Lego links

The giant-sized special edition of The Dark Pages with my article on Anthony Mann & John Alton is available now. I have my hard copy edition, and I gotta say, I'm impressed with the look of it.

Back in the 90s, I had a passing interest in zines, which coincided with my initial steps into self-publishing comics. I remember trying to market my comics amongst the zine crowd, but it didn't work out; zines are a whole different animal.

One would think zines were old hat in the digital age, but TDP is one of the finest looking ones I've come across in a long time: simple, but well laid out, on nice paper, with every square inch utilized, and a topic, film noir, with a wide and devoted audience. It's like reading all the entries in a blogathon in one collection.

Karen and her staff have a quality product here, and I'm pleased to have been a part of it.

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Speaking of blogathons, if you want in on the Richard Matheson Blogathon, hosted by myself and Debbie from Moon in Gemini (who is also part of the special TDP issue), be sure to e-mail me at ratzo318 (at) yahoo (dot) com or post in the comments and I'll put you on the list. March 9-10 is when it goes down.

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Here's more pushback against Whoopi Goldberg's anti-bike diatribe from weeks ago. Long-time readers of this blog know my feelings about biking, and the need for livable streets in general. It's not that cars are unimportant; it's just that they dominate our streets at the expense of other forms of transportation, and as a result, they've become as great a threat to human safety as guns, if not more so. We shouldn't tolerate it anymore.

More after the jump.

Whoopi vs. bike lanes: If Tenth Avenue could talk

"You’ve built 83 miles of protected bike lanes, okay. And I like bikes, I like people who ride, but I don’t think you understand the impact of taking something like 10th Avenue, which is six lanes down to two-and-a-half, particularly when you have a winter storm and you can’t move—none of that is movable. So you can’t get—nothing flows."

Aargh. For all the progress New York, and indeed, America, is making towards accepting livable streets as a goal worth pursuing, something new comes along to mess it all up again — in some cases, by people who should know better!

Recently, the city had prepared to shut down a major subway tunnel in desperate need of repairs for fifteen months — a plan that has now been put on hold by the governor — but there have also been contingency plans for serving the displaced subway riders in which several streets would be rearranged to accommodate bike lanes and faster buses.

A lawyer representing a coterie of limousine liberals has led a vocal opposition to these plans, despite his credentials as a "progressive."

Now this: another alleged progressive speaks out against measures — bike and bus lanes as a means towards social and economic justice — every left-winger should be applauding. (Whoopi's current solution: movable bike lanes.)

But I don't want to get too political here. Instead, I'll counter Whoopi's uninformed remarks with opposing testimonies from other TV and movie stars, since no one will listen to you in this country unless you're famous, it seems:

"I was pretty fast on the bike... I actually had fun on the bike." - Jennifer Aniston

"...thank you for the many of you who wanted to follow me [online]... I totally get inspiration from all of you when I get on that bike." - Hugh Jackman

"...There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go." - David Byrne, who wrote a book about biking

"Jennifer and I mix it up. We like to lift, and we enjoy bike riding." - Alex Rodriguez on himself and Jennifer Lopez

"...cycling is freedom. It's fun. It's community. It recharges your soul." - Patrick Dempsey, who hosts a bike run

And if you're still unconvinced about the benefits of bike riding, take it from me: give it a try, just once. You don't need to wear spandex, you don't need some fancy, tricked out two-wheeler like they use in the Tour de France, and if you're careful, you don't even need a helmet. You might see the world in a whole new way.

Hollywood Rides a Bike

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Also:

Woody vs. bike lanes

Menashe

Menashe
seen @ Lincoln Plaza Cinema, New York NY

Hang around Brooklyn long enough and you'll see some Hasidic Jews. Granted, they don't stray far from their pocket neighborhoods, but you can run into a few in public places like parks, beaches or the subway. The L train goes through their part of town, for example.

How isolated are they from the rest of New York City? When the city wanted to install a bike lane through South Williamsburg several years ago, the locals opposed it, in part, because they objected to the sight of women in shorts and tank tops biking through their neighborhood. (Hasidic women tend to dress very conservatively.) Later, when the city's bike share program expanded throughout North Brooklyn, there was a hole in the network the size of South Williamsburg.

Now, some people might notice the inconsistency in a neighborhood that relies on the same basic utilities - gas, electricity, water, etc. - as the rest of the five boroughs, yet is allowed to dictate how the city can use its streets that run through their neck of the woods, streets built, cleaned and maintained by the city... but those people don't work for the Mayor's Office or the Department of Transportation.

Still, the Hasidim are not so different from the rest of us in the ways that count. Menashe is a film about a single father fighting for custody of his young son. (In that respect, it reminded me a lot of Kramer vs. Kramer.) Is he a drunkard or a junkie? Nope. Is he irresponsible? The man works as a store clerk and hustles to get to work on time and to get his son ready for school. Is he abusive? He adores his son; he reads the Torah with him, takes him to the park and gets him a baby chick to raise at home. So why can't he keep his son?

Simple. He's a widower, and his religion says he has to remarry. Raising a child at home is not supposed to be his responsibility.

Director Joshua Weinstein, who also did the taxi documentary Drivers Wanted, recruited his cast from within the Hasidic community. He shot some exteriors on the down low; not everyone in the neighborhood was thrilled to see a movie being made about their lives. Menashe Lustig is quite good as the father. He is a bit of a misfit within his world, yet he is still a product of it. He never challenges the doctrine that says he has to remarry; he knows the rules, but his love for his son is actually an impediment to following them. Oh, and did I mention this entire movie is in Yiddish, bubbeleh?

I saw this with Vija and Lynn. This was Lynn's suggestion; as soon as I read a review of it, I had a feeling it might be worth seeing. Also with us was Joan, a woman I met not long before I left NYC, back when Vija tried to put together a support group for artists. As I recall, Joan made collages. I remember I used to enjoy giving her a hard time because she claimed to not like the Beatles. (She's old enough to have been around for them.) She's no square, though; she's actually quite kind and pleasant. This was the first time I could recall her seeing a movie with us. I think she liked the film.

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

Fantastic links and where to find them

Things have been going good lately. I've been on a bit of a tear with the novel, which is why I took another week off from here. I had to force myself to break away from it in order to keep the blog going! I feel like I understand my characters better now, especially my female lead. I had been sort of feeling my way through her central conflict for awhile, but then bolt-of-lightning inspiration struck. My scenes are getting longer as a result because I have more to say. I'm still a long way from calling this manuscript finished, though.

Meanwhile, I've also been honing my culinary abilities, such as they are. I got my mother's old crock pot out of mothballs and after at least two decades of inactivity, it still works. I've made a bacon & corn chowder and a chicken parmesan pasta with the crock pot using recipes found on cooking blogs. They both turned out pretty good.

The support from my Facebook friends continues to amaze me. Not the support itself - I've got some terrific friends - but the strong opinions that cooking seems to engender. They say too many cooks spoil the broth, but that hasn't happened to me yet. All the advice I've been getting so far has been useful. My only regret is that I never learned how to cook when I was living in Columbus. I went grocery shopping every week, but almost never for food I could cook (as opposed to heat up in a microwave). I might have saved a fair amount of money if I had!

Three blogathon posts this month, including two in one weekend. I may have a lot of new releases too; it's that time of year. I know I won't be able to see everything, though. I never can. Also, the Alamo Drafthouse has finally opened in Brooklyn. I hope to write about my first movie there very soon.

Also, I wanna send a shout-out and good luck wishes to Ruth from the blog Silver Screenings. She's taking on NaNoWriMo this year. As you probably know, the novel I'm working on was the result of my experience with this annual novel-writing challenge. I think everyone who enjoys writing and wants to push their talent and creativity in strange and unexpected new directions should give it a try. It's not for everyone, but those who attempt it will learn a few new things about themselves and their work. 

Your links:

Le talks about the slapstick tradition in Brazilian cinema.

Paddy, guest blogging at Jacqueline's site, provides a Canadian perspective on American cinema.

Ivan reviews two books about essential genre cinema.

Raquel reviews a restored film noir from Argentinian cinema.

Jennifer strolls through haunted houses in classic horror cinema.

Bring me the head of Christopher Walken!

Robin Williams loved bicycles. (subscription required)

A parent-child relationship examined through the lens of Back to the Future.

Cinematic sex and violence, female edition: a critical discourse. (NSFW)

Finally, in honor of the end of the Obama administration, here's an interview where he talks Star Trek. It has been eight great years. Let's hope the next four are just as good.

Woody v. bike lanes: dawn of ignorance

Upper East Side residents gathered at a church on East 88th Street last night to argue about a revised DOT proposal to paint new bike lanes on one-way streets throughout the neighborhood. Derisive jeers and earnest applause erupted repeatedly throughout the heated meeting inside Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, as cyclists clashed with older residents who deem bike lanes unsafe and unwanted in their neighborhood. 

Among them was director, writer, and actor Woody Allen, who has a home on East 70th Street. Allen, who has never had much love for cyclists in NYC, told us the plans were "unacceptable." 

"None of the streets can accommodate a bike lane in a graceful way," Allen said, arguing that the DOT's plan to add bike lanes to Upper East Side crosstown streets is out of step with the community. "Every street has a good argument why it shouldn't have a lane."

Woody, Woody, Woody, what are we gonna do with you? As a filmmaker, you're a legend: the movies you made in your prime, during the 70s and 80s, remain hilarious and poignant, and some of your recent stuff hasn't been bad either. Beyond that... well...

Leonardo DiCaprio rides a bike!

May being National Bike Month, it's a good time to bring this subject up here. Last week, New York's transportation department released a report which charted the phenomenal growth biking has experienced in this city over the past decade. Biking as a legitimate transportation option is better accepted by the average New Yorker today than even five years ago, but there's still plenty of work yet to be done regarding a tougher matter: changing people's attitudes.

In her new book Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution, former NYC transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan devotes an entire chapter to addressing the complaints of the anti-bike crowd, and points out the real problem that usually goes unrecognized by them:

...Road rage directed at bike riders obscures the underlying design flaws of streets that bring riders, walkers and drivers into conflict in the first place. Bike riding shouldn't be an act of bravery, and transportation leaders should redesign their streets so that they don't depend on armor or surrender to survive.... Designs that protect people who ride bikes reinforce the variety of street uses, making the entire street safer by making people more visible and predictable. If cities really want to deal effectively with bike riders and create safer streets for everyone, they can start by building bike lanes.

The article at the link above links to an earlier interview with Woody in which he claims to be all for more bikers in NYC, but also says, "uncontrolled bike riders are a great hazard." If that's the case, you'd think he'd be in favor of a means to control them. He claims "every street (in the Upper East Side) has a good argument why it shouldn't have a lane." Gee, it would've been nice to have heard those arguments from him, especially given the fact that similar Manhattan streets have done just fine with them.

Angelina Jolie (and her kid) rides a bike!

In his movie Manhattan, Woody says, "All cars in Manhattan should be banned." Given that, one wonders if he feels any outrage over the lives lost over the past decade due to car crashes. Earlier this week, a consortium of families and transportation advocates petitioned Albany to pass a bill that would remove the limit on speed cameras outside schools. Speed cameras have been proven to reduce the number of deaths and injuries due to car crashes, many of which happen to children.

Bike lanes also help reduce speeding because their very presence reduces the size of the street and forces drivers to slow down. One wonders, however, if people like Woody understand that. By no means is he an anomaly: also this week, New York mayor Bill DeBlasio announced the city would go forward with their plan to expand the bike lanes on historically-fatal Queens Boulevard despite a local community board's vote to remove them from the plan. One of the board members even called bikes "missiles on wheels." What does that make cars?

I give Woody props for showing up at his local board meeting, but he, and a lot of other people in this town, still need to get their facts straight about bike lanes, because they're not going away. New Yorkers continue to bike to get around, and one way or another, they're gonna need a safe place to ride.

Cargo bike documentary on Kickstarter

...At once I understood all the stories I was reading of regular folk--some who hadn’t been on a bike in years, getting on a cargo bike and instantly becoming fanatic evangelical advocates, reaching out and befriending every cargo bike lover they could find. They can’t contain their excitement and neither could I. I felt duty-bound to make the cargo bike experience accessible, to show people how easily it can be done, how much sense it makes, how completely ALIVE it makes you feel. 

It was obvious that the rapidly growing network of cargo bike users heard the same call; what if I helped them connect and we tackled this project as a team? I had to try it. Given my knowledge and love of filmmaking, we had to make a film.

I know, I know, everybody and his brother's got a Kickstarter project that's absolutely deserving of your money. I'm sure you've seen plenty of them by now and the last thing you need is one more pitch. Well, this isn't a pitch, necessarily. I just wanna share my thoughts on this particular Kickstarter project - a documentary called Less Car More Go.

As some of you may know, when I lived in Ohio, I got around on a bicycle, though it wasn't a cargo bike. I hadn't planned on doing it; I simply needed a better way to get around than waiting on a bus system that isn't 24-7 and runs sporadically. (I don't drive.) It was one of the best decisions I ever made. If you've never ridden a bike, I don't think I can properly convey the sense of liberation you get from being able to travel in this fashion. It's efficient, yes, but unlike a car, you feel connected to your environment in a much more direct way. You're not surrounded by a great big hunk of metal that has the potential to maim or kill someone if you're not careful.

I don't see that many cargo bikes on a daily basis in New York, but I know there are people here who use them, and frankly, they make sense. They're good for lots of activities from grocery shopping to taking little kids to school to doing laundry - all those little tasks that many people use the car for without even thinking about it. 

When you take the car, though, you gotta worry about parking, about traffic, about gas, etc. I'm not saying ditch the car completely, but why not save it for longer trips instead and avoid all the hassle? And yeah, there are all the environment and health-related reasons to switch to a cargo bike, too, but bottom line, it has the potential to make daily living a little bit easier.

So I wanna see this doc do well. If it interests you at all, click on the link at the top and read all about it. Needless to say, I'll keep an eye on its progress.

QWFF Day 3: Hands across the water

Iconoclastic director Spike Lee recently made some statements about the changing, gentrifying face of New York in general and Brooklyn in particular. Whether or not you think gentrification is a good thing is a separate issue. What had me thinking, especially after writing about the changes to Long Island City and Astoria yesterday, was how this issue relates to Queens. I've lived in both East Elmhurst and now Jamaica; I remember how Queens used to look and I'm familiar with how it looks now, and while I've certainly seen signs of changing demographics, the thought that whites are taking over neighborhoods in Queens at a rate similar to that in Brooklyn doesn't quite jibe with what I see.

Maybe LIC and Astoria (and Ridgewood, to a lesser extent) are becoming more like Park Slope and Williamsburg, in their own little way - and gentrification on a larger scale could sweep through Queens the way it has through Brooklyn one day - but right now, I still see enclaves of broad ethnicity. I can point out Orthodox Jewish and Indian and Chinese neighborhoods on a Queens map. I see pedestrian plazas bringing all kinds of people together in places like Jackson Heights and Corona. If I walk down Roosevelt Avenue long enough, I can hear Spanish, Korean, and Bengali languages spoken and more besides.

QWFF's Don Cato leading the procession of student
filmmakers at the PS 69 film premiere

And at a school like P.S. 69 in Jackson Heights, I can see children of color thriving in a curriculum that lets them explore their creativity through the arts - in particular, film. A major component of the Queens World Film Festival (QWFF) is its Young Filmmakers Program, in which school kids not only get the opportunity to learn how to make films, but they get shown as part of the festival and get treated like big shots for a day.

Yesterday was that day this year. Five films from five groups of fifth graders played at the school, and the atmosphere, while less than a world premiere at Cannes, was more than that of a typical school assembly. There was a delightful little "red carpet" down the center aisle of the auditorium made of construction paper, decorated and autographed by the student filmmakers, who walked down it amidst an audience of their schoolmates, their parents, faculty and others.

Led by Don Cato, in his role as QWFF programmer, the filmmaker mentors for this year - Sharif Sadek, Patti Lowenhaupt, Shelley H. Miller and Richard Calvache - assisted the students in making short films that mirror their lives, exploring themes that reflect their experiences, such as bullying and how to prevent it, or coping with wearing glasses or braces. Yes, there's an "afterschool special" vibe reflected in these shorts, but overall, they're fun to watch, they show the enthusiasm the kids bring to the work, and unlike many adult-made films, they don't try to be anything other than what they are. Katha Cato told me afterwards that she was amazed at how mature the kids looked on the screen, and to a degree, many of them did.

Councilman Daniel Dromm

Among the attendees included City Councilman and former teacher Daniel Dromm, a long-time supporter of QWFF, who was recently appointed chair of New York's Education Committee. After the screening, he assisted Don Kato in handing out certificates of achievement to the student filmmakers, along with CDs of the films.

And in case I didn't make it clear - these are (mostly) students of color: black, Latino, Indian, Asian, as well as white. They dressed up for the occasion (one girl wore a lovely sari), and some of them hammed it up a bit for the iPhone and iPad cameras as they walked down the "red carpet," as kids will do. They seemed pretty proud to be there. A few of them spoke to the audience, basically saying how much they enjoyed the experience of making films and how it changed them, and I have no doubt that this will stay with them, even if they never pick up a camera to shoot a movie again. So maybe gentrification is a thing in the rest of New York, and maybe it's something to be resisted... but here in Queens, diversity is by no means a four-letter word.

Later on yesterday, I headed west to the Secret Theater in LIC and had the place virtually to myself for much of the afternoon as I screened two outstanding feature-length documentaries:

The students receive certificates from Councilman Dromm

The Second Meeting deals with the relationship between a U.S. pilot, Dale Zeiko, and the Serbian officer, Zoltan Deni, who shot his stealth bomber down during the Balkan war in 1999. Both men's lives were changed as a result of the confrontation, and twelve years later, they met again, under much more peaceful, and kinder, circumstances. Both men were soldiers in wartime; they knew the risks that came with their jobs and they knew it was kill or be killed in that situation, but off the battlefield, we see how they were able to find common ground and put the fighting aside for good. It's the kind of tale that makes one wonder: if two men can leave their conflict aside and find peace, why can't two nations? Here's the trailer.

Breakin' LA is not an 80s breakdancing movie, but rather a German film about a group of German bicyclists who explore Los Angeles on their bikes. They take in not just the local biking scene, but aspects of American culture at large; we see them do things like volunteer at a homeless shelter and fire guns at a shooting range. The cinematography is dynamic, as we follow them breezing through the streets from various POV angles and doing biking tricks in parks. We also hear locals talk about the difficulties of biking in such a car-centric city, and how biking has become a thing, not only in LA but around the country. Entertaining and enlightening. Here's the website.

To save the drive-in, you must destroy it

...As a baby boomer, I grew up in the heyday of drive-ins. I remember my parents putting my brother and me in our pajamas and toting us off to the outdoor screen in Paramus, New Jersey (now long gone), where we would usually fall asleep at some point during the program. I can’t forget the garish ads for even more garish-looking refreshments, and the fact that when you looked up a movie’s showtime in the local newspaper, chances are it would say “dusk.” I vividly recall the crackling of the always-inferior portable speakers that hung in our car window, but my strongest association with drive-in movies is the constant presence of mosquitoes. So why should I have any fondness for this once-forward-thinking, now quaint presentation of movies? Call it rose-colored nostalgia, if you like, but it was an experience like no other, a genuine slice of Americana.

Let it be known: if the drive-in were to die tomorrow, I would not shed a tear. I am not a baby boomer, and I do not feel warm and fuzzy and nostalgic about what was a beneficiary of the urban sprawl period of the 50s, where cities became decentralized and America created more and more highways and thoroughfares, cutting through our neighborhoods, spreading us further and further apart, and most of all, making us more and more reliant on cars, which led to greater air pollution, the decaying of our downtowns, increased reliance on foreign oil, et cetera. 

The drive-in is certainly not to blame for all of that, but it did contribute to the mythology, and dare I say, fetishization, of car culture, that "genuine slice of Americana" that Leonard Maltin talks about in the preceding quote. That said, however, I have no desire to see a legitimate movie venue die off, and so I've given the matter of how to keep drive-ins alive some thought. My conclusion: it must die...

... and be reborn. The problem with drive-ins is that they're generally located outside the cities, which means depending on the car to get there. That may not have been a big deal back in the 50s, but in recent years, the effects of urban sprawl are being deeply felt. (Also, studies have shown that there's an increasing demand for transit support on the federal level.) This is obviously a problem that goes far beyond the scope of this post, but to bring it back to drive-ins, if they are to survive, and perhaps, even thrive, there needs to be less of an emphasis on cars as a means to get there. 

The drive-in must be reinvented as an outdoor movie theater, accessible via a variety of methods. It needs to be able to compensate for bad weather. It needs more to offer than a nightly picture show or two. Above all, it needs to foster the kind of community that picture shows specialize in.

- Multimodal transportation options. This is the single most important change drive-ins must make, but implementing it doesn't have to cost a fortune. How about investing in something as simple as a school bus or a van? It could make round trips from the downtown to the drive-in, perhaps stopping at the mall or other, similar locations to and from the drive-in. Charge a small fee to help pay for gas and maintenance and you're good to go. (Half price for seniors, kids 12 and under free?) 

Patrons can still drive to the drive-in, of course, but there needs to be a limited amount of parking space set aside for their cars, and a fee should be charged for the privilege, one slightly higher than the bus fare. I would also encourage carpooling.

Plus, the new drive-in must do everything in their power to encourage bicycling. Provide bike racks, maybe even valet parking. Advertise in bike shops. Offer weekend discounts on admission for bikers. Encourage "bike trains" to the drive-in - basically large groups of bikers traveling together, because biking is safer when one travels in groups. The drive-in could even sell a limited amount of bike helmets, locks and chains, and night lights depending on the demand.

People in the cities need to feel that the drive-in is not so far away and can be easily reached even if one doesn't own a car.

- Pre-show entertainment. If the new drive-in will be asking people to travel out of their way for a movie, it needs to offer a little more than two shows a night. There are lots of "warm-up acts" one can put together, at relatively low cost. It can be as simple as a dance party, maybe with music to match the theme of the evening's movie; or perhaps live music on the weekends (with an extra fee to help pay for the band). It could be games and contests for the kids. Some drive-ins used to have playgrounds; that's an excellent thing to have. It could be a celebrity appearance. It could be practically anything, and it wouldn't have to cost that much (and if it does, you can always charge an extra fee). The point is to provide the patrons with an experience that would justify making the trip out beyond the downtown.

- Outdoor seating and rain protection. Aluminum or wooden bleachers could easily accommodate large crowds, and some manner of tarp can be pitched above them when rain threatens. This will cost a little more, but with the patrons out of their cars, it'll be a necessity one can't do without.

- Cultivating a unique group experience. By watching a movie in your car, surrounded by others doing the same thing, you're isolating yourself from the rest of the audience, and the net result is that you might as well be watching the movie on TV at home - and if that's the case, why bother going out at all?

By getting patrons out of those cars, not only can they re-engage in the natural audience behavior associated with movies (laughter, tears, cheers, etc.), but they can also enjoy the warmth of a summer night. Yes, audience behavior has deteriorated in recent years (texting, cell phone conversations, crying babies, etc.), but as with any indoor venue, proper monitoring by theater staff can make all the difference.

There are other suggestions I could offer, but these specifically address the drive-in experience. Upgrading to a digital projector has, regrettably, become a necessity for showing today's movies, and the fundraising drive mentioned in Maltin's original article is certainly an important part of the effort to keep drive-ins going. Still, I believe this alone is not enough. A modern drive-in must reflect the changes inherent in modern America, and the 1950s model won't do anymore.

Thoughts?

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Related:
My dream movie theater
Could variable ticket-pricing work?

Animal House

National Lampoon's Animal House
last seen @ Central Park Conservancy Film Festival, New York, NY
8.24.12

I went to college here in New York, but I almost went away. There was a school in Rhode Island that I was accepted to, and if not for the costly tuition, I would've gone. Naturally, I liked the idea of spending four years in another part of the country. Still, I'm glad I ended up where I did. School of Visual Arts was good for me; I had some excellent teachers and I made some good friends.

Still, I wonder sometimes what it would've been like to have gone to a school out of the city, where I would've had to have lived on campus. I don't know if I would've joined a fraternity or not. I see it as one of those things that I would've done and regretted later for some reason. Besides, I did my share of partying without belonging to a fraternity.

Animal House is, of course, more than a movie about college hijinks. Like American Graffiti before it, it's a tribute to what we laughingly think of as a "simpler" time. It's still funny, though maybe not quite as funny as I remember it. Mostly I like it, as I'm sure many people do, for John Belushi, and for the amazing comic talent that he had on display. (Apropos of nothing: the site College Humor recently ranked the best college movies and Animal House finished second to Will Ferrell's Old School. Not sure I like that!)

Central Park has been in the news lately on account of reports that bikers have been going too fast on the roads inside the park. A blind marathon runner was hit by a cyclist, which made the front pages of the tabloids. The Daily News in particular has gone to great lengths to present bikers as a menace to society. It's not that they're wrong to report about this, it's more the extreme measures the tabloids (and certain websites) take in order to paint bikers in general in the worst light while routinely ignoring the damage cars do every week. It's frustrating...

...but it had no bearing on the screening last Friday. I ran into my friend Terry while heading to the subway afterwards, and while we were talking she brought up a point about outdoor movies in general that I don't think I've mentioned here: the propensity of some moviegoers to bring a plethora of "fancy" snacks - basically, the kind of stuff you'd get from Whole Foods, like fancy cheese, grapes, crackers made someplace in Europe with different kinds of dip, etc. Maybe it's a New York thing. I don't necessarily think ill of it, but it is kinda funny.

Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY
6.19.12

I was never a Boy Scout or a Cub Scout, but I did have my share of overnight camp-outs while attending summer day camp. To hear my mother tell it, the reason she never sent me to sleepaway camp is because she knew I'd get homesick. Maybe that was true... but even at day camp, I got to experience overnight camping on a number of occasions. I think I still have my sleeping bag, but I'm not sure and I don't feel like looking for it.


I remember sleeping in lean-tos with other boys, which was awkward and uncomfortable most of the time. I remember trying and failing to start a fire the old-fashioned way, without lighter fluid. Of course we roasted marshmallows and told ghost stories, and used lots of cans of bug spray. And it's not even like we went all that far - I think we spent one overnight in a park in Staten Island, though I'm not sure. My mind is fixated on that being the place, and maybe it was.

It was the simplest, most basic form of camping. We never had to learn any hardcore camping skills; why would we need to, when we were only doing this for one or two nights a summer? My most vivid memory from that period is getting a nasty rash on my thighs while I was walking down a road with a counselor late at night. I don't remember how I got it, nor do I recall where we were coming from or going to, but that rash stands out - as you might imagine.


When I was older, I spent a couple of summers as a counselor at a sleepaway camp in Massachusetts. The site was a converted farm, with a dirt road leading to it from the street. We didn't teach the kids any outdoor camping skills either - we had a woodworking class, but most of the things taught there weren't necessarily for camping. And of course, the kids brought with them all manner of non-essential items from home, in particular - this being the 90s - Magic: The Gathering cards. While they played with them all the time, they also tended to be a bone of contention more often than not. I shudder to think what it would be like today, with kids carrying around cell phones and iPads.

While not a direct comparison, the unlikely love affair at the heart of Moonrise Kingdom reminds me a little bit of one of my earliest crushes as a kid. It was the summer of 1985, and I was traveling with my mother, my aunt and my cousin to California to visit relatives. At one point we stayed in a lodge at Sequoia National Park for a few days to see the giant trees. At the same time there was a girls' camp staying there, and that's how I met this chick named Amanda. 

We only knew each other for three days, but we clicked. I hung out with her friends, we went swimming, that kinda stuff. I recall we took part in some kind of nighttime game - it may have been a scavenger hunt or something. We didn't run away together into the woods like the kids in the movie, and though she was a camper, she wasn't a Girl Scout or anything like that, but the point is, to my young mind, it felt like an ultra-romantic affair. We promised to write each other once it came time to go, and we did for a little bit before the memories faded. I mooned over her for awhile and then got over her. Hadn't even thought about her in years until now...


Everything feels so much more intense at that age. What's nothing more than a mutual infatuation seems indistinguishable from Twoo Wuv. Sam and Suzy come across as so deadpan earnest (like many Wes Anderson characters) that it's easy to forget that they really are in love. There's nothing cynical or ironic about it, and it's nice to see.

I rode my bike to the theater. I had never done that before, which is a bit unusual, since the Kew Gardens is so close to me, but I had just bought a new bike lock a few days prior, so now I had no excuse. Truth be told, I combined riding and walking, because there's a steep incline leading to the theater and I did not wanna challenge it on the bike. Just don't have the legs for it! From my direction, you go up the hill, and then you make a left and you go down the hill from a different angle, and then you go up a little bit and there's the theater. I walked all this section. Even in Columbus I approached hills with great trepidation, but then, I had a better bike there. My current bike is one I bought second-hand.

Why does "car-free = loser" in movies and TV?

"Einstein rode a bike!"

...The continuing contempt for the poor is a huge problem for sustainable transportation because so many Americans think of the stuff we promote as symbolic of poverty and disempowerment. Whether it's intentional or not, imagining that people can be tainted by the mode of transport they use is pretty dehumanizing. I've felt the shame of standing at a bus stop, waiting and waiting, while cars flow past. You're not supposed to have to wait; you're an American, the cultural conditioning says in the back of my mind. Well eff that. 

For-profit entertainment media hasn't caught up with the reality I inhabit, where lots of people get around outside of cars. Grown ups of different socioeconomic strata are commuting to work, toting kids, hauling goods, all on bikes, despite these continued assertions that only people who do not matter get around this way. I don't have any interest in perpetuating the idea that I should stay in a car so that I can stay away from the undesirables who can't afford to drive.

As National Bike Month has begun, this article comes at an appropriate time. This is particularly relevant for me; I took up biking as a means of transportation during my year in Columbus, and I've written in this space before about filmmakers who promote alternative transportation in general.


One thing this piece doesn't mention, but which I think is also relevant, is how Hollywood has, it's fair to say, a vested interest in keeping the auto industry happy. Car ads are given prominence in prime-time television, as well as in the ads that precede trailers - hell, even in the films themselves often times (the Transformers films, for example, as well as the recent Lorax tie-in). Is it any wonder that it seems as if a pro-car agenda is at work?

"Why am I even listening to you? You're a virgin who can't drive."

Living in the Northeast, it's easy to forget how much of the rest of America lives in car-oriented areas. It's something I became aware of while living in the Midwest: for many Americans, walking or riding bikes is less feasible than driving because they live in sprawling, decentralized cities and towns with wide, straight, multi-lane streets that encourage driving at unsafe speeds, endangering the lives of pedestrians and bikers.


And as for public transit, too many cities, New York included, are unable to build and/or sustain the capital necessary for a viable system. New York has the largest subway network in the world, but we're reliant on the state government for funding, and in recent years, they've stolen funds from city transit to balance their own books, and city transit is drowning in debt as a result. If that can happen here, you can imagine how vulnerable other places are as well.


Unfortunate as it is for Hollywood to look down their noses on alternative transportation, they're simply reflecting attitudes in real life. Fortunately, however, some of those attitudes are changing, and the work being done to promote National Bike Month (with a shout-out to my friends in Columbus for their efforts) has been, and continues to be, a major catalyst for that change. One likes to believe that Hollywood will eventually follow suit, but that will take time.


Thoughts?