How Can Movie Theater Design Inspire Connection?
Architect, author, and filmmaker James Sanders discusses the potential in theatrical architecture and changing cinematic depictions of NYC.
Hello! Week 1 of New York Film Festival press & industry pre-screenings is in the books, and most of what I’ve seen has been quite good. The Mastermind, Kelly Reichardt’s (or “Big Kellz” as I heard one man call her) spin on a heist movie, met my high expectations. Late Fame, a satirical look at contemporary New York intellectuals written by Samy Burch and directed by Kent Jones, exceeded my also pretty high expectations. And Sirat, from director Oliver Laxe, I went into with no expectations, and it proceeded to punish me in the most severe ways possible.
I’ve been going to NYFF P&I screenings for many years now, and I always get a kick out of the crowds. It’s a bizarre collection of movie freaks — the old, the young, the movers, the shakers, the fedora wearers, etc. etc. There are always a few people who think it’s OK to send a full email or slowly eat a raw onion during a movie. That kind of behavior can be infuriating when it’s the person sitting next to you. But I quietly delight at the micro-conflicts that erupt amongst other people who are spending a work day watching prestige cinema. Hello, man who sniped at other man for saving a seat for a friend who had gotten up to use the restroom!
If you wind up at the festival, which begins September 26, and are looking for something to eat before, between, or after movies, remember that you can refer back to this list of the best restaurants near different NYC movie theaters. I’ve added a very affordable and delicious halal cart I’ve come to love as well as FLC Director of Programming Dennis Lim’s go-to spot for a quick bite, which he shared on a recent episode of the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast. If you have new favorite spots you want to share (near FLC or elsewhere), please email them to nothingbogus1@gmail.com.
THE FEATURE PRESENTATION
How Can Movie Theater Design Inspire Connection?
An interview with architect, author, and filmmaker James Sanders.
As moviegoing has slipped out of the cultural zeitgeist over the past couple decades, there’s one word I’ve heard over and over again: eventize. As in, perhaps if a movie was not just a movie, we’d draw the eager masses. It’s easy to mock some of the gimmicks that theaters have resorted to in their attempts to sell tickets. But ultimately, if eventizing means making a night at the movies feel communal and special, that’s a worthy goal.
My own favorite moviegoing experiences have had less to do with whether the theater served me dinner or let me sing along, and more to do with the interactions I had after the movie. So I’ve been thinking lately about how architecture and design comes into play. What spaces are most conducive to socializing? And if theaters had the goal of inspiring connections, how would they be designed?
To think through some of these questions, I called up James Sanders — an architect, author, filmmaker, and longtime New Yorker. Sanders has written extensively about the city, its buildings, the ways films have captured it, and movies and architecture more broadly. His books include Scenes from the City: Filmmaking in New York and Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies; and he’s collaborated with Rick Burns on the documentaries New York: A Documentary Film and Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film. We discussed New York’s evolving theatrical ecosystem, changing depictions of New York in films, and who the most iconic modern New York filmmakers are.
To start, I’d love for you to talk a bit about how the theatrical ecosystem —particularly in New York — has changed in the past few decades.
In the last thirty years or so, the ecosystem of movie theaters has gotten smaller. As recently as the 1980s, maybe even into the 1990s, there were just a whole host of different kinds of theaters that showed different kinds of films, particularly in large cities. You had the big multiplexes that showed big-budget films that were promoted broadly and got some version of the four audience quadrants (adults, children, men, women). Those were the closest to the old big movie palaces.
And then there were smaller theaters that were kind of neighborhood theaters; they also showed general-interest films, but maybe less so later in the films’ run. And it might be where you'd see a Woody Allen movie or a romantic comedy or something that's a little less of a big- budget extravaganza.
Then you had specialty theaters — a few theaters that specialized in sophisticated films, European films, French and Italian and English imports. In those days, they didn't have much in the way of Asian films, but those sometimes too. And these were places in New York like the 68th Street Playhouse and the Paris Theater. They were more elegant and very much oriented towards adults, not children. And you didn't have those in that many cities. That's where the cineastes would go to see their hip films. And that would be a smaller theater, seating maybe 200, as opposed to the bigger theaters, which would be for 600 or 700 or even 1000. So, a different kind of space and economics.
And then in New York you'd also have repertory theaters. The Thalia and the New Yorker and the Elgin, which is where the Joyce Theater is now. They showed older films, and you could get a phenomenal education in the movies by going to them. And they were cheap. They were just renting the old films from distributors, so they could keep the ticket prices low.
This is all to say there was a rich ecosystem of theaters which matched the rich ecosystem of films and the rich ecosystem of New York City neighborhoods and subcultures. Now, most of that is gone. We do have some remnants of it. The Metrograph has opened, which is terrific. And of course, Film Forum goes strong.
But this is all by way of saying there could be an intersection between community, film, and the kinds of theaters — the size of them, the amenities of them, and the kinds of audiences to whom they appealed. And to a lesser extent, the architectural style and flavor. And sadly — first because of the rise of the VCR and VHS tapes and then DVDs and then streaming and flat screen televisions — we're now living in a world where films are viewed at home. There's obviously a great diminution of the collective moviegoing experience, and that's reflected in the loss of the complexity of that ecosystem.
Was there a year that you locate that inflection point?
I think it lasted longer than one would've thought. The VHS tapes and VCRs put a dent in it, but it didn't change dramatically then. And then the rise of DVDs put a further dent in it. But it's really been the last fifteen years, which corresponds to DVDs, but then the rise of the internet and being able to watch films on the web. By 2015, the damage was done. If anything, recently it's gotten a tick better. Although overall viewership may be down, in the terms I'm talking about, there's been a rebirth of the Paris Theater, and the Metrograph is doing great programming, and the Quad reopened. You could compare it to the rediscovery of vinyl — the elite pleasure in analogue and traditional experiences.
On the whole, though, the theatrical window of films keeps getting shorter and shorter. Now it serves largely as a promotional project. You want to open the film in theaters in New York and LA to get the press, basically. But streaming is the main [commercial] thing. And obviously the pandemic was a huge hit [on business], when no one could go to any theater for a year and everyone got used to watching movies on their laptops or in their home theaters. That's the problem as I see it. But I do think it's related to the idea of the relationship between theaters and communities in the city.
Moviegoing is an urban experience. Obviously there are movie theaters in small towns also. But I mean urban as opposed to suburban. The original “death” of movies: Hollywood started being in a lot of trouble in the 1940s and early '50s because it was being hit with the double-whammy of television but also the suburbs. Whereas city people went to the movies all the time, suburban people would sit at home and watch television. Why go into the city when the city, so to speak, would come to you? So I always think of moviegoing as a great urban experience. Even though it ironically takes you away from the city.
I've observed a real vibrancy around repertory moviegoing and moviegoing in more indie film spaces in the city. Something people talk about a lot is ‘eventizing’ moviegoing and making it this fun, communal experience. So that got me thinking about the architecture of these spaces and how you encourage people to stick around after the movie and make connections.
There were very sophisticated theaters in the '80s and '90s that had little bars — usually wine and beer; they didn't have cocktails. But you could have a drink and talk about the movie. The Quad has something like that. And then there are the ones like Alamo where you get your dinner with the movie. So people are trying all kinds of things with varying degrees of success. The act of watching a [true] movie means you go into a darkened room — it doesn't come to you, you go to it — and then the room disappears. The image is so large that you get transported into the image of the film. That only happens a bit in any kind of home experience. Because the screen's not big enough, you can start it and stop it any time, the room is usually lighted, and it doesn't have the same power to draw you into it. But it is a curious thing that it was the most urbane and civic thing one could do, to go into one of these great movie palaces, and yet once you were there the city melted away.
If you were designing a theater with the goal of community-building and socializing, what would you do?
One thing that occurs to me is we've talked about all the disadvantages the new technology has wrought, but there are advantages too. In the days of film projection, projection was a highly regulated, complex thing. You had to have a licensed projectionist. Projection booths were very carefully designed for flammability and other issues. It was hard to show films and hard to project films. Now that's all changed. We have digital projection, which just about anybody can do and which has no real risk associated with it. So that allows more possibility in the ways projection spaces can be integrated with other uses. Specifically it's made possible these smaller projection spaces, like screening rooms. And you can integrate those into other uses. I'm thinking of the Roxy Hotel in Tribeca. It has a small theater and they show really interesting repertory films.
So the idea that you could integrate screening rooms into other kinds of places is a really appealing idea. You could imagine having a bar where you show a film for two hours in the evening and then the rest of the time it's a bar. And then being able to do outdoor projection has become really straightforward from a technological point of view. You’re able to take different spaces and make projection spaces. I've been fascinated since I was a kid with projecting onto the sides of buildings. When I was a [young teenager], I was invited to be an intern at the first benefit ever held by the American Film Institute in New York. They had started in Hollywood. They took over Westbeth in the Village. And they took a 35mm slide projector and threw the images — stills from classic movies — across a courtyard onto a whitewashed wall. And I was just in love with the idea that you would be able to turn the city into a giant screening room.
And that would be a really interesting idea — that you could have a space with a white wall and in the evening turn it into a projection screen and have speakers, and have evening screenings in this plaza-like space. People are exploring these options — ways to have spaces which A) are smaller, so they're economically less ruinous, B) don't require a lot of technical support, and C) can appeal to niche tastes. There's further work that could be done in integrating projected films in an interesting way. And I do think there's an appetite for it. Everyone who goes to the movies realizes that the experience of seeing a film on a large screen and in a collective experience is just more alive and meaningful.
I've been thinking about how you make these places feel special today. And maybe it is getting creative in ways you were mentioning, like mixing theaters in with other events in unusual spaces.
I could imagine an urban project where you create a space that's enclosed on three sides and open to the sky, one wall of which was a blank wall. And then it would be activated in the evenings with projection from the opposite wall and had a good sound system built in. And it could have space that allowed for folding chairs or blankets. It could be a plaza that comes to life. But when you do it in Bryant Park you have to put up trusses and create the big projection screen and bring all that stuff in, which is very expensive. But imagine a space where that's all built in. You could program whatever you want and people could just walk by and see it's happening — or you have a countdown clock.
And let's not forget that the festival model achieves some of these ideas. The Tribeca Film Festival, for instance, which I had a small role in when it started, took over all the little theater spaces around Tribeca and lower Manhattan. And it was like a living festival that filmmakers could be part of. It was integrated with the bars and restaurants. The whole point of it was to bring life to the bars and restaurants of lower Manhattan, which in the spring of 2002 were in bad shape. But the point is, there are a lot of possibilities.
Do you have a favorite movie theater to go to?
Not really. The Paris Theater is still the same old experience. I used to go there with my father when I was a kid and I loved that. I go to Film Forum a lot. I wouldn't say the theatrical experience is necessarily ideal there, but you go because of the programming. When I was a real little kid I used to go to the Gramercy movie theater, with the plush seating. Even smaller theaters then were very elegant.
Since you wrote Celluloid Skyline, what are the biggest trends you've noticed in how depictions of New York have changed in movies?
Well, I did a follow-up book called Scenes From the City in 2006 and then brought it out again in 2014. And that was on the 40th anniversary of the founding of the New York Mayor's Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting and I did it in cooperation with that office. That was about location filming in New York. I'm releasing a book of essays next year, and one of them is on this very topic. And specifically about how if you had asked people after 9/11, "What's the future of film production in New York?" people might have said knowingly, "We're still going to have police and action films." But two genres you probably wouldn't have thought people would be in the mood for were A) romantic comedies, because who would feel light-hearted about New York? and B) fantasy films, specifically superhero films where people fly around the skyline of New York. And yet, in the ten years following 9/11 the two biggest genres were romantic comedies and superhero movies.
Thanks to the work of the Mayor's Office during Bloomberg's administration, there was an explosion of feature film production and television production in New York. New York didn't have studio space in the '70s and '80s and it was beginning to in the '90s, but suddenly people across the city were building new studios everywhere. It's become much easier to make films in New York than it was thirty years ago.
Is there one filmmaker who you think of as the most iconic New York filmmaker of the modern era in the way Woody Allen or Spike Lee were at different points?
It's a little hard to say. We had such an interesting triumvirate in the '80s and '90s with Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and Spike Lee representing three different visions of the city. They were obviously of different backgrounds class-wise and racially and they were interested in different parts of the city. Together, they did a pretty good survey of the city. Also, there was Nora Ephron. There have been some wonderful filmmakers more recently — I think Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig have done wonderful portraits of contemporary New York. We don't quite have that iconic New York filmmaker the way we had in the day, though.
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