Movies Til Dawn

Last week I attended what was certainly the single most impressive and delightful cultural gathering I've ever been invited to. It was the annual luncheon/award cermony/cocktail party given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters . The purpose of the gathering is ostensibly to hand out lots of different awards bestowed by various individuals (and by the Academy) on deserving members of the artistic community. I was there because my collaborators on the musical version of my movie "Two Family House" and I were the fortunate recipients of a Richard Rodgers Award. But wonderful as this part of event is, the real purpose is to see how many cultural giants can be squeezed into one building on the island of Manhattan. Everywhere I looked I saw another mega-star of their respective field; look, there's Meryl Streep, look there's Edward Albee, oh hello it's James Levine, gee isn't that Bill Moyers, my look at Calvin Trillin, hey Gunther Schuller!, but wait i...

"City Island' continues to kick serious indie ass at the national box office, remaining in the top 20 for its TENTH WEEK and keeping its per screen averages nicely solid. Some of the trends are interesting. Our per screen average was up versus previous weekend and our core theaters are holding in strong, many showing increases versus previous. RANK IN COMPLEX: #1 – 49 #2 – 35 #3 – 23 #4 – 15 #5 – 28 Our top 10 theaters are: Bethesda Row (DC/Maryland), Beekman (NYC), Angelika (NYC), Farmingdale 14 (Farmingdale NY), Chelsea 9 (NYC), Bronxville Triplex (Bronxville NY), Plaza Frontenac (St Louis), Roosevelt Raceway 10 (Westbury NY), Laemmle Town Center 5 (Encino/LA), Scottsdale 101 (Phoenix DMA). 7 of the Top 10 were up versus previous weekend and 2 more were down only slightly. Overall, 84 of our holdover screens were up or flat versus previous weekend and another 21 were down less than 10%. And the cities that are trending above our average are New York, Los Angeles, ...

We are entering our NINTH week in theaters, a frankly unheard of feat for all but the flukiest independent films. Clearly the word of mouth is working. And the reviews are mostly helpful. But what is truly driving our continuing success is that most blessed of all movie occurances: repeat business. Example: my mother overheard two elderly ladies speaking in the beauty shop on the Friday before Mother's Day. "What are you doing for Mother's Day", asked Yenta 1. "My children are taking me to see "City Island", answered Yenta 2. "They loved it!" As I wrote the good people at Anchor Bay, this means we're not only getting the senior's business, we're getting r epeat boomer business. How long can this keep going on? I don't know. Nobody does. We might be nearing the end or square in the middle or still at the beginning. As the Chinese proverb goes: "Nobody knows if the earth is very old or very young". I doubt that we'...

In its seventh weekend, City Island expanded to take first place among limited releases, with Bollywood crime caper Housefull and previous limited champ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo falling just behind it. New movies from Michael Caine and Nicole Holofcener also performed fairly well, while The Good Heart and Mercy failed to spark much interest. Box Office Mojo Well, if Box Office Mojo says it, I don't have to look elsewhere. My faith in them is a beautiful thing, no? And while we're at it, what do we think of turning "City Island" into the first post-"Avatar" three-D "shot-flat, released-demented" indie? Not that this can be done--or at least not in North America (I imagine somewhere in Zagreb a home-converting 3-D system is being worked on in some sinister animation cell...) And now for where I've been for a week. In meetings. Meetings happen in Hollywood as a time-filler for everyone concerned--the execs who don't read scripts and don...

From Ferguson's show the other night. More to follow...   Subscribe in a reader

This weekend, "City Island" climbed one more rung up the box office chart to number 17, with a more than healthy per screen average of $2810 on 269 theaters. The news is all good, witness the report from the front office: HIGHLIGHTS: Weekend Rank in Complex: #1 – 64 #2 – 32 #3 – 19 #4 – 9 #5 – 10 TOP 5 SCREENS FOR COMBINED FRI-SATE: #1 – Bethesda Row in Wash DC/Maryland #2 – Farmingdale 14 in Farmingdale NY #3 – Landmark in LA #4 – Plaza Frontenac in St Louis #5 – Camelview 5 in Phoenix S total) Next 5 are: AMC Raceway 10 (Westbury NY), The Beekman (NYC), Town Center 5 (Encino, CA), Fallbrook 7 (West Hills/LA, CA) and Shadowood 16 (West Palm) Joe Williams, from the St. Louis Post Dispatch, writes in this article about the burgeoning phenomenon of our movie --it seems to be a hit in St. Louis, a place where one might not expect a Bronx-based Italian-American comedy to play as well as it does. Similarly we've been doing bang up business in places like Arizona, Mi...

I thought, while I had your attention, I'd attempt to interest a few of the newer readers of this modest blog who joined us once production commenced on "City Island" to the blog's original intention--the celebration of my twin obsessions, old movies and jazz, as purveyed clip by clip on the wondrous thing known as youtube. (Jesus that's a long sentance. Anyone still reading?) The vehicle for this would not be un-"City Island" related, however; I've found a quite amusing montage that a youtuber named Nicoley132 built revolving around the pre-code era and, among other things, people making out in old movies. Briefly, the Production Code was established circa 1933 in order to rid movies of salacious behavior and improve the country's low impression of Hollywood's notoriously low morals. But before the code anything went, short of pornography. Sex was much more open in the late silent and early sound era than it ever was again until the late 19...