Off The Wall Cinema

French filmmaker Chris Marker (91) has passed away. “La Jetee,” which we screened many times at Off the Wall, is one of the most perfect films of any sort. I first saw this in a film series on PBS, which gave Larry and I a film education that was a crucial inspiration for OTW. I’ve been negligent in posting, I know. I’ll put out a new installment soon. mnicholson

Well, thanks! Let us know if you find any more Off the Wall gems…
I wonder what happened to ALbert Lamb, the piano player in that clip?

Second that!

Thanks Ub (and also Georgi). I hope others of you tuned in and enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed doing it.
One of the big challenges of OTW was coming up not only with entertaining shows but coming up with a good title to entice people to come. However loyal, people rarely came just to OTW, but to see a particular show. “International Animation” (our first show) and “Science Fiction” are descriptive, but hardly exciting. “Fantasy & the Fantastic” and “Roots” (early shorts by well known directors) were probably the two best from our first year, but hardly went through the roof. I was the one who came up with most of the titles, and my first, and most successful inspiration was “Magic Movies” (the first show opened 1/28/76). Quite a bit better than “International Animation.” Another good one from 1976 was “Slightly Bent-Centennial,” funny and satirical shorts we put together to celebrate the Bicentennial. “Heart Throbs” was the other good one from 1976. “Hubley Bubbly,” the animation of John & Faith Hubley, was a good one from 1978, as was the comedy show “Laughing Gas.” “Feats of Feet,” a show of dance shorts, was a good one from our last days at Main St. I don’t have many records from our State St. days, so next time I’ll review some of the best show names from Pearl St, including the story behind “Bigfoot…..”

Michael – thanks so much for the stories and updates. Can’t wait to hear your picks!

Hey, looking forward!

Before I continue the story, let me clear up a few points. Instead of winging it, I decided to go through some old stuff. I kept track of each day’s box office when we were on Main St. in a series of notebooks. We were shut for showing Heart Throbs after the 5:00 show on 9/14/76. We reopened (after assuring the authorities we wouldn’t show HT) on Friday, 9/24/76. We did show “Heart Throbs ‘77” for six weeks beginning March 23 of that year. The Jazz on Film series actually ran 8 weeks (totaling $9201, not great, but better than I remembered). Fleischer ran for 4 weeks and totaled $10,675. The first week we had 27 shows, 21 of them sellouts.
The woman who serves Larry in the clip is of course the lovely Ingrid, close friend to our partner Mike Peck (more about him when we get to State St and Pearl St.
The reason I don’t post more is that I do not have a computer, and have to use the one at work. I’ll try to speed it up, since I can’t wait to find out how it comes out.

Yes, that is Pearl St. Larry was of course still with OTW when we were on Main St. He was at Ch. 38 when we were at Pearl St. Speaking of Main St., I promised the story of “Heart Throbs.” I might have come up with the title and the concept- films of sensuality & sexuality -but I don’t really remember. Anyway, sex sells, right? So we splurged on multi-color posters with the logo, the butt cheeks in the heart shape, and put them up around town. Well some Cambridge City Councilor got offended and the next thing we know, we were “investigated” by a couple of plain clothes police. At that time, especially at early shows, we would push the lock button on the front door (locking from the outside, but not the inside), so of course that was suspicious. Someone brought up films being flammable. Well nitrate films went out 50 years ago, just ask any of the other ½ dozen movie theaters in Cambridge. One film we showed was a 5 minute film called “Ass.” As it opens, you see an attractive woman in short shorts and a top tied beneath her breasts. She’s in a barn, pitchforking some hay. As she works, she appears to get turned on, drops the pitchfork and leans back on the hay, rubbing her hands over her body. The only sound so far has been the noise of a running projector. The camera pulls back to reveal that this film has been screening on a movie screen set up in a barn with an audience of…donkeys! This was described by one of the officers as a film about bestiality. That still blows my mind today. My favorite film was “The Club” by George Griffiths. It was an animation showing one of those “old boy” clubs where all the members were literally male members. Any way, we got shut down and it was big news. So much bigger news than when we reopened about two weeks later that it took us months to recover. “Off the Wall? Aren’t you the ones got closed down?"
Next: How’d we come up with those programs, anyway?

Glad to see this on YouTube again — for a while it had disappeared due to a copyright takedown claim.

Which Off the Wall was this — Main Street or Pearl Street?

Also ART THEATRES never hardly work.

Thanks for the latest installment, Michael. Keep ‘em coming! In the meantime, here’s Larry Silverman himself, sneaking an Off the Wall promo into an episode of “We Don’t Knock” on channel 38 in Boston. That’s resident Off the Wall pianist Albert Lamb on the piano. Oh, you have to sit through Dana Hersey at the Rat first…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymPiVv-ArdE

Michael Nicholson! Weren’t you the voice of the “now showing” outgoing messages on the OTW phone machine?

“Next: early struggles until we found Betty Boop… ”

Don’t tease us, get on with it!

I hope everybody noticed that “Quasi at the Quackadero” was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Way to go Sally!