Upon Attending a Double Feature at the Jacob Burns Film Center 

by Christian De Matteo

 I couldn’t resist the lofty homage of a title, a nod to all the greatest essayists of the past who often opted for such dull and yet engaging titles to their ramblings and wonderments.  Usually the masters were discussing having just read a masterwork of a book, attended the opera of all operas, or having taken a particularly exhilarating walk through the park wherein they’d come to some kind of personal Nirvana, or at the least, figured out the secret to world peace. 

Indeed, I do feel I’ve had an encounter worthy of such exhortation and certainly such a title.  Or perhaps I simply couldn’t think of a better title… but you’ll never know, will you?  Unless you read a lot of my essays….

 But yes, I have had a tremendous experience.  About a year ago I discovered the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York, which I know seems to mean little to those of you living in other parts of the country, world, universe, etc… but it should.  It should mean something to you because the Jacob Burns is doing something that few other theaters are doing and a damn sight more should be doing.  So take note.

 The first movie I ever saw at the Burns was probably Garden State.  I’ve lived in Westchester County, where Pleasantville resides, for my entire life but usually found myself at all the mega-multi-digi-octi-septa-plexs with everyone else.  While these experiences usually left me frazzled and perturbed, or more likely irate and wild-eyed at all the jackasses feeling the consistent need to answer, or just as often, make phone calls during a film, situations that usually elevated to the point of confrontation… mostly my doing, but annoying to me nonetheless, I continued going.  Most of my friends had stopped going to theaters, choosing instead to watch movies in the quite comfort of their own homes where the only telephone interruptions were their own, which they felt was somehow better.  While I myself am a huge proponent of constant home movie watching, there’s something about the big screen that draws me in, something that makes me feel I didn’t really see the movie unless I saw it in the auditorium, the setting, the performance space, it was intended for.  Yet, daily, that space seemed to be becoming less appropriate for the art form, and the home more so. 

Seeing Garden State at the Burns was an eye-opener.  Truly this was how movies should be seen.  With art lovers, movie lovers, and, most of all, people who knew how to keep their cell phones off, their children at home and their damn mouths shut.  Not that I’m bitter, mind you, just observant.

 Since then, I’ve caught more films there, most notably the night they premiered Clerks II (and what movie that was) with Kevin Smith, and he was nice enough to sit on stage and do Q&A for roughly two days.  That was the first night I met Ms. Janet Maslin, famed writer for the New York Times and a woman who cares about her movies.  I spoke briefly to her and Kevin Smith and found them both to be highly approachable.  That pleased me.  Then I managed to get into a long conversation with Ms. Maslin and found her to be not only approachable, but wonderful and engaging.  Again, the Burns surprised me.  Ms. Maslin is the president of the Jacob Burns and was more than willing to stop and talk to a non-member.  Well, I figured, if it was this good and friendly a place when I wasn’t a member… so I joined.

 Since, I’ve gone to several movies at the Jacob Burns, Volver and Babel being the last two before this incredible double feature the Burns managed to pull off and the reason I am writing this at all.

Despite Flags of Our Fathers having Paramount distribution and Letters from Iwo Jima having Warner Brothers distribution, the excellent crew at the Jacob Burns Film Center managed to finagle a double feature creating one of the best nights of film viewing I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying.  I’m not sure how they pulled it off, knowing full well how proprietary film companies are, but it would certainly be in the distributors and producers best interests to let this kind of thing not be a one-shot deal, as, at the moment, it is.  As I mentioned in my review for Flags and Letters, I saw at least one hundred people turned away due to sold-out tickets at this not particularly large theater in Westchester County, New York.

 Here’s what they did that made it so great.

 While we were waiting for the film to begin, Mr. Stephen Apkon, the executive director at the Burns, came on stage to welcome us and work out a plan so that we could keep our seats between films.  This plan, I will note, worked flawlessly.  In a room full of us snooty, self-entitled, Westchesterites, there was not a single squabble.  Impressive.

 But the lauds are far from over.  Mr. Apkon than talked about what some of the goals of the Burns had been when it opened, one of them the idea of showing two films about one topic from different viewpoints to incite discussion, as well as to stir conversation about the way stories can be told visually, using images to make statements, pose questions, and raise thoughts.

 While he spoke I settled truly into movie viewer Heaven, as though I’d found a variation on Buddha’s tree where a movie lover could sit and let inspiration and enlightenment wash over him.  Instead of merely waiting for us all to be seated, our money well taken, and starting to show the movie, a man who truly understood why we were all gathered there, spoke to us in a way we understood, more so, in a way we wanted to be spoken to, in the way we would speak to each other when we left the theater, perhaps, as Clarence Worley would like, over a piece of pie.  I really was very happy to be sitting in the theater.

 When the movie ended, the audience clapped.

 I can’t tell you how much I’d missed that.  Some un-discussed consensus seems to have been come to by the movie-watching masses that we no longer should clap at the end of a movie, because the actors aren’t there.  I hate that.  I love to clap at the end of a movie if it made me happy, because it’s a thank you not only to those who made the film, but to those who showed it and thereby, showed me a good time. 

 I like to be shown a good time.  I hope that doesn’t make me sound easy.

 After Flags of Our Fathers ended, we filed out of the theater, some outside to enjoy the cool night air, some outside to ignore the cool night air and inhale tar and asphalt and sulfur and tobacco and little dead puppies or whatever else they’re putting in cigarettes these days, some to the lobby to buy snacks and most to the bathrooms to thank the Lord for small miracles like bladders that don’t explode during elongated emotional experiences. 

When it was time to come back in, we met a surprise that threatened to ruin the evening.  As this was a premiere of Letters from Iwo Jima and pirating films has become such a problem, Warner Brothers employees hired clearly for their physical similarity to barroom bouncers were waiting with Spartan grimaces to pat us down.  Here it comes, said pessimist Christian, the end to a great evening.  I bet they’ve even reassigned seats.

 I won’t even get into what happened, because nothing did.  Quickly making sure no one had a recording device of any kind, they sped us through and back to our previously claimed seats.  No problems at all… and yet, Mr. Apkon still apologized to the audience for the inconvenience.  Not only was this an unnecessary apology, but a far cry from the disinterested faces I usually have to complain to about why the lights were on through the entire movie at most other theaters.

 With little ado, the second film began, as thoroughly enjoyable a film watching experience as the first one had been.  Truly this was a night perfectly executed and direly in need of happening more often. 

 Again, we applauded.

 I write this to tell those in the proximity of Pleasantville to get in their cars or go online and become members of the Jacob Burns Film Center.  The membership is tax-deductible and much of the money goes to film education, a very important focus for a world less and less aware of all the facets of art.  If this is too much to ask, so be it.  Simply start attending the Jacob Burns Film Center.  Here there be all the films that never seem to make it up from Manhattan.  Here there be gems from the past as they should be shown on the big screen.  Here there be movie lover’s paradise.  (And on January 12^th, here there be monsters, as they will be opening Pan’s Labyrinth.) 

I write this to tell all of you no where near Pleasantville, New York, that this is how movie theaters should be run, and there should be at least one of these in every area.

 I write this to tell the movie companies that allowing theaters like this to show movies back-to-back should be an unhesitant yes, despite differences in distributors.  You stand to win from this.  Flags of Our Fathers did not do well when it was first released.  This time people were being turned away.

Film is art and it should be presented were it is appreciated.  Film is appreciated and celebrated at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York.  Take note, movie distributors, this is where your posterity lies.