! Scaling the paths leading upward to the top sometimes reminds me of the summer camp I worked at where once, our bunk was atop a similarly steep hill which we had to traverse every day. I suppose the view from high above is worth the effort, but most of the time I don't need to enjoy the view that much. Otherwise, it's a very nice park.

The Witness

The Witness
seen @ IFC Center, New York NY

I don't consider Kew Gardens "my" neighborhood, but it's one of the parts of Queens I like most, and within which I feel comfortable. A big reason why is the presence of the Kew Gardens Cinemas, which I've written about here lots of times, but there are other reasons: places to eat, parks, the nice houses. Yet for over half a century, this neighborhood has had to live with the memory of not only a brutal murder committed there, but a reputation for apathy that may not be entirely earned.

I learned about the murder of Kitty Genovese through pop culture. There's a chapter in the famous graphic novel Watchmen which goes into the origin of the sociopathic antihero Rorschach. One of the reasons he provides for becoming a masked vigilante was shame over her story: as reported in 1964 by the New York Times, Genovese was attacked, raped and killed outside her Kew Gardens apartment late at night. 38 people allegedly saw or heard what was going on, but did nothing to prevent it happening. Within the context of the fictional superhero tale, I didn't recognize this as a piece of real-life history when I first read the book, and I was too young to even know about it.

Over time, I learned it was all too real, but it wasn't until recently that I was able to process it as something that happened in a part of town I knew. In the 2014 book Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World's Fair and the Transformation of America by Joseph Tirella, a chapter is devoted to the slaying, which took place as Queens was preparing to put on a World's Fair that would put it in the international spotlight. Queens was put in a spotlight, all right, but not the kind it expected:

...Citizens, clergy, politicians, journalists and psychiatrists offered numerous opinions in an attempt to explain the horrible crime, and the larger issues it invoked. President (Lyndon) Johnson mentioned it on a radio address, as the murder of Genovese quickly became a symbol of all that was wrong with America's cities. The silence of those thirty-eight witnesses would be debated for decades to come; sociologists even gave a name to this new disease that was infecting urban America: Genovese syndrome.

Now comes a new documentary, The Witness, which looks at the murder through the prism of the surviving Genovese family members, specifically Kitty's younger brother Bill, who is the film's narrative center. Driven by a need to understand what really happened that night in 1964, when he was a teenager, we follow him as he examines old police records, visits the Kew Gardens street where it happened, as well as Kitty's old apartment, and talks to many people associated with Kitty and her death, including other siblings, police, lawyers, journalists, co-workers, her former roommate, the son of the killer, and most of all, Kitty's former neighbors, who may or may not have been among the infamous 38. We learn that the story of the 38 might have been an exaggeration, certain aspects of the story went unreported, and the story itself went unchallenged at the time.

Bill Genovese, Kitty's brother

I either hang out or pass through Kew Gardens a fair amount, mainly because of the movie theater. The neighborhood has become quite familiar to me. In my mind, it's difficult, bordering on impossible, to imagine something like this, an event the whole world knows about by now, taking place on a street I've walked up and down countless times. If you go to Austin Street now, there's no indication of what occurred that night, not that any should be expected. Other than the Long Island Railroad trains passing through every so often, it's a quiet community - not as diverse as Jackson Heights or as gentrified as Long Island City, but it's okay.

The Witness showed footage of Kew Gardens from the time of the murder, and I was amazed to not only see the neighborhood as it was over fifty years ago, but to see Kitty Genovese within it. The portrait the film paints of her is of a cute, lively, fun-loving young woman who was a cut-up around her friends and a confidant to her little brother Bill. I can easily imagine her as a friend.

Winston Moseley, Kitty's killer

There's a scene late in the movie where we see an actress, on Austin Street late at night, re-create Kitty's last moments, with Bill watching. When asked why he arranged to have that done, he cited his experience in Vietnam as an impetus. His fellow soldiers were there to save him when he got his legs blown off, but no one was there for his sister when she died. The reenactment was a kind of catharsis, to let Kitty's spirit know he is there for her. I suppose we all have our own ways of dealing with grief.

The Endless Summer

The Beach Party Blogathon is devoted to the grooviest and swingingest beach-related movies around, hosted by Speakeasy and Silver Screenings. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the link at Speakeasy.

The Endless Summer
Netflix stream viewing

I've never had any great interest in surfing. When I think of the beach, I'm reminded of my days in summer camp as a child, and we did a whole lot more splashing around and dunking each other than we did surfing. I vaguely recall experimenting with a boogie board once or twice.

I learned the hard way that swimming in a beach is nothing like swimming in a pool, and the difference, obviously, is in the waves. Not that I'm that great a swimmer to begin with, but at least with a pool, the conditions are much more controlled and predictable, and swimming always felt more relaxed and natural there, not like on a beach, where the waves can do anything - and to be honest, I still find the waves to be a little scary sometimes.

I remember being envious of the counselors who would go further out into the waves than we campers. At this one day camp, whenever we'd go to the beach, the counselors would form a "horseshoe" perimeter in the water within which we would have to stay, and the counselor who was the best swimmer (I think it was always the same guy; not sure) would be in the center, the farthest out from the shore. It would be a challenge for us to swim out to him and try to mess with him in some way.

I live near Rockaway Beach, and in recent years I've gone out there in the summer to see the surfers. I wasn't even aware they had a surfing scene. Whenever I used to go out to the Rockaways, I always went to Riis Park, which was much further down the peninsula. (I remember the beach there as always having big waves, in my mind, anyway.) A few years ago, however, I went to Rockaway Beach and was pleasantly surprised to see surfers doing their thing. I don't recall seeing any spectacular moves, but I'm not exactly an expert on the subject. Everything they did looked amazing to me.

Coney Island, by contrast, is a place where I almost never see much in the way of surfers. Every time I go out there, I see way more swimmers, especially kids. Maybe the waves aren't conducive for hanging ten. Maybe it's not allowed down there. Don't know. [UPDATE 6.11.15: A subsequent visit to Coney after writing this, plus confirmation from John, leads me to conclude it's the former.]

It may be that no other film captures the terrifying beauty and exhilaration of surfing better than The Endless Summer, a documentary from 1966 that follows two California surfers as they travel around the world in search of the so-called "perfect wave." Once again, I prevailed upon the Netflix account of my pals John and Sue to watch this one, which is available as a stream. Over burgers and chips, we watched it at their place and got a great kick out of it.

Director, writer, co-producer, cinematographer and editor Bruce Brown follows two surfers, Mike Hynson and Robert August, all over the world and films them taking on the waves in a wide variety of locations, from California to Africa to Australia to New Zealand and Hawaii. A surfer himself, Brown's entire film career has been devoted to the sport, ever since he took 8mm shorts of California surfers while in the Navy in the early 50s. He taught himself how to make movies from a book.

Summer was made on a budget of $50,000 and was turned down by Hollywood. A two-week screening in Wichita, Kansas was a huge success, however, and Brown followed it up with a year-long run in New York, and distributor Monterey Media/Cinema V picked it up. It would gross $5 million domestic and $20 million worldwide.

The cinematography is incredible. We see Mike and Robert hanging ten from multiple angles, and Brown even gets a few subjective shots from a camera strapped to a board while it's in motion in the water! They need to be seen to be believed. John had made the point that while the average person could conceivably take shots like these today thanks to the progression of modern technology, they must have looked strikingly innovative in 1966, a time when Frankie-and-Annette beach party movies were the apex of beach-related cinema, and Jaws was still nine years away. 

Even today, it's thrilling to watch. The skill Mike and Robert, as well as the surfer friends they make during their travels, have in taming the waves is amazing enough, but we also see the majesty and power of the waves themselves. We see lesser surfers getting wiped out, their boards flying in all directions as they escape with their lives. We watch breathlessly as the bigger waves carry the surfers higher and higher up the crest until they tumble over the top, or encircle the surfers within a tunnel of water that quickly closes behind them. It's man versus nature at its most primal.

Summer is not without its flaws. Seeing Mike and Robert, two white guys, coming to African countries like Ghana and Nigeria and teaching the natives how to surf can't help but smack of imperialism to a certain extent, and John, Sue and I were gob-smacked at seeing them in South Africa, apparently completely ignorant of what was going on down there at the time with apartheid and Nelson Mandela. Maybe Americans were too busy fretting about Vietnam to know much about South Africa in 1966 (and indeed, traveling around the world to surf on unfamiliar shores must have seemed like a great away to avoid the draft!), but in hindsight, it's extremely difficult to watch our protagonists interact with white South African surfers who probably benefited directly from the apartheid system, even if they didn't contribute to it, and not think about such things.

It would've been nice to have seen Mike and Robert talk about this, and many other things, but here we come up against my biggest problem with Summer: Brown's narrative, which dominates the entire film. He takes a light-handed, even silly at times, approach to his narration (though it comes across as a bit racially insensitive in some scenes in Africa), but he even puts words in the mouths of Mike and Robert - for humorous purposes, yeah, but it struck me as overkill. Even documentary filmmaker chatterboxes like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock let their subjects speak for themselves, but not Brown. Also, in some surfing sequences, he really should just shut up and let the power of the waves and the skill of the surfers do the talking.

The soundtrack is put together by a band called The Sandals, and as you would imagine, there's plenty of catchy surf-rock instrumental tunes. The theme song is very mellow, the kinda tune you could imagine listening to as the sun goes down on the horizon after a long day of surfing, and you're lying there on the sand, lounging under an umbrella, maybe with a lemonade in your hand. You can practically hear the waves breaking on the shore. The Endless Summer, dated as it may be, will make a surf fan out of you for sure if you're not one already.

QWFF 2015 Day 4: And then it snowed

It snowed. On the first day of spring, it snowed. Actually, it wasn't as terrible as it sounds; it's more the timing, I think, that has bothered everybody. And can you blame us? This winter wasn't as brutal as last winter, but it felt almost as bad, and for a brief moment, it looked as if we had finally put it behind us. It's like the killers in horror movies - never count 'em out until you're absolutely sure they're out! (Sometimes not even then.)

I came to P.S. 69, the third venue for the Queens World Film Festival, all the way from Bayside, which is far to the north and east. I thought the weather might impede traffic somehow, and indeed I had to wait awhile for a bus, but once it came, the ride was fairly quick. The weather didn't stop the great big crowd from coming - lotsa friends and family of the filmmakers who were in the house last night.

P.S. 69 in the snow

- Comic Book Heaven. The last days of a neighborhood comic book shop and its cantankerous octogenarian owner. Speaking as someone who used to work in a comic book shop a lot like the one depicted in this short documentary, I have to say that it's not surprising at all that it's out of business. It looked like little more than a hole in the wall, and I counted a grand total of one female customer and zero kids. It appeared as if the merchandise was mostly of the long underwear variety, and I couldn't tell if there were any trade paperbacks (collected editions of monthly issues).

Folks, comics were my life for a long time, so believe me when I say that that character on The Simpsons may be an exaggeration, but he is heavily based on reality, and he should not be any kind of role model when it comes to running an actual comic shop. I can only go by what I saw in the doc, and I concede that I may not have gotten the complete picture (it was only 12 minutes long), but what I saw was an owner who wasn't making any concerted effort to bring in more than just adult white men as customers, and for too many years, guys like him were not rare at all.

As a film, however, this was good. I can see why director EJ McLeavey-Fisher chose his subject. Joe Leisner makes for good sound bites, and his crankiness played very well to the crowd I saw this with. Hell, I laughed a few times, too. The film was shot and edited well, made nice use of the score. As a film, this works... but I only wish that the subject matter was someone who didn't perpetuate the worst stereotypes involved with comic book retail.

- Old Days. Aging rock band The Atomik Age Project reminisces about its glory days. They sound like a good band, in that Eddie and the Cruisers, nostalgia-rock vein, but the entirety of this short consisted of a couple of very brief talking head interviews and a music video. That's it. I learned more about them from this webpage than from this short.

Some of the filmmakers (and subjects) at P.S. 69 last night

- As You Pass By. Doc about a florist in an unusual part of town: next to a cemetery and under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The location of the business is as much an element in this short as the business itself: there are a number of shots of the oppressive-looking ceiling of the BQE covering the wide street, people on the tiny sidewalk, car traffic, etc., and this is apparently part of what will become a bigger piece about the BQE and its effect on those who live and work in its vicinity. If this film is any indication, that's something I'd like to see.

- The Walk. Boy whose father recently died befriends an old man who just wants to go for walks. I expected some kind of M. Night Shyamalan-type twist to this story, but it was exactly what it was on the surface - and I'm grateful for that.

- Gasper & Son. A father-and-son neon-making business. Neon lights have been a huge part of the visual iconography of New York for generations, but according to this doc, it's a dying art, and seeing how neon is made was pretty cool, as was the family dynamic at the heart of this story.

More pics at the Tumblr page.

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Previously:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3