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AMERICAN GRAFFITI 45th Anniversary with Screenwriters and Co-stars In-person on October 23 in Beverly Hills

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 45th anniversary screening of one the most beloved comedies of the era, George Lucas’s AMERICAN GRAFFITI.

The film earned five Oscar nominations in 1973, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress Candy Clark, and it was a box office smash, despite the studio’s nervousness about the film’s innovative structure and largely unknown cast (all of whom would go on to have extraordinary careers).

“Where were you in ’62?” was the advertising tag line for the movie, and it tapped into the nostalgia that many Americans felt for a more innocent time, before all the violent upheavals of the late 60s and 70s. Set around Lucas’s home town of Modesto, California, the film follows a group of friends on a single night before two of them are scheduled to leave for college. They cruise the main drag and have a series of wild and sometimes dangerous adventures before dawn forces them all to a reckoning with both their past and their future.

As Variety wrote, “Of all the youth-themed nostalgia films in the past couple of years, George Lucas’ American Graffiti is among the very best to date… all the young principals and featured players have a bright and lengthy future.”

Those “young principals” include Ron Howard, a former child star and future Oscar-winning director; Richard Dreyfuss, who would win a Best Actor Oscar four years later; Cindy Williams, who would star in the hit TV series, Laverne and Shirley, later in the decade; Harrison Ford, who would soon become a megastar in Lucas’ Star Wars and other films; Candy Clark, Paul LeMat, Charles Martin Smith, Mackenzie Phillips, and Bo Hopkins.

The behind-the-scenes team was equally impressive. Fresh off his triumph on The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola acted as producer, along with Gary Kurtz. The impressive night-time cinematography was by Oscar winner Haskell Wexler, credited as “visual consultant.” The film’s Oscar-nominated editors were Marcia Lucas and Verna Fields (later an Oscar winner for Steven Spielberg’s Jaws). The musical score—a non-stop medley of 1950s and early 60s hits—provided delightful punctuation to the action, with commentary by real-life deejay Wolfman Jack, who makes a memorable cameo appearance late in the film.

Many later films followed the template created by American Graffiti of having all the action take place over a single day or night. These hit films, which might never have been financed without the success of Lucas’s film, include several John Hughes movies (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) and Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused.

Entertaining as they were, few of these later films had the same emotional depth that American Graffiti plumbed. Newsweek’s Paul D. Zimmerman called it a “brilliant, bittersweet memoir.” Writing in the New York Times, Stephen Farber said, “The stunning screenplay by Lucas, Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck is rich in characterization, full of wit and surprise.” And Time’s Jay Cocks declared, “Few films have shown quite so well the eagerness, the sadness, the ambitions and small defeats of a generation of young Americans. Bitchin’ as they said back then. Superfine.”

Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz also wrote the screenplays for Radioland Murders, French Postcards, and the Lucas-Spielberg production of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Candy Clark, who earned an Oscar nomination for her engaging performance in American Graffiti, co-starred with David Bowie in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth and also appeared in Jonathan Demme’s Citizens Band, Blue Thunder, At Close Range, and David Fincher’s Zodiac. Charles Martin Smith co-starred in The Buddy Holly Story, Never Cry Wolf, Starman, and The Untouchables. More recently, he has written and directed for both film and television.

AMERICAN GRAFFITI screens Tuesday, October 23, at 7:30PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Oscar-nominated screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz and co-stars Candy Clark and Charles Martin Smith will participate in a Q&A at the screening. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

Jacques Tati’s MON ONCLE 60th Anniversary Screenings October 17 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest installment in our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program, 60th anniversary screenings of the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film of 1958, Jacques Tati’s MON ONCLE.

Tati made only six feature films over the course of his career (including Jour de Fete, Playtime, and Traffic), and this comedy—his first film in color—is considered one of the highlights.

Tati had introduced the character of Mr. Hulot in Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, his highly praised film from 1953. He once again plays the character of Hulot in this more ambitious satire of modern technology and its dehumanizing effect on family life. Jean-Pierre Zola and Adrienne Servantie play a married couple in thrall to a sterile, workaday world. Alain Becourt plays their young son who finds liberation with his playful uncle.

As in many of Tati’s films, Mon Oncle pays homage to the masters of silent comedy. There is very little dialogue in the film; instead the humor is visual, where the slightly futuristic settings are as important as the human characters. The ingenious sets were designed by Jacques Lagrange at the Victorine Studios outside Nice.

Variety wrote, “Jacques Tati’s film has inventiveness, gags, warmth and a ‘poetic’ approach to satire.” Leonard Maltin declared, “Tati’s first color film is a masterpiece… Continuous flow of sight gags (including the funniest fountain you’ll ever see) makes this easygoing, nearly dialogue-less comedy a total delight.”

The film has also had an enduring impact on many other directors. At the AFI Festival in 2010, David Lynch presented a screening of Mon Oncle and announced that it was one of the films that had the greatest influence on him.

MON ONCLE screens Wednesday, October 17, at 7pm at the Royal, Town Center, and Playhouse. Click here for tickets.

65th Anniversary of HOUSE OF WAX in 3-D on October 13 at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills

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This Halloween season Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 65th anniversary screening of the 1953 horror thriller HOUSE OF WAX, starring horrormeister Vincent Price, in 3-D.

The film was a remake of Warner Bros.’ Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) with the added sensation of three-dimensional technology. This version is noteworthy for its creative use of 3-D and emphasis on storytelling over gimmicks.

Directed by Andre de Toth from a screenplay by Crane Wilbur (adapted from the earlier film and the play The Wax Works by Charles Belden). Toth, a Hungarian émigré and workman director who remarkably had one eye, which rendered him unable to see the 3-D effects of his most accomplished movie. House of Wax was the first color 3-D feature film from a major studio, and its’ success at the box office fueled the first 3-D craze that swept Hollywood in the early 1950s.

Vincent Price stars as a wax sculptor-artist of an early twentieth-century New York wax museum who is disfigured in a fire set by his greedy business partner. He returns to open a new house of wax figures that create a show business sensation of shock and terror, with a horrifying secret – his wax effigies are now filled with corpses.

After primarily supporting parts, Price relished the leading role that launched him into the front ranks of screen villainy, and he spent the rest of his movie career closely identified with the horror-terror genre in such films as House on Haunted Hill, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and Theater of Blood.

A strong supporting cast included Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk, and in roles early in their careers, future Oscar-nominee Carolyn Jones (Bachelor Party, TV’s The Addams Family) and action star Charles (Bronson) Buchinsky (Death Wish), who is somewhat pitiable in the role of madman Price’s mute assistant.

The novelty of wearing polaroid glasses to view the 3-D effects (including a paddleball-pitchman and the original museum fire) helped lure audiences away from their television sets in the fifties.

Variety aptly predicted “this film will knock ‘em for a ghoul.” The film was successfully reissued twice, in 1971 and again in the second 3-D fad of the early 1980s. In 2014, the movie was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in the National Film Registry.

The 65th anniversary screening in 3-D shows at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills on Saturday, October 13 at 7:30 PM. 3-D glasses provided to view the fun.

Click here for tickets.

Format: 3-D DCP

SUPERMAN 40th Anniversary Screening in 4K with Cast Member Q&A on Tuesday, October 9 in Beverly Hills

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 40th anniversary screening of the film that launched the comic book movie craze, the original SUPERMAN, directed by Richard Donner and starring new screen personality Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel.

Comics had inspired TV series and Saturday afternoon serials, but there had not been a big-budget attempt to capture the spirit of these fan favorites until Donner, working for producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind, gambled a huge budget on a screen version of DC Comics’ favorite superhero. As this character is so popular amongst comic book fans, it was only right that a budget was found to bring fans closer to their favorite superhero. Recently, it was actually found that Superman is the favorite of the most amount of states still. This means that people are still enjoying this character’s journey to the big screen. Whether in comic books or on TV, Superman has a special place in a lot of people’s hearts. This is why the movie’s success spawned three sequels and also led to the first big-screen incarnation of another DC hero, Batman, a decade later (in the version directed by Tim Burton).

To write the screenplay, the Salkinds hired a bevy of successful writers-best-selling author Mario Puzo, acclaimed screenwriters Robert Benton, David and Leslie Newman, though the final version was reportedly crafted by Tom Mankiewicz, credited as “creative consultant.”

The film takes an epic approach to the tale of Superman, beginning with a prologue on the planet Krypton, then following Clark Kent’s childhood and adolescence in Smallville, Kansas, before he takes on his grown-up identity as the “mild-mannered reporter” at The Daily Planet in the city of Metropolis.

The all-star cast included Oscar winners Marlon Brando as Superman’s father, Jor-El, and Gene Hackman as arch-villain Lex Luthor, along with Susannah York, Glenn Ford, Ned Beatty, Valerie Perrine, Jack O’Halloran, Maria Schell, Terence Stamp, Jeff East, Jackie Cooper as Daily Planet editor Perry White, Marc McClure as cub reporter Jimmy Olsen, and Margot Kidder as Superman’s love interest, Lois Lane.

After many big-name actors turned down the title role, the filmmakers decided to take a chance on a brand new actor, Christopher Reeve, who had only a couple of TV appearances and one other feature film to his credit. Their gamble paid off and turned the brash, witty young actor into a superstar.

The creators of the original comic book, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, praised the casting. As Shuster said, “Chris Reeve has just the right touch of humor.” Oscar-winning cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth (Becket, Cabaret) had one of his last credits on the movie, and multiple Oscar-winning composer John Williams wrote the stirring score. The movie won a special Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

In addition to scoring an enormous box office success, the movie received mainly favorable reviews. Variety called Superman “a wonderful, chuckling, preposterously exciting fantasy.” Making an apt comparison, The New York Daily News’ Kathleen Carroll, declared, “It is this year’s answer to Star Wars, a movie that is pure escape and good, clean, unadulterated fun.” Roger Ebert wrote, “Superman is a pure delight… Reeve is perfectly cast in the role.”

Several of the supporting cast members will participate in our Q&A after the screening, including Jack O’Halloran (the 1976 King Kong, The Flintstones), Marc McClure (Back to the Future, Apollo 13), and Valerie Perrine (Oscar nominee for Lenny).

SUPERMAN screens Tuesday, October 9 at 7:30pm at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

Format: 4K DCP

ROSEMARY’S BABY plus Q&A, book sale and signing with ‘This Is No Dream: Making Rosemary’s Baby’ author James Munn September 26th in Pasadena

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In conjunction with the publication of This is No Dream: Making Rosemary’s Baby by James Munn, Laemmle Theatres, the Anniversary Classics Series and Vroman’s Bookstore present a 50th anniversary screening of one of the most terrifying movies of all time, ROSEMARY’S BABY.

Ira Levin’s ingenious best-selling novel imagined a witches’ coven hiding in plain sight in contemporary Manhattan and hatching a plot to bring the Devil’s son to earth. Producer William Castle, the mastermind behind many successful B-horror movies, graduated to the A ranks with this classy production. Paramount’s head of production, Robert Evans, hired acclaimed European director Roman Polanski to make his Hollywood debut with the film.

The casting of the film was inspired. As the innocent woman at the center of the diabolical conspiracy, the filmmakers chose a relatively new face to movies, Mia Farrow, and she played the role with endearing vulnerability.

The film’s success catapulted her to full-fledged stardom. John Cassavetes took a break from his own independent productions to play Farrow’s conniving husband. The brilliance of the casting extended to the supporting players, a veritable Who’s Who of vintage Hollywood and Broadway actors, including Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Patsy Kelly, and Elisha Cook Jr. Gordon won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her spot-on portrayal of a nosy neighbor with a sinister agenda. Polanski earned an Oscar nomination for his adapted screenplay.

Behind-the-scenes credits were just as impressive. Six-time Oscar nominee William Fraker (‘Bullitt,’ ‘Heaven Can Wait’) was the cinematographer, while two-time Oscar winner Richard Sylbert (‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,’ ‘Chinatown,’ ‘Dick Tracy’) was the production designer. The eerie score was composed by a gifted friend of Polanski, Christopher Komeda, who died tragically at the age of 37 soon after the release of the film.

Among the stellar reviews for the film, Leonard Maltin hailed a “classic modern-day thriller by Ira Levin, perfectly realized by writer-director Polanski.” Stephen Witty of the Newark Star-Ledger called it “one of the finest horror films ever made.” In 2014 ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

Q&A, book sale and signing with author James Munn after the screening. Munn is a freelance writer, film historian and former editor at Architectural Digest; he grew up in rural Nebraska and currently resides in Hollywood, California.

ROSEMARY’S BABY screens Wednesday, September 26 at 7pm at the Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

PETULIA (1968) 50th Anniversary Screening with Actors Shirley Knight and Richard Chamberlain In Person on September 20th in West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a screening of one of the groundbreaking movies from the tumultuous year of 1968, Richard Lester’s PETULIA. Set in 1960’s San Francisco, the story of a troubled love affair between a divorced surgeon and a free-spirited socialite captures some of the disruptions of a society in transition.

The extraordinary cast includes Oscar winners George C. Scott and Julie Christie, Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Shirley Knight, Golden Globe winner Richard Chamberlain, Pippa Scott, Kathleen Widdoes, and veteran actor Joseph Cotten, one of the stars of ‘Citizen Kane.’

Lester, the winner of the Career Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in 2014, first came to attention as the director of comedies like ‘The Mouse on the Moon’ and the brilliantly innovative Beatles musicals, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and ‘Help!’

PETULIA marked his first foray into dramatic filmmaking, though it retained the comic and satiric touches of his early movies. Lester’s daring approach to non-linear storytelling had a tremendous influence on a later generation of filmmakers, including director Steven Soderbergh, who published a series of interviews with Lester.

PETULIA, produced by Raymond Wagner, was adapted from a novel by John Haase. Lawrence B. Marcus, who later earned an Oscar nomination for his script of ‘The Stunt Man,’ wrote the screenplay. The technical team behind the movie was also first-rate.

Master cinematographer Nicolas Roeg went on to become the acclaimed director of such films as ‘Don’t Look Now’ and ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth.’ Film editor Antony Gibbs worked on such films as ‘A Taste of Honey’ and Lester’s ‘The Knack,’ as well as Oscar winners ‘Tom Jones’ and ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’

Five-time Oscar winner John Barry composed the score, with some help from on-screen performances by Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead, and other San Francisco bands of the ’60s.

Roger Ebert reviewed the film at the time and wrote, “I am unable to find a single thing wrong with it.” Life Magazine’s Richard Schickel declared, “PETULIA is a terrific movie, at once a sad and savage comment on the ways we waste our time, our money and ourselves in upper-middle-class America.” Leonard Maltin praised the film’s “terrific acting, especially by Scott and Knight, in one of the decade’s best films.”

Shirley Knight earned two Oscar nominations early in her career, for ‘The Dark at the Top of the Stairs’ and ‘Sweet Bird of Youth.’

She went on to star in the film version of Leroi Jones’ controversial play ‘Dutchman,’ in Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘The Rain People,’ Sidney Lumet’s film version of Mary McCarthy’s best-selling novel ‘The Group,’ and in James L. Brooks’ Oscar winner ‘As Good As It Gets.’

For television she starred in Ingmar Bergman’s script ‘The Lie’ and won an Emmy for her performance in ‘Indictment: The McMartin Trial.’

Richard Chamberlain, star of stage, screen, and television, will join the Q&A of PETULIA with actress Shirley Knight. Chamberlain was best known for the Dr. Kildare TV series when director Richard Lester decided to cast the actor against type as the abusive husband of Julie Christie in PETULIA. The role helped to alter Chamberlain’s image and enhance his reputation and his visibility.

He went on to co-star in Lester’s enormously popular ‘Three Musketeer’ movies. He played Tchaikovsky in Ken Russell’s film ‘The Music Lovers’, also co-starred in such films as ‘The Towering Inferno’ and Peter Weir’s ‘The Last Wave.’

Chamberlain became best known for his starring roles in several popular TV movies and miniseries, including ‘Centennial,’ ‘Shogun,’ ‘The Thorn Birds,’ and ‘Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story.’

PETULIA screens on Thursday, September 20th at 7pm at the Laemmle Royal in West LA. Q&A with Shirley Knight and Richard Chamberlain. Click here for tickets.

Format: DVD

Tribute to Neil Simon: THE ODD COUPLE (1968) on Thursday, September 13 at the Royal in West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series pay tribute to the late, great prolific playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon with a 50th anniversary screening of one of his most influential works, THE ODD COUPLE.

This film version of his hit Broadway play about the friction between two divorced men who decide to live together in a Manhattan apartment despite a difference in their personalities was a box office bonanza in 1968, the fourth highest grossing movie that year.

As noted by playwright Harvey Fierstein, “Simon could write a joke that would make you laugh, define the character, the situation, even the world’s problems.” Another successful television producer calls The Odd Couple, “a Master class in character creation.”

Seems like everyone wanted to see the comic complications between the neurotic neat freak Felix, played by Jack Lemmon, and the fun-loving slob Oscar (Walter Matthau). Simon had created those characters in 1965 for the stage, and he earned the first of four Oscar nominations for his screen adaptation. His other nominations were for adapting his plays The Sunshine Boys and California Suite, and for his original screenplay for The Goodbye Girl (a best picture nominee and best actor winner for Richard Dreyfuss in 1977).

Both Lemmon and Matthau would go on to star in several more movies written by Simon, including The Out-of-Towners and The Prisoner of Second Avenue (Lemmon), and Plaza Suite, The Sunshine Boys and California Suite (Matthau).

Gene Saks, a frequent Simon collaborator on Broadway, directed the film version with a spirited cast including Herb Edelman, John Fiedler, Monica Evans and Carole Shelley. Lemmon replaced Art Carney who had originated the role of Felix on the stage, with Matthau reprising his Tony-winning role. Both Lemmon and Matthau garnered acclaim for their performances, and the success of the play and film took Matthau to full-fledged star status after years as primarily a supporting player.

The film’s rousing reception at the box office spawned a hit television series in 1970 with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, and other incarnations in gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation diversity through the ensuing decades. The 1968 film stands out as a definitive version of Simon’s creation.

Simon drew from his personal life for inspiration, and his works explored the ethos of mid-to-late twentieth century America, often centered in New York. The Odd Couple in particular looks at old-school masculinity on the edge of profound change in American society. There is pathos (as played by Lemmon) underlining the comedy, and the movie touches on those dramatic elements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A58OtN9h918

 
In Simon’s obituary, The New York Times noted that he “helped redefine popular American humor with an emphasis on the friction of urban living and the agonizing conflicts of family intimacy.” Among the tributes after his death, actor Treat Williams neatly summarized Simon’s contribution to American culture, “Neil Simon is the Norman Rockwell of comedy. His artistry will only gain ground as the years pass.”

THE ODD COUPLE screens at the Royal theatre in West LA on Thursday, September 13 at 7:00 PM. Discussion on Simon’s career and cultural impact with film critic Stephen Farber and guests TBA. Click here for tickets.

Format: Blu-ray

65th Anniversary Screening of SHANE with David Ladd In Person on Sunday, August 26 at the Ahrya Fine Arts

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 65th anniversary screening of one of the most beloved Westerns of all time, George Stevens’ production of SHANE.

The 1950s happened to be a golden age for cowboy sagas, and as the Hollywood Reporter observed, “George Stevens’ SHANE earns a place along with ‘High Noon’ and ‘The Gunfighter’ as one of the great tumbleweed sagas of the decade.” Or as Leonard Maltin declared decades later, “Classic Western is splendid in every way.”

Alan Ladd, Paramount’s biggest star of the era, plays a mysterious gunfighter who arrives in a small Western town and finds a turf war between the farmers and cattle ranchers who want to drive them off the land.

Shane decides to become a protector of these homesteaders and strikes up a friendship with one family; Van Heflin plays the father, Jean Arthur (in her final screen performance) plays the mother, and young actor Brandon De Wilde plays their son, Joey.

Jack Palance was cast as the villain of the piece, a black-clad gunslinger hired by the cattle ranchers to eliminate Shane, along with the rest of the farmers.

The supporting cast includes gifted character actors Ben Johnson, Edgar Buchanan, Emile Meyer, and Elisha Cook Jr. Ladd received the best reviews of his career for the picture. The Saturday Review wrote, “As Shane, Alan Ladd has one of his best roles and gives what is surely his most rewarding performance.”

Stevens had won the Academy Award for best director of 1951 for ‘A Place in the Sun.’ SHANE gave him his third nomination in the directing category (he would win a second Oscar for ‘Giant’ in 1956).

SHANE earned six nominations in all, including Best Picture and two nods in the supporting actor category, for both Palance and De Wilde. The Oscar-nominated screenplay was written by A.B. Guthrie Jr., who adapted the novel by Jack Schaefer. The picture won the Oscar for the magnificent color cinematography of Loyal Griggs.

In tune with the fashions of the era, Stevens chose to shoot on location in the magnificent Grand Tetons outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Because of the care he took with the production, the film went over budget, and the studio was nervous. But the film turned out to be a box office smash and proved enticing to adult and family audiences alike. Kids who saw the move in 1953 are not likely to forget the emotional ending and young De Wilde’s cry, “Come back, Shane!”

Joining us for a Q&A will be David Ladd, the son of Alan Ladd. David went on to be a popular child actor in the 1950s. He appeared with his father in two films, ‘The Big Land’ and ‘The Proud Rebel;’ he then starred on his own in two family hits, ‘Misty’ and ‘A Dog of Flanders.’ He went on to act in a few films as an adult but then segued into a career as producer and studio executive.

SHANE screens on Sunday, August 26, at 3pm at Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP