A first time for everything

Quad Cinema Director of Programming and Nathan Silver's Thirst Street co-writer C Mason Wells Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Since its reopening by Charles S Cohen in April, the Quad Cinema has had four noteworthy theatrical premieres right from the start: Terence Davies' soulful A Quiet Passion (with Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson, Jennifer Ehle, Keith Carradine); Katell Quillévéré's thoughtful Heal The Living (Emmanuelle Seigner, Kool Shen, Tahar Rahim, Finnegan Oldfield); Bruno Dumont's wild Slack Bay (Fabrice Luchini, Juliette Binoche, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), and Maura Axelrod's impish Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back.

Terence Davies' A Quiet Passion still going strong at the Quad Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Following First Encounters for Greta Gerwig with David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Kenneth Lonergan with Edward Yang's Yi Yi, John Turturro and Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali, and Noah Baumbach catching up on Bruce Robinson's Withnail And I at the Quad, Director of Programming, C Mason Wells, clued me in on some of the responses from the guests on their chosen films, the origin of the series, and on what's coming up next, including a Bertrand Tavernier retrospective with his Journey Through French Cinema.

Anne-Katrin Titze: We are sitting in what is to become the bar of the Quad?

C Mason Wells: Yeah. It used to be a lamp store originally.

AKT: Is this the original ceiling?

CMW: No, this is not the original ceiling. It looks like it, though. It looks old and vintage but it's not. It's fake old vintage.

AKT: And this [Italian vintage poster] is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? No, it's Wonder Man.

CMW: I believe that's what it is, yeah.

AKT: I would like to start with First Encounters, which is a great idea.

Wonder Man (L'Uomo Meraviglia) poster at the Quad Bar - Danny Kaye as Edwin Dingle: "I'd like a pint of Prospect Park!" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

CMW: Thank you. It's an idea I've had kicking around for a long time. It was born out of the idea of how to have special guests come and present a movie but outside of just picking a favourite film. A lot of theaters do that particular kind of programming. That's revealing but I was trying to think of a way to do that differently. A lot of what we're trying to do with the Quad is create new movie going memories for people. The theater has been around for almost 45 years.

We want to make new memories for our audiences but also people that we find interesting in the creative community. The idea was - let's invite some of those people to come to the theater. That will be a memory, not only for them but something an audience can share in as well. I love the idea that the reactions are immediate afterward. There's almost no time to process. The guest comes right up on stage and starts talking about it instantly.

AKT: Greta Gerwig watching Blue Velvet was the first one?

CMW: That was the first one.

AKT: How was her reaction to it?

CMW: She liked it a lot. She had seen a number of other Lynch films, she had a sense of what she was getting into. She was of course still processing like the look and the feeling of the film and the sound of it. Some of these films are canonical classics or things that people have wanted to see for a long time and just haven't seen for any number of reasons.

On Greta Gerwig and Blue Velvet: "It was fun that she didn't know about the Pabst Blue Ribbon aspect of the movie, so she was surprised by that." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

I think we all have films like that. You have these preconceived notions of what a movie is. Maybe you've seen scenes or snippets or lines of dialogue from it. It was fun that she didn't know about the Pabst Blue Ribbon aspect of the movie, so she was surprised by that.

AKT: Do you have questions prepared or you just throw them out there?

CMW: No, no, I think it's very important to guide them through it. Our theaters are not huge so there's an intimacy there which is very nice, I think. And you can have a great conversation with the audience. It's a special kind of Q&A because that guest is not an expert on the movie.

AKT: Quite the opposite.

CMW: It's in fact the opposite of how most Q&As work. Here the audience probably knows more about the film and has probably seen it before. That creates a very interesting dynamic where the person on stage is kind of learning about the movie and the history of the film from the people in the room. It's humanizing for these guests. It really gets into the way that these people think, which is what I'm excited about.

You're watching them kind of work through scenes and moments and what stands out to them and appeals to them immediately. It says something about the personality of a Kenneth Lonergan or a John Turturro or a Greta Gerwig. You can sort of see the little gears turning.

"Or, I think Kenneth Lonergan would like Yi Yi, a sprawling kind of family epic which is comparable to some of the things he makes as well." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

AKT: Can you talk about these little moments from the ones that already happened?

CMW: The energy of each one is completely different. For Noah Baumbach who did Withnail And I, it was a movie that he felt had sort of passed him by. When he was in college and growing up, it was a movie that everyone sort of loved and quoted and as a result…

AKT: … he rejected it?

CMW: Yeah, yeah. He was a little turned off by that. So he feels like he almost missed the boat on it. So he was coming back to it 30 years later. John Turturro did Pather Panchali, the Satyajit Ray film. And he was very moved by it. I think he had a very intense emotional experience and a great conversation with the audience where he was very open and wanted to work through the film itself.

AKT: You've just had a handful of these, so it probably didn't happen yet that somebody said - oh, I'm so disappointed?

CMW: No, but I'm looking forward to that! Actually, I can't wait for that to happen. The movies that they pick tend to fit in with their personality or something that they might like. We try and direct it toward where it's like, okay, I think Noah Baumbach would like Withnail And I in terms of the biting comedy of it.

"For Noah Baumbach who did Withnail And I, it was a movie that he felt had sort of passed him by." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Or, I think Kenneth Lonergan would like Yi Yi, a sprawling kind of family epic which is comparable to some of the things he makes as well. But when it's close to the type of work that they make, sometimes those are the ones they like the least. We're going to keep doing it.

AKT: It's endless. The series can go on forever.

CMW: We can go on forever, it's just dependent on guests being comfortable with reacting immediately after the movie and admitting they haven't seen something. Sometimes people might be embarrassed to say it publicly. But everyone has - you can call them blind spots. No matter who you are, film scholars, historians, critics, filmmakers.

AKT: What's one on your list?

CMW: Sometimes I do this where I have seen so many movies by a filmmaker and I love the filmmaker, I sometimes save one. I've worked my way through most Lubitsch films, but I have not seen Angel, the Marlene Dietrich film. It's a good rainy day kind of thing to have in your back pocket.

AKT: Knowing that you have completed all the films by one director, I remember how I felt when I completed Truffaut. Now I have seen them all. It was sad.

Quad Bar coming soon at the cinema Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

CMW: Exactly! And you can go back and rewatch them and that's a completely different experience. But I have also completed Truffaut and I got a similar experience. I don't think I even realised until a few weeks after I watched, whatever the last one was, maybe The Last Metro, and I came to this realisation. I was like, oh no, this is actually somewhat depressing.

It's like that Billy Wilder line after Lubitsch died. Someone told him, "Oh, no more Lubitsch." And I think Wilder said: "Even worse, no more Lubitsch movies." Once you work your way through someone's canon, there's still pleasure to be had but there's something to that very first exposure to a film that is very special.

AKT: There is a lot of playfulness in your programming.

CMW: Thank you.

AKT: So it's very fitting that the Maurizio Cattelan film was one of the very first to re-open the Quad.

Coming up - C Mason Wells on their Bertrand Tavernier retrospective, Desperate Characters: The Cinema of Frank & Eleanor Perry, Forbidden Colors: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Immigrant Songs, and Quadrophilia at the Quad.