|
In 1960, American film changed forever, but the revolution didn’t take place anywhere near a Hollywood set. That year, the New Yorker Theater opened on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and began screening cutting-edge films from around the world for an eager audience that included the city's most influential producers, directors, critics, and writers. Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Susan Sontag, Andrew Sarris, and Pauline Kael—among many others—made the New Yorker their home, trusting the owners' taste and incorporating the films they viewed into their own work. For the first time, Toby Talbot, co-owner and proud “matron” of the New Yorker, recounts with her husband Dan Talbot the eclectic personalities they encountered as they pioneered the art-house movement in Manhattan. Godard, Fassbinder, Ozu, and Tati—these directors were regulars at the theater as it introduced French New Wave and New German Cinema to American audiences. With Vietnam War protests and the struggle for civil rights in full swing, the New Yorker became an early distributor of political films such as Bertolucci's Before the Revolution and the documentaries Shoah and Point of Order. The theater's Monday-night series featured program notes by Jack Kerouac, Jules Feiffer, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonas Mekas, Jack Gelber, and Harold Humes, a list of notables that testifies to the deeply engaged and collaborative spirit behind each showing. Discussing moments from her new book, The New Yorker Theater and Other Scenes from a Life at the Movies, Talbot shares stories from the projection booth and the box office—even the lost and found—and describes the highs and lows of a thrilling era in filmmaking.
Toby and her husband founded, owned, and managed New Yorker Films, a distribution company, and they now own and run Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. Toby is also a long-time member of the faculty of The New School.
|