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Tonight begins my new series at Doc Films titled I Was a Teenage Film: The Birth of American Teen Cinema. It runs every Monday night at 7:00 until May 31st. It's about as definitive an Evan-series as you can get, featuring some of my favorite teenage-oriented flicks from the '50s and '60s. My dream was to have a series devoted entirely to beach party movies, but this'll have to do! At least we'll get Beach Blanket Bingo in there - don't miss that one!

Doc Films is located in Ida Noyes Hall at 1212 E. 59th St. in Chicago. Tickets are just $5, or you can get a pass for all 80-or-so films in the quarter for only $30.

Here's the series at a glance, plus my essay for the newsletter and descriptions of each film:

Mar. 29 - The Wild One
Apr. 5 - Blackboard Jungle
Apr. 12 - Rebel Without a Cause
Apr. 19 - Gidget
Apr. 26 - Don't Knock the Rock
May 3 - West Side Story
May 10 - David and Lisa
May 17 - Eegah!
May 24 - Beach Blanket Bingo
May 31 - Lord Love a Duck

I Was a Teenage Film

The Birth of American Teen Cinema

Just before the more celebrated baby boom, there was already a surge of children born in America during the Second World War. Once these children reached their teen years in the 1950s, they benefited from unprecedented economic prosperity. As American families migrated toward the suburbs, teenagers entered a car-based consumer culture, enjoying independence and mobility they never had before. They had a means to get places, time to kill, and money to spend – and film exhibitors were quick to provide a place for them to spend it. In the 1950s and ‘60s, a whole new category of film emerged, targeted specifically at a new teenage market. The early films of teen cinema are certainly of their time, but they had an enduring effect on the way Hollywood movies are marketed to this day.

But beyond the implications it had for the film industry, the birth of teen cinema represents a much more important historical moment. It marks the beginning of the very idea of teenagers itself. Certainly, humans aged thirteen to nineteen existed before the Eisenhower administration, but never before had they been viewed as a distinct group rather than simply an extension of childhood or a precursor to adulthood. Teenagers were developing their own tastes, their own values, their own idols. Restless and misunderstood, American teens found themselves at the beginning of a generational conflict that would build throughout the ‘60s, even if the media’s fear-mongering about a supposed juvenile delinquency epidemic was exaggerated.

The most significant act of teenage rebellion, whether intentional or not, was their embrace of a loud form of African-American rhythm and blues known as rock ‘n’ roll. The inclusion of Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” over the opening titles of Blackboard Jungle marked a true cultural sea change, with a reception comparable to the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, complete with riots in cinemas across the nation. Haley, a portly white country singer, was hardly one of the most threatening of rock’s early stars, but the film industry’s capitalization on the trend helped bring exposure to wilder rock ‘n’ rollers like Little Richard, who appears with Haley in Don’t Knock the Rock. Little Richard epitomized the brilliance – and the threat – of rock ‘n’ roll, flamboyantly juxtaposing gospel shouts with raucous piano-playing in songs with coded lyrics about anal sex.

Though the teenage rock rebellion may have been genuine, the rock movies of the ‘50s are an early example of the film industry learning how rebellion could be commodified. The protagonists within the films proclaimed that rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay, yet the studios themselves perceived the music as just another fad. Most teen movies were inexpensive formula pictures with salacious titles churned out as quickly as possible to exploit the latest teenage trend, or to anticipate the next one (there was even a short-lived wave of movies predicting calypso as rock’s successor). With a growing number of drive-in theatres needing double features to show, the demand for these cheapies offered tremendous new opportunities for independent producers. Many found great success in the horror realm, making countless films with teen protagonists and outlandish monsters, combining youth rebellion with the Cold War fear of technology. Eegah!, the horror entry in this series, is certainly one of the strangest of them all, becoming a cult classic long after its initial release.

The most successful of the independent teen movie studios was American International Pictures. Led by Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson, AIP produced inexpensive yet extremely lucrative titles for teenagers over multiple decades. They had tremendous success early on with teen horror films like I Was a Teenage Werewolf and The Curse of Frankenstein, but astutely branched out into dozens of other subgenres. In 1963, they cashed in on the emerging surf craze, enlisting teen idol Frankie Avalon and former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello to star in the hugely popular Beach Party. Though Gidget was an important forerunner, Beach Party established the formula for an entire genre of beach party movies. AIP ultimately produced seven, including the wonderful Beach Blanket Bingo, while virtually every other American studio churned out imitations by the dozen. The beach party movies were always essentially self-parody from the start, but they would be further satirized in George Axelrod’s 1966 black comedy Lord Love a Duck.

Not all the teen pictures from the era, however, were exploitation films directed explicitly toward teenage audiences. Many Hollywood films, like Peyton Place and A Summer Place, focused on the changing state of the American family and the teenager’s role within it and were either marketed directly at adults or aimed for cross-generational appeal. Nicholas Ray’s moving Rebel Without a Cause was an exemplary attempt to portray and understand the anxieties of teen culture. Dying tragically in a car crash before the film’s release, James Dean became the definitive teen icon, carrying the mantle of Marlon Brando’s rebellious motorcycle gang leader in The Wild One from the year before. Like Rebel, Frank Perry’s quiet independent feature David and Lisa showed considerable understanding of troubled American youth, though the film has since suffered undue neglect. By contrast, the popularity of West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein’s musical about teenage star-crossed lovers, has never waned.

Good fortune has put this series on the same calendar as our John Hughes retrospective, offering us a view of teen cinema’s birth as well as its artistic zenith. By looking at the cinematic evidence of the creation of teendom, we’re able to see the origin of the truths that Hughes understood so intuitively: that the world of teenagers is a distinct, self-contained universe, governed by its own set of complex rules; that high school life is no mere “microcosm” of the real world, but is the realest world we get, where the stakes are higher, and everything feels more important - because it is.

The Films

Monday, March 29 at 7:00 • 79m
The Wild One
László Benedek, 1954 • “What’re you rebelling against, Johnny?” “Whaddya got?” Marlon Brando’s performance as the leader of a delinquent motorcycle gang was almost too wild for teens in 1954, but it served as an important prototype for the teenpics that followed. When the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club invades a small town, they soon find themselves in fierce conflict with a rival biker gang led by Lee Marvin. The image of a leather-clad Brando astride a Triumph motorcycle has persisted as an icon of youth rebellion, subsequently adopted and amended by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Kenneth Anger in Scorpio Rising. 35mm

Monday, April 5 at 7:00 • 100m
Blackboard Jungle
Richard Brooks, 1955 • In this important early teen film, Glenn Ford plays an idealistic English teacher at an inner-city school who struggles to gain the respect of his unruly students, including Sidney Poitier and Vic Morrow. Though the plot sounds familiar today, the film’s frank portrayal of juvenile delinquency and race issues, along with its rock ‘n’ roll score, was at the time sensational. Teens were driven to riot at several screenings, destroying the cinema interiors. One theatre even played the first reel silently for fear that Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” over the opening credits would incite the audience. 35mm

Monday, April 12 at 7:00 • 111m
Rebel Without A Cause
Nicholas Ray, 1955 • James Dean’s tragic death has only served to freeze him in time as the perennial teenage icon, a martyr for disaffected American youth. Rejected by his peers and let down by his ineffective parents, Dean’s Jim Stark instead founds a surrogate family with fellow outcasts Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo). Nicholas Ray shows a deep understanding of teenage alienation, reaching across the generational divide that even the film’s most well-meaning adult characters are unable to bridge. Shot in gorgeous Cinemascope, Rebel is not only the definitive teen movie but also one of the decade’s greatest films. 16mm

Monday, April 19 at 7:00 • 95m
Gidget
Paul Wendkos, 1959 • Sandra Dee’s first starring role was in this adaptation of a popular young adult novel about a girl who is introduced to surfing life by a Malibu gang led by The Kahuna (Cliff Robertson), but falls for surfer Moondoggie (James Darren). Gidget’s fun-in-the-sun attitude and great pop music (by The Four Preps!) laid the groundwork for the later beach party movies, but its earnest chronicling of a teen’s coming of age makes it sweeter and more down-to-earth than the follow-ups. A nationwide obsession with surf culture and several sequels followed. Archival 35mm

Monday, April 26 at 7:00 • 84m
Don’t Knock the Rock!
Fred F. Sears, 1956 • When white teenagers discovered the rock ‘n’ roll music championed by disc jockeys like Alan Freed in the mid-‘50s, it caused a wave of controversy among their concerned parents. Filmmakers were quick to exploit that controversy, marketing rock films toward teens, while also making pleas to grown-ups to embrace the new sensation. In Don’t Knock the Rock, Freed plays himself, a mediating adult figure defending a teen idol against attacks from a town who wants to ban his music. The film features classic performances by Bill Haley & His Comets and also helped introduce Little Richard to a wide audience. Archival 35mm

Monday, May 3 at 7:00 • 150m
West Side Story
Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise, 1961 • This musical transplantation of Romeo and Juliet into the ethnic warfare between teenage gangs in New York was already a Broadway hit before its popular film adaptation. Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer are fine as the leads, but the supporting cast led by Rita Moreno and Russ Tamblyn is truly exceptional. Leonard Bernstein’s score is one of the great works of 20th-century American art, with songs like “Somewhere” and “Tonight” since becoming enduring standards. He’s assisted by witty lyrics from a young Stephen Sondheim and the inimitable choreography of co-director Jerome Robbins. 35mm

Monday, May 10 at 7:00 • 95m
David and Lisa
Frank Perry, 1962 • Perry's neglected low-budget debut feature follows a troubled teen sent to a mental institution, where a schizophrenic girl helps him confront his problems. This nuanced look at youth mental illness stands in stark contrast to Elia Kazan’s absurdly over-the-top portrayal in Splendor in the Grass one year earlier. Jean Renoir called the movie a turning point in the history of film, saying it achieved “by means of very high caliber, extremely moving actors… a certain contact with the director, which is, all things considered, the essence of art.” 35mm

Monday, May 17 at 7:00 • 90m
Eegah!
Arch Hall, Sr., 1962 • Of the many bizarre horror films churned out on the cheap for teenage drive-in audiences, Eegah! is certainly one of the strangest. Writer/director/producer Arch Hall, Sr. designed the film as a vehicle for his son Arch Hall, Jr. who plays a rock ‘n’ roller attempting to rescue his girlfriend from a caveman (Richard Kiel) who has captured her in his desert cave (the same cave in fact doubled as Ro-Man’s lair in another cult movie, Robot Monster). Eegah! is a classic example of how the emergence of teen cinema opened up new opportunities for independent, low-budget filmmakers. Watch out for snakes! Archival 35mm

Monday, May 24 at 7:00 • 98m
Beach Blanket Bingo
William Asher, 1965 • AIP’s delightful cycle of beach party movies starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon created an entire genre, with countless imitators of its colorful bend of surfing, teen pop, and broad comedy. In the fifth and best film of the series, Frankie, Dee Dee, and the usual gang of teens become obsessed with skydiving after seeing singer Sugar Kane (Linda Evans) attempt it as a publicity stunt. Dee Dee meanwhile becomes jealous of Frankie’s attentions for one of Sugar’s sidekicks. A goofy motorcycle gang led by Eric Von Zipper also shows up. So does a mermaid. And Buster Keaton. It’s, like, the best. 35mm

Monday, May 31 at 7:00 • 109m
Lord Love a Duck
George Axelrod, 1966 • A unique and virtually indescribable film, Lord Love a Duck is a manic yet unusually sophisticated black comedy that satirizes the entirety of teenage culture in the ‘60s. Tuesday Weld stars as Barbara Ann, a teenager who signs a pact with a Svengali-like classmate (Roddy McDowall) to help her achieve social success, including by helping her acquire the 12 cashmere sweaters necessary to join an exclusive all-girl club. The film lashes out in all directions at various topical concerns, lampooning the beach party genre, American consumerism, and even old men’s sexual obsession with younger girls. 35mm

The screening of Georgy Girl in my British New Wave series at Doc Films this quarter has been cursed with audio problems. The failure of an amp in the cinema forced us to cancel the initial screening. Last night, our make-up screening caused a moment of panic when we started playing the first reel and discovered that the soundtrack was physically missing from the print. We weren't sure if it was missing from just a portion of the reel, or if the whole first 20 minutes would have to be projected silently. Fortunately, as we let it run, we found that only the opening credits sequence (and later the closing credits) were silent.

This means, however, that we missed out on hearing the hit title song by The Seekers, a folk-pop group from Australia that were hugely popular for a while in the '60s. They coincided and were sometimes associated with the British Invasion, but sound more like an updated but less politically conscious version of The Weavers, along the lines of similar American groups like We Five and The Stone Poneys. "Georgy Girl" was their biggest hit in America, peaking at #2 on February 4, 1967, with "I'm a Believer" by The Monkees keeping it from the top. The music was written by Tom Springfield, brother of Dusty, and the lyrics were actually by the actor Jim Dale, best known for the Carry On films and for his really remarkable work on the Harry Potter audiobooks. Since it wasn't in the screening last night, here it is now:

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The Seekers - Georgy Girl [mp3]

In addition to the Downtown 81 series, I am also presenting a retrospective at Doc Films of the work of Charles Laughton, one of my favorite actors, Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. Laughton is one of a handful of actors I can think of that I've noticed instantly make films more enjoyable, regardless of the movie's quality or the size of their role, simply by their presence. This series has nine of his best performances, including some relative rarities, and I very much hope you come see them. It begins tonight with Les Misérables.

Doc Films is located in Ida Noyes Hall at 1212 E. 59th St. in Chicago. Tickets are just $5, or you can get a pass for all 80-or-so films in the quarter for only $30.

The quick schedule of the series, my essay about it, and descriptions of each film:

Oct. 1 - Les Misérables
Oct. 8 - Island of Lost Souls
Oct. 15 - White Woman
Oct. 22 - The Private Life of Henry VIII
Oct. 29 - The Suspect
Nov. 5 - The Sign of the Cross
Nov. 12 - Witness for the Prosecution
Nov. 19 - Advise & Consent
Dec. 3 - The Night of the Hunter

The Public Life of Charles Laughton

Hollywood's blusteriest star.

There has never been a Hollywood star comparable to Charles Laughton. With his portly shape and blustery persona, he could easily have remained in the company of Edward Everett Horton, Thomas Mitchell, and Andy Devine as a successful character actor forever serving as sideman to the handsome stars of the moment. Instead he somehow became one of the most unlikely and distinctive leading men in the industry. Laughton delivered fiercely energetic performances in iconic role after iconic role, projecting intelligence and genuine pathos no matter how much scenery he managed to chew in the process.

At his best, Laughton committed himself to his acting to a degree few other performers can claim. He was a proto-Method actor – or perhaps more accurately, “a Method actor without the bullshit,” as James Mason described him - often changing his physical appearance for a role as much as his body would allow. George Cukor called him “the first actor I encountered who prepared to make a laughing entrance by going around doing ha-ha! sounds for hours.” But despite any resemblance of his technique to Stanislavsky’s System, it was in fact his friend Bertolt Brecht who championed Laughton as a natural embodiment of his theories. In Brecht’s view, Laughton’s method was only a partial immersion: “The actor appears on stage in a double role, as Laughton and as Galileo; the showman Laughton does not disappear in the Galileo he is showing; Laughton is actually there, standing on the stage and showing us what he imagines Galileo to have been.”

Indeed Laughton brought something very personal to his finest roles. Despite routinely playing emperors, kings, and other Great Men, Laughton managed to channel his own personal struggles and put them on display to the public. He suffered from a crippling lack of self-confidence; he hated his appearance (“I have the face like he behind of an elephant,” he would say); and he struggled with his homosexuality throughout his life-long marriage to fellow actor Elsa Lanchester. The troubled, obsessed characters like Javert in Les Misérables were never far from Charles Laughton the man.

He was a remarkably versatile actor, equally at home in lavish historical drama like The Private Life of Henry VIII, gentle comedy like Ruggles of Red Gap, and stylish film noir like The Suspect. Notoriously difficult to work with, and self-conscious about that fact, Laughton still collaborated with many of cinema’s great directors, including Jean Renoir, Billy Wilder in Witness for the Prosecution, Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger in Advise & Consent), Leo McCarey, and David Lean. Even Ozu seemed to have recognized his brilliance early on, as he included a clip of Laughton’s performance from the Lubitsch-directed segment of If I Had a Million to great effect in Woman of Tokyo.

Although he worked with so many masters, some of Laughton’s greatest performances came in fact from his less distinguished films. The camp of movies like Island of Lost Souls and White Woman perhaps does not represent the artistic zenith of Laughton’s career, but it demonstrates an essential quality of his brilliance. He worked best when he had the liberty to completely invent his own character from nothing, whether creating White Woman’s absurd jungle plantation owner or transforming Nero into a flamboyant queen in The Sign of the Cross. The subpar source material worked to his benefit, essentially offering him a blank canvas to paint on. Conversely, Laughton struggled throughout his career with performing standard Shakespeare and Dickens roles on stage. He was, it seems, less an interpreter of roles than a fervent inventor of personalities.

It’s this passion that Laughton brought to his characters that makes him an easy target for accusations of overacting. To be sure, Charles Laughton was a ham, but in the best sense of the word. Rather than overact in his movies, he managed instead to transcend the film somehow. His performance becomes something more tangible than the film itself. Even in the most unmemorable movie, Laughton’s character lingers long in the audience’s memory. One at times feels sorry for his co-stars, for even if their acting is pitch-perfect, Laughton simply dominates the screen even in a minor role.

Despite a litany of iconic performances over a prolific career, it’s still hard not to dwell on what Laughton might have accomplished. Due in part to the anxieties of both Laughton and the director Joseph von Sternberg, an adaptation of I, Claudius was infamously never completed. The film, which exists now only in about twenty-five minutes of dailies, has since become the stuff of legend. From viewing only these surviving fragments, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum declared it “arguably the greatest piece of acting in all of sound cinema: better than Brando, better than Olivier, better even than Chaplin in Monsieur Verdoux.” Our retrospective concludes with The Night of the Hunter, Laughton’s lone entry in a directing career that never was. The stunning visual style; the overwhelming feeling of suspense; the breathtaking performances Laughton coaxed out of Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, and Lillian Gish – it all adds up to one of the great masterpieces of American cinema, and an astonishingly confident debut from a man who was anything but.

The Films

Thursday, October 1 at 7:00 • 105m
Les Misérables
Richard Boleslawski, 1935 • In the first sound adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel in English, Fredric March stars as convicted bread thief Jean Valjean. March is a perfect match for Laughton's wonderful performance as the obsessed Inspector Javert, unrelentingly pursuing Valjean over a period of decades. Between this, Mutiny on the Bounty, and Ruggles of Red Gap, 1935 marked an extraordinary year for Laughton. His over-the-top bluster here feels delightful and appropriate, unlike the over-the-top bluster of the dreadful 1980 musical adaptation that helped destroy Broadway forever—Susan Boyle be damned. 35mm

Thursday, October 8th at 7:00 • 67m
Island of Lost Souls
Erle Kenton, 1932 • Charles Laughton was perhaps born to play a mad scientist, and he makes the most of the opportunity in this creepy version of H.G. Wells's Island of Dr. Moreau. Richard Arlen and Leila Hymans are shipwrecked on Moreau's island, where the doctor has been conducting experiments combining humans and animals. His bizarre creations, led by none other than Bela Legosi, are barely under control. Laughton's performance, which he apparently based on his dentist, marked his first starring role in an American film. Find here the source for Devo's famous chant of "Are we not men?" from their 1977 song "Jocko Homo." 35mm, not available on DVD

Thursday, October 15th at 7:00 • 68m
White Woman
Stuart Walker, 1933 • A bizarre pre-code gem about a despotic rubber plantation owner in Malaysia married to a nightclub singer (Carole Lombard). Terrorized by her husband (Laughton), she begins a relationship with one of his employees. Though he did not think fondly of the film and disliked working with Lombard, who he said was not a "controlled actress," Laughton's overblown performance among the headhunters and spear fights of the jungle makes the film a real joy. During filming, Laughton insisted that Ravel's Bolero be played in between takes to sustain the tense jungle atmosphere. Archival 35mm, not available on DVD

Thursday, October 22nd at 7:00 • 97m
The Private Life of Henry VIII
Alexander Korda, 1933 • Never is Laughton given license to let loose and chew scenery more than in this star-making turn as the titular monarch. Henry blusters his way through five marriages, contending with wives and lovers played by likes of Merle Oberon, Binnie Barnes, Robert Donat, and Laughton's real-life wife Elsa Lanchester. Tremendous fun and gleefully inaccurate, the film's worldwide success became a major breakthrough not only for Laughton, but for British cinema as a whole. Laughton would again collaborate with Alexander Korda on the equally excellent historical biopic Rembrandt. 16mm

Thursday, October 29th at 7:00 • 85m
The Suspect
Robert Siodmak, 1944 • One of director Robert Siodmak's best works, this film noir, set in 1902 London, stars Laughton as a bank teller with a horrid wife (Rosalind Ivan). He begins an innocent friendship with the young and beautiful Mary Gray (Ella Raines), but his wife learns of it and is consumed with rage. Laughton then kills his wife and covers it up as an accident, but of course, he still raises the suspicions of a Scotland Yard inspector, as well as his neighbor. The result is a classic suspense tale, taut and finely crafted, largely thanks to the excellent performance of Laughton. 35mm, not available on DVD

Thursday, November 5th at 7:00 • 125m
The Sign of the Cross
Cecil B. DeMille, 1932 • In making this Roman epic, his comeback project at Paramount, DeMille met with tremendous resistance by the studio, forcing him to recreate ancient Rome on a modest budget. Perhaps distracted by these struggles, DeMille allowed Laughton to transform his interpretation of Emperor Nero into a raging queen, complete with a nude, nubile young man sitting by his side. The film became a hit, yet for decades faced censorship battles, including over an infamous scene where Claudette Colbert bathes in milk. This archival print, restored from DeMille's personal copy, returns the film to its uncut form. Archival 35mm

Thursday, November 12th at 7:00 • 114m
Witness for the Prosecution
Billy Wilder, 1957 • Billy Wilder adapts this thrilling mystery by Agatha Christie to great effect. Laughton plays Sir Wilfred Robards, a successful British attorney defending Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) against a murder charge, despite his poor health. Sir Robards is shocked to discover that Vole's wife, played by Marlene Dietrich, plans on appearing as a witness for the prosecution. Elsa Lanchester also appears, and both husband and wife would eventually be rewarded with Oscar nominations. The twisting plot and witty dialog show both Christie and Wilder at the top of their form.35mm

Thursday, November 19th at 7:00 • 140m
Advise & Consent
Otto Preminger, 1962 • While battling bone cancer, Charles Laughton made his final screen appearance in Otto Preminger's slow-burning adaptation of Drury's Pulitzer Prize-winning political novel. Henry Fonda plays Robert Leffingwell, a liberal appointed by the President to serve as Secretary of State, sparking an intense confirmation battle that puts the careers of several politicians in jeopardy. Players in the drama include Burgess Meredith, Walter Pidgeon, and Laughton donning a southern drawl as a fiery senator from South Carolina. Preminger reportedly also offered a role to Martin Luther King, Jr., who declined. Archival 35mm
Preserved by the Academy Film Archive with funding from the Andrew J. Kuehn Jr. Foundation.

Thursday, December 3rd at 7:00 • 90m
The Night of the Hunter
Charles Laughton, 1955 • It's difficult to encapsulate the power of The Night of the Hunter, the greatest directorial debut this side of Citizen Kane, which, sadly, would also be Laughton's only directorial credit. Robert Mitchum gives one of film's most iconic performances as a sinful preacher who marries a fragile widow so that he can torture her two children into revealing the location of a hidden fortune. Pulitzer Prize-winner James Agee wrote the screenplay, with Laughton himself providing an uncredited rewrite. A terrifying slice of Americana filled with haunting imagery, this is, simply put, as good as cinema gets. Archival 35mm

The Fall 2009 calendar at Doc Films begins this week, and there are two series on it that I programmed. The first one, which I put together with my good friend Hannah, is called Downtown 81 and focuses on the work of the downtown New York artists of the '70s and '80s. The series runs every Tuesday night at 7 p.m., beginning tonight with James Nares's Rome 78. We're really excited for this series and have been talking about doing it for a long time. Basically, it's just an excuse for us to showcase some of our mutual favorite movies and artists, like Laurie Anderson, John Lurie, Spalding Gray, and Talking Heads.

Doc Films is located in Ida Noyes Hall at 1212 E. 59th St. in Chicago. Tickets are a measly $5, or you can get a pass for all 80-or-so films in the quarter for only $30.

Here's the quick list of the films in series, then the essay about it that Hannah and I wrote, and finally the descriptions of each film:

Sep. 29 - Rome 78
Oct. 6 - The Vasulkas: Selected Works I & II
Oct. 13 - Stranger Than Paradise
Oct. 20 - Home of the Brave
Oct. 27 - The Kitchen Presents Two Moon July
Nov. 3 - Downtown 81
Nov. 10 - True Stories
Nov. 17 - Swimming to Cambodia
Nov. 24 - Stop Making Sense
Dec. 1 - Ellis Island & Book of Days

Downtown 81

The New York arts scene of the '70s and '80s

Since at least the 1960s, downtown Manhattan was the home to a diverse community of artists committed to experimentation within their art and lifestyle. The blurring of art and life and the dissolution of the barriers between artistic disciplines can be seen in the work of downtown residents of the early ‘60s, such as Jack Smith and Tony Conrad. Coming generations of artists in the Lower East Side would sustain this radical ethos, and they are the focus of our series, Downtown 81.

This series focuses on films from the mid-1970s and ‘80s, and highlights the diversity of voices and flexibility characteristic of the downtown arts scene of the time. Many of the artists showcased were associated with the Kitchen, a venue started in the early '70s by Steina and Woody Vasulka with the intention of exhibiting video and performance art.

The Vasulkas’ Selected Works I & II illustrates their creative output during the early years of the Kitchen. Due to its willingness to embrace a broader definition of what was considered art, the Kitchen became home to numerous experimental bands and mixed media projects, many of which can be seen in the concert film The Kitchen Presents Two Moon July.

Downtown artists also made significant innovations in experimental theatre. The Mabou Mines company performed radical interpretations of classic texts in non-traditional theatre spaces, while the Wooster Group created performances from found material, recycled texts, and their own autobiographies. Spalding Gray produced a series of autobiographical monologues with the Wooster Group, most notably Swimming to Cambodia, which was released as a film under the direction of Jonathan Demme. Both companies were inspired by the work of Meredith Monk, director of Ellis Island and Book of Days, whose epic theatrical events blended dance, music, film, and opera.

The No Wave movement, another crucial voice in the downtown arts scene, is a product of the creative influence of punk rock on the art community. Rhys Chatam, Arto Lindsay, and other artists were decisively inspired by bands such as the Ramones, who were getting their start at Lower East Side venue CBGB. This intercommunication seen in No Wave produced the distinct aesthetic displayed in work by Lydia Lunch, James Chance, and No Wave filmmakers such as Amos Poe and James Nares. Nares's Rome '78 features an array of crucial contributors to the scene and displays a punk approach to filmmaking.

Edo Bertoglio’s Downtown 81 uses a similar format to that of Rome 78, following Jean-Michel Basquiat as he encounters artists and musicians on the Lower East Side. These films give a sense of the thriving community, and of the participatory ethic that was definitive of the scene. The opposition to professionalism characteristic of the punk attitude set the mood for a scene in which artists were inspired to try their hand at making music, acting, or directing without regard to the boundaries of discipline, both initiating diverse projects of their own or participating in those of their friends. All three stars of Jim Jarmusch’s film Stranger than Paradise started as musicians; leading man John Lurie also composed the film’s original score. In fact, Jarmusch himself was at one time a member of the No Wave band the Del-Byzanteens. The frequency with which artists appear as contributors to the films in this series demonstrates how essential this collaborative spirit was to the productivity of the scene.

In covering a relatively wide time range, the series tracks the full trajectory of celebrity for several artists featured in these films. David Byrne, who was involved in the Kitchen, was at the height of fame by the mid-‘80s with the Talking Heads. Before the release of Stop Making Sense and True Stories, they had scored a top ten hit in the U.S. with the song “Burning Down the House.” Likewise, Laurie Anderson, who also performed at the Kitchen, was two albums into a record deal with Warner Brothers when she made her concert film, Home of the Brave. These concert films are not from the downtown arts scene proper, but instead offer insight into the way these artists continued to apply the sensibility gained during their involvement in the scene toward their work.

The inclusion of these later works also highlights how remarkable it is that so many artists from the scene were able to achieve mainstream popularity. Byrne, Anderson, Philip Glass, Cindy Sherman, and Bill T. Jones have all become international celebrities – all working within a neighborhood with a total area under a square mile. This mainstream success also signaled the end of the movement. The rising cost of living meant that within the next decade, lower Manhattan would no longer be conducive to the kind of movement that had thrived there since the '60s. While the movement ended, the participatory approach to art influenced the generations that followed, and has been applied in communities worldwide. It is our hope that this series offers a chance to think critically about the collaborative ethic that defined the period.

The Films

Tuesday, September 29th at 7:00 • 82m
Rome 78
James Nares, 1978 • Painter, performance artist, and former Contortions bandmember James Nares directed this classic of No Wave cinema. An irreverent and playful period drama, the film is as much a documentary of late-70s Lower East Side as it is a fiction film about the late Roman Empire. David McDermott III stars as Caligula, Anya Phillips plays the Queen of Sheba, and Lydia Lunch, lead singer of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and star of many films produced in the movement, also appears. Critic J. Hoberman, an early champion of No Wave, described the film as "like a toga party in Little Lulu's clubhouse." 16mm, not available on DVD

Tuesday, October 6th at 7:00 • 52m
The Vasulkas: Selected Works I & II
Steina and Woody Vasulka, 1974 • The Vasulkas were pioneers of the video art form, and founders of The Kitchen. They were among the first to have their video works included in the Whitney Biennial, and have remained innovators of the genre, both technically and formally. These selected works serve as a sampling of the Vasulkas's work during the early years of the Kitchen, a time in which they were primarily concerned with the production of synthetic video images. Through their emphasis on the materiality of video with the use of static and wave patterns, the Vasulkas forge images of a natural beauty akin to landscapes. DVD, not commercially available on DVD

Tuesday, October 13th at 7:00 • 95m
Stranger Than Paradise
Jim Jarmusch, 1984 • Eva, freshly arrived from Hungary, walks the derelict streets of New York in search of her cousin Willie. She pauses to turn on her portable tape player, and continues to the sound of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, hysterically repeating "I Put a Spell On You." With this scene, Jarmusch established himself as an innovator of American cool and informed the idiom of independent American cinema with a blend of style and incongruent humor. As Willie's sidekick (Richard Edson, one-time drummer for Sonic Youth) tags along on a trip across the U.S., Jarmusch weaves nuanced relationships between off-beat characters. 35mm

Tuesday, October 20th at 7:00 • 90m
Home of the Brave
Laurie Anderson, 1986 • Five years after landing a surprise pop hit with "O Superman," performance artist (and Glen Ellyn, Illinois native) Laurie Anderson directed her own concert film while touring in support of her album "Mister Heartbreak." Playing violin and synthesizer along with a full band, she layers poetry on top of electronic music in this innovative multimedia performance, and her deadpan observations are at once hilarious and spooky. William S. Burroughs, the inspiration for her song "Language is a Virus," also appears on stage at one point to dance a tango with Anderson. Laserdisc, not available on DVD

Tuesday, October 27th at 7:00 • 53m
The Kitchen Presents Two Moon July
Tom Bowes, 1985 • Founded in the early '70s by Steina and Woody Vasulka, The Kitchen became one of the most important art spaces of the downtown scene. Located in the kitchen of the Mercer Arts center, it started as a space for video art, but eventually expanded to include artists across several disciplines, as illustrated in this film. Originally filmed as a television project, Two Moon July is a unique document of this community, bringing together many of its talented artists, including David Byrne, Bill T. Jones, Laurie Anderson, Cindy Sherman, John and Evan Lurie, Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Robert Longo, and Bill Viola. DVD, not available on DVD

Tuesday, November 3rd at 7:00 • 71m
Downtown 81
Edo Bertoglio, 1981 • Also known as New York Beat Movie, Downtown 81 is a fascinating portrait of the New York scene in the early '80s. The then-unknown Jean-Michel Basquiat stars as a character much like himself, who spends the day wandering the Lower East Side, encountering many notable figures from the scene, including Debbie Harry, the Plastics, and John Lurie. Glenn O'Brien, host of the infamous public access show TV Party, wrote the screenplay. Financing issues caused the film to be abandoned until 2001. As much of the original soundtrack was lost, Basquiat's dialog was re-recorded by actor and poet Saul Williams. 35mm, not available on DVD

Tuesday, November 10th at 7:00 • 90m
True Stories
David Byrne, 1986 • Featuring a score by Talking Heads, True Stories is a beautiful, bizarre take on small town life. Byrne, sporting a ten-gallon cowboy hat, guides us through the fictional town of Virgil, Texas, as its citizens prepare for the "Celebration of Special-ness." Inspired by headlines from tabloids, the film wanders from character to character, such as the woman who never leaves her bed, the man with a radio in his head (the inspiration for the British band's name), and the engineer with the consistent panda bear shape looking for love. The result is an intruiging variation on the traditional American musical. 35mm

Tuesday, November 17th at 7:00 • 85m
Swimming to Cambodia
Jonathan Demme, 1987 • In the first of his filmed monologues, Spalding Gray recounts his experiences in Southeast Asia filming his supporting role in The Killing Fields. Armed only with a glass of water, a writing pad, and a map, he provides a compelling example of storytelling at its finest. Gray, a co-founder of the experimental theatre company the Wooster Group, pioneered in this film a form of autobiographical one-man-show whose influence is still seen today. Demme's minimalistic direction gives room to focus on Gray's hilarious and touching anecdotes, while Laurie Anderson provides an appropriately haunting score. 35mm, not available on DVD

Tuesday, November 24th at 7:00 • 88m
Stop Making Sense
Jonathan Demme, 1984 • Beginning with David Byrne performing "Psycho Killer" alone with a drum machine and growing to an enormous band with backup dancers, this classic concert film catches Talking Heads at the height of their global success. By this point, Byrne had developed into one of music's great showmen, and moments from his performance—dancing with a lampshade, jogging in a circle around the stage, and donning his famous big suit—have since become iconic. Demme's fluid direction helps make this, along with >i/i<, one of the greatest rock n' roll films ever made. Thanks! Does anybody have any questions? 35mm

Tuesday, December 1st at 7:00 • 100m
Ellis Island & Book of Days
Meredith Monk, 1981 & 1988 • Monk, a filmmaker, choreographer, and composer, filmed Ellis Island at the famous port of entry before its 1990 restoration. Described by Monk as a "ghost story told through the musicality of images," it blends fiction, documentary, and dance to explore the story of the millions of immigrants who passed through. In the dreamlike Book of Days, Monk juxtaposes black and white depictions of the tumult of the Middle Ages with color scenes of a contemporary AIDS-plagued world. Music, dance, and stunning cinematography mix into a haunting and often humorous meditation on the transparency of time. 35mm, not available on DVD

On Thursday, April 23 my extraordinarily popular WTF? series continues with a very very rare screening of Cecil B. DeMille's This Day and Age. "One of the earliest and rarest of DeMille's sound features, This Day and Age is a wild paean to vigilante justice and mob violence masquerading as an inspirational high school story. When a few teenage boys witness the murder of a Jewish tailor at the hands of the local mob, they vow to take revenge by creating a grand coalition of all the high school students to do unspeakable things to the criminals' leader. The jawdroppingly insane plan they enact, followed by their triumphant victory march, has led more than one reviewer to compare the film to Hitler Youth propaganda." It will be preceded by a short called The Owl. Doc Films is located at Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E 59th St. in Chicago. Tickets are $5.

WTF?: The God-damndest Things Ever Seen, my series of bizarre cinema at Doc Films, continues tonight with the crown jewel of the series: Corn's-a-Poppin'. It's an utterly mysterious backstage musical. Nobody seems to have any real information about it - we can't even confirm the year of its release, though 1951 is probably right. In fact, for all we know, its screenings at Doc have been the only theatrical exhibitions of the movie ever. All we know is that one of its screenwriters was none other than a starving Kansas City television worker named Robert Altman.

I won't attempt to describe the film anymore, as my friend Kyle Westphal wrote the definitive piece about the film on his blog - and this is not just because it is likely to be the only piece ever to be written about Corn's-a-Poppin', but because it is a truly insightful look at the kind of unaccountable cinema that a certain contingent of Doc people/alums are particularly entranced by:

The emotional heart of a picture filled with obtusely intimate moments is the penultimate number, “On Our Way to Mars.” It has the greatest build-up of all the numbers, with little Susie begging her brother to be allowed to sing with him on the air. The result is a piece of minimalist s-f: Susie and Johnny float in a cardboard rocket while crooning about finding a grilled cheese sandwich on the moon. They set up rhyme schemes and then abandon them, finishing couplets with ‘Zoom! Zoom!’ It’s a creepy number, filled with romantic and sexual overtones—already present from the first reel of Corn’s-A-Poppin’ during which we’re not quite sure whether Susie is Johnny’s sister or his midget bride. (Susie speaks with all the bluster and toughness of a boozed-out Hollywood sideshow, cooks all of Johnny’s meals in an apron, and possesses a disposition very unbecoming of a child star.) But “On Our Way to Mars” becomes unexpectedly moving when Johnny sings about ‘dreams in Cinemascope,’ a timidly self-conscious expression about the kind of ragged, desperate movie that Corn’s-A-Poppin’ must be. Its actors will never see their names on a marquee or headline a Hollywood production; the reference to unattainable aesthetic luxuries has the effect of reminding us that Corn’s-A-Poppin’ constitutes a wooly alternative to them. The enterprise is so small-time that most of the performances come across better and stronger as documentary records of deer in the proverbial limelight. Intentionally or not, local acts of guerilla cinema like Corn’s-A-Poppin’ unleash a torrent of poetic feeling and reveal a new territory in film aesthetics.

For many years at Doc, the people running the organization were obsessed with Stanley Donen's Bedazzled starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, which you may remember was remade by Harold Ramis in 2000 with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley. Doc for some reason would screen the original Bedazzled every single year. That tradition ended some time ago, but perhaps it is time to start it up again...only with Corn's-a-Poppin' instead.

The film screens Thursday, April 9 at 9:00 p.m at Doc Films, 1212 E. 59th St, Chicago. There will be some delightful shorts beforehand as well.

[motion within motion]

On Thursday, April 2 at 9:00 p.m., Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda? kicks off my series at Doc Films called WTF?: The God-damnedest Things Ever Seen. "The legendary Ed Wood offers this bizarrely incompetent attempt to explain his own penchant for transvestitism—particularly for angora sweaters. A morphine-addled Bela Legosi, spewing out nonsense in an inexplicable role as a scientist "pulling the strings" of the action, is the best actor of the cast, which even includes Wood himself as the titular Glen/Glenda. There is no discernible structure, and stock footage makes up a good chunk of the actual screen time. Yet despite his lack of technical or narrative skill, Wood's obvious sincerity is what makes the film so endearing." Doc is located at Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E 59th St. in Chicago. Tickets are $5, or $26 for a quarterly pass.

The Doc Films spring calendar begins tonight. On Sundays there'll be post-war films by Yasujiro Ozu; Mondays features Taiwanese cinema; Tuesday is devoted to the early days of documentary films; Wednesdays are Cary Grant films; Thursdays at 7:00 feature American post-hippie urban angst from 1968-1973; and finally...

Late Thursday nights, usually at 9:00 p.m., is the series I programmed: WTF?: The God-damnedest things ever seen.

Here's the essay I wrote for the newsletter explaining the rationale:

Alice in Wonderland

When Bill & Coo, a feature film with a cast made up entirely of actual birds in costumes, was released in 1948, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Agee was assigned to write a review. Flabbergasted by what he had seen, Agee declared the movie "by conservative estimate, the God-damnedest thing ever seen." This series presents that film, as well as nine other contenders for that title.

Although I initially assumed that the meaning of "God-damnedest" was self-evident, from the blank expressions I received when pitching this series, I soon realized it would require some further explanation. I do this under a certain amount of protest: I believe the descriptor is as impossible to explain as the films it describes. These movies are movies so utterly bizarre that one cannot believe they are real. You see, part of what makes film so unique as an artistic medium is that, for the most part, it can only be created by a team of people. Writers, directors, actors, editors, right on down to caterers and drivers are involved in any given production, not to mention the producers and financial backers. It's impossible to imagine, then, that such a large group of people could collectively agree to devote days and weeks to create a western with only dwarf actors, as in The Terror of Tiny Town, or a serious film depicting a Communist decapitating a small child for refusing to stomp a picture of Jesus Christ, as in If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? But somehow, they happened. These are unaccountable films. These are films that should not exist. Yet, fortunately for us, they do.

The immediate conclusion a viewer may draw after seeing these movies is that they are not manmade at all, but are some sort of alien artifact - a parody of cinema made by some distant race with only vague familiarity with human and filmic conventions. Even if we are to assume that they do originate on Earth, one thing must be made clear about these films: they were not selected because they are "so bad they're good." Yes, Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Glen or Glenda? does not conform to any standard conception of how movies work. Yet what the viewer ought to walk away thinking about is not its incompetence, but its inexplicability. Wood did not intend to create a camp classic about transvestitism. He believed he was making an earnest explanation of a practice that to this day remains completely misunderstood. Yet how could he and his crew not realize how utterly strange an explanation it was?

Some of the films are quite expertly crafted, completely defying any sort of "so bad it's good" definition. David Lynch's Eraserhead is a revered classic, a surrealist masterpiece filmed over a period of five years as a student film project. Unlike in much of Lynch's later work, there is nothing one can call tongue-in-cheek here. Thirty years later, no one quite knows how its terrifying visual effects were created, lending credence to the theory that the movie was, in fact, produced extraterrestially. Likewise, This Day and Age was made by an accomplished and esteemed director - Cecil B. DeMille. Yet its shockingly uncritical look at unspeakable mob violence - by upstanding teenage boys, no less - makes it hard to believe a major studio could have possibly agreed to make it.

Often the obscurity of these films lends them a great deal of otherworldliness. Reviewing impossible to find movies like the 1930s self-flagellating religious cult thriller The Lash of the Penitentes or the disturbing all-star production of Alice in Wonderland makes us at Doc feel like we've just dug up some horrifying item that throws into chaos everything we know about how the universe functions. That isn't to say there is not a certain amount of joy that comes with our discoveries. We have long talked about starting up a boutique DVD label under the Doc Films name with the sole purpose of releasing Corn's-a-Poppin' for a larger audience. The fact that its filmmakers and performers are so seemingly anonymous and lost to time is almost as jarring as the realization that one of its crewmembers is not anonymous at all - the script was co-authored by Robert Altman. Yet why did he neglect to discuss it in his book Altman on Altman?

In short, the God-damnedest things ever seen might best be classified as outsider art. Like their musical and artistic counterparts The Shaggs and Henry Darger, these films simply cannot be explained, and do not need to be.

All films will be preceded by rare and bizarre archival shorts, curated by Stephen Parr/Oddball Films, San Francisco.

Complete descriptions of the films are available on the Doc site:

• April 2 at 9:00 • Glen or Glenda (Ed Wood, 1953)
• April 9 at 9:00 • Corn's-a-Poppin (Robert Woodburn, 1956)
• April 16 at 9:00 • Alice in Wonderland (Norman McLeod, 1933)
• April 23 at 9:00 • This Day and Age (Cecil B. DeMille, 1933)
• April 30 at 9:00 • The Lash of the Penitentes (Zelma Carroll, 1937)
• May 7 at 9:30 • Bill and Coo & Dogway Melody (Dean Reisner & Zion Myers, 1948 and Jules White, 1930)
• May 14 at 9:00 • If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (Ron Ormond, 1971)
• May 21 at 9:00 • The Terror of Tiny Town (Sam Newfield, 1938)
• May 28 at 9:30 • Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1978)
• June 4 at 9:30 • SPECIAL EVENT: Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996)

Tickets are $5, or you can buy a pass good for every film in the entire quarter for $26.

Doc Films
Max Palevsky Cinema
Ida Noyes Hall
1212 E. 59th St
Chicago, IL 60637

The whole calendar for the upcoming spring quarter at Doc Films will be available soon, and I will shortly detail in depth my series that will be late Thursday nights. But now, it is time to announce the most exciting thing to hit Chicago movie screens this year.

Last year, as part of my Cinemasaurus! series of dinosaur movies, we concluded the whole Doc weekday calendar for the year with an out-of-control screening of Jurassic Park. I put together an orchestra to play the movie's theme song before the film started. Then, unbelievably amazing celebrity paleontologist Paul Sereno answered questions from the crowd (he never stops finding dinosaurs!). The movie was more than sold out. Over 500 excited (and inebriated) people crammed into the auditorium, edging Deep Throat for the best attended screening in Doc history. It was a hot June day and the air conditioning didn't work, which I think enhanced the experience.

Remember, this was just days before graduation. It was one of the most joyous celebrations I've ever attended. It felt like I threw the biggest and best party I'll ever throw.

So how do you follow that up? Well, I don't expect to ever replicate anything that great... but I think we'll come pretty close with this June's screening of...

Like last year, it will also have special surprise pre-show entertainment. I'm not going to tell you what it is...but I will tell you that it will be EPIC. Perhaps the MOST EXTREME MOMENT IN CHICAGO REPERTORY HISTORY.

June 4, 2009 - 9:30 p.m.
Doc Films
Ida Noyes Hall
1212 E. 59th St
Chicago, IL 60637

Hey, the Oscars were last weekend! Now it's time for a round-up of the bad, bad news of the state of cinema in 2009.

How bad? Well, for starters, there's the impending eviction of the Film-Makers' Cooperative in New York, maybe the most important distributor of experimental films in the United States. As the NYT reports, Alanna Heiss, the founder of P.S. 1, is kicking them out to use the space for some internet radio project:

“All we want is a corner,” said Jonas Mekas, the director and poet who is one of the patriarchs of American avant-garde cinema. “We can’t understand why they are giving her so much space for a project that is just being formed and has not proved itself of any service to the arts community, and at the same time throwing out the only organization that independent filmmakers have to distribute their work.”

Then came the news that New Yorker Films is going out of business. For several decades, New Yorker has been an incredibly important foreign and arthouse distribution force. Not the cheapest source of prints, but an incredible library. At Doc Films, our lovely Ousmane Sembene retrospective and our screening of Kieslowski's complete Decalogue, for example, was made possible by New Yorker. The library will be auctioned off, it seems, but who will buy it? By a corporation that actually cares about cinema, or someone who will extort independent exhibitors with excessively high rental fees? Will it be by someone who focuses exclusively on DVD/Blu-Ray/streaming exhibition, or someone who realizes that repertory cinemas still exist as the best way to see film?

On that point, here's an important article by Anthony Kaufman about the demise of the VHS format. It talks about an issue that I've found many people surprised about when I mention it: that despite the seeming instant availability of so many films on DVD and through Netflix, there are actually far fewer films available to be seen today than in VHS's heyday. In fact, as Dave Kehr points out in an interview, fewer than 4% of the U.S. films listed in the Turner Classic Movie Database are available on home video, and these include some important classics.

I only wish Kaufman's article put a little bit more emphasis on repertory cinemas as opposed to just DVD releases, though he does acknowledge them briefly in a parenthetical. It would certainly be great if all these films we want released on DVD were released, but wouldn't it be better for actual print libraries to flourish, allowing easy access for cinemas to show amazing films in the format they were designed to be shown in?

Another sub-thought: Kaufman talks about the Criterion Collection slowly but surely releasing wonderful films. Like most people, I love Criterion. A great selection of films in fine transfers and the most gorgeous commercial design out there. But does it make anyone else a little bit uncomfortable that, for many people, Criterion is the definition of the film canon? Certainly, it's great when people who have previously never heard of Crazed Fruit suddenly check it out because they see that familiar logo on the packaging. But it just seems a little strange when one company is the only source for young film fans' knowledge of older cinema. It sometimes feels like, to some people, the quality of a masterpiece like Leo McCarey's Make Way For Tomorrow is under dispute until legitimized by Criterion.

Anyway, many of these are points I made a few years ago for a piece I did on Chicago Public Radio, by the way (recorded when I had a cold, it seems). Things have only gotten worse since then, it seems.

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