The nation didn’t know it, but 1960 would change American film forever, and the revolution would occur nowhere near a Hollywood set. With the opening of the New Yorker Theater, a cinema located at the heart of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, cutting-edge films from around the world were screened for an eager audience, including the city’s most influential producers, directors, critics, and writers. Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Susan Sontag, Andrew Sarris, and Pauline Kael, among many others, would make the New Yorker their home, trusting in the owners’ impeccable taste and incorporating much of what they viewed into their work.
In this irresistible memoir, Toby Talbot, co-owner and proud ‘matron’ of the New Yorker Theater, reveals the story behind Manhattan’s wild and wonderful affair with art-house film. With her husband Dan, Talbot showcased a range of eclectic films, introducing French New Wave and New German cinema, along with other groundbreaking genres and styles. As Vietnam protests and the struggle for civil rights raged outside, the Talbots also took the lead in distributing political films, such as Bernard Bertolucci’s Before the Revolution, and documentaries, such as Shoah and Point of Order.
Talbot enhances her stories with selections from the New Yorker’s essential archives, including program notes by Jack Kerouac, Jules Feiffer, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonas Mekas, Jack Gelber, and Harold Humes. These artifacts testify to the deeply engaged and collaborative spirit behind each showing, and they illuminate the myriadand often entertainingaspects of theater operation. All in all, Talbot’s tales capture the highs and lows of a thrilling era in filmmaking.
Table of Content
Foreword by Martin Scorsese
Acknowledgments
Reel 1: The Theater
Genesis of the Theater
Flashback
How the Theater Got Its Name
Opening Programs
A Family Store
Struggles and Obstacles of an Art House
Matinees
Brief Encounter
Walking to Work
Cinephiles
Monday Nights: Special Series
A Phone Call
Peter Bogdanovich
Events of 1968
Kids
Guest Books
Things That Bug an Exhibitor—and an Audience
Payoffs
Reel 2: Distribution
Bernardo Bertolucci
Jean-Luc Godard
Ousmane Sembene
Point of Order
New Yorker Films
Cinema Novo and Latin American Films
Catalogues
Alain Tanner
Jack Gelber
Nagisa Oshima
Satyajit Ray and Ismail Merchant
Jacques Tati
Yasujiro Ozu
Dreamland
Problems of Distribution
A Last Hurrah
Shoah
Reel 3: On Location
New Yorker Bookstore
Box Office
Candy-Counter Tales
Reel 4: Film Critics
Manny Farber
Andrew Sarris
Pauline Kael
Vincent Canby
Reel 5: Festivals
Cannes
Berlin
Fassbinder
Post-Toronto: 2001
Reel 6: Demolition
The End of New Yorker Films
Reel 7: Epilogue: An Ongoing Reel
Appendix 1: Program Notes (sample pages)
Appendix 2: American Theatrical Premieres at the Cinema Studio
Appendix 3: American Theatrical Premieres at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas
Guest Books/Sample Pages
Ledger from the New Yorker Theater (sample pages)
Index
About the author
Toby Talbot, a native New Yorker, has been an Upper Westsider since the 1950s. She and her husband Dan Talbot first owned and ran the New Yorker Theater in the 1960s, and then Manhattan’s Cinema Studio and Metro Theater in the mid-1970s and early 1980s. They now own and run Lincoln Plaza Cinemas on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Talbot is the author of
A Book About My Mother,
Early Disorder, numerous childrens’ books, and many translations, among them Jacobo Timerman’s
Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without a Number. She has taught Spanish literature at Columbia College and New York University, was formerly the education editor of
El Diario de Nueva York, and now teaches documentary film at the New School University in New York.
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