Author: Ira

Outtake from “Searching for Mr. Rugoff” #1: Roger Corman

The idea for a documentary of some sort had been rumbling around in my head for a long time. At first I thought it would simply be a way of capturing a bit of history by interviewing people that I knew were getting up in age and had great stories to tell about the early era of independent film distribution. 

It was 7 years ago this week that I heard Roger Corman was being honored at Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival, an event that I have attended yearly for quite some time. It dawned on me that this was an opportunity to capture one of those interviews for my yet to be defined project. I reached out to Michael and asked if I could interview Roger at the festival. The resulting interview was just as informative and colorful as I had hoped, but as my project took shape, it turned out that Roger did not make the final cut. However, I decided that this interview, and the many others that followed, deserved to see the light of day as a sort of side project. My goal is to eventually create an online oral history about this particular period in the business.

In any case, below is a small portion of that interview.

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A Little Glimpse Behind the Scenes of the Release of My Doc

A few days ago, I announced the long-awaited release of my film “Searching for Mr. Rugoff” (long-awaited by me, anyway). It’s been a protracted journey with many twists. I’ve begun to reflect on the many decisions I made along the way–fortunate and not–and thought some of it might be instructive for others (the teacher comes out in me!)

The project itself was years in the making, and at many points I wondered if it would ever actually add up to anything. I was once told that narrative features are a sprint, but that documentaries are a marathon. Trite but true. There were many times when I thought the film was as good as it could be, only to get feedback that made me take yet another look, leading to yet another version. The process was often frustrating and infuriating, but with each iteration, it seemed to get better. I had work-in-progress screenings for the students at Columbia, at the offices of Kartemquin Films in Chicago, at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, and at the 2019 Art House Convergence. And while audience reactions were very encouraging, I always walked away with more notes—sometimes completely contradictory. Continue reading “A Little Glimpse Behind the Scenes of the Release of My Doc”

A Tribute to Joan Micklin Silver

Within a month of when I started working at Cinema 5 in 1975, Joan Micklin Silver’s first feature, Hester Street, opened at the Plaza Theater on 58th Street. The Plaza was one of the Cinema 5 theaters and it was located around the corner from our offices. Every night, on the way home from work, I would see the lines of people stretched all the way down the block toward Park Avenue. The film was a huge hit. Around that time, I first met Joan and her husband Ray when they came to our offices to make a deal with us to distribute the film to the non-theatrical market. I learned that my boss, Don Rugoff, had turned the film down for theatrical distribution because he thought (as many others did) that the film was “too niche.” But now that the film was a hit, he wanted in.

My job at the time was as a non-theatrical salesperson, so I was on the phone all day with colleges, libraries and other organizations, trying to get them to book our library of films. Hester Street would not only be a valuable addition, but would be of particular appeal to Jewish organizations, which we were already servicing with such films as Garden of the Finzi-Continis and The Sorrow and the Pity, among others. Continue reading “A Tribute to Joan Micklin Silver”

The Incredible Edens Theater

A number of years ago, I wrote a piece about Movie Theaters I’ve Known and Loved. It included the story of how I had one of my most formative movie experiences in a modernist masterpiece of a theater that was on the Edens Expressway in Northbrook Illinois. Yesterday, I stumbled across a YouTube video about the theater and its demise that had been made for local TV in the ’90s. For those of you who are fellow movie theater geeks and others who are interested in architecture, you might find this as fascinating as I did. Little did I know that the theater featured that largest hyperbolic paraboloid in the world. If you want to know what that means, you’ll have to watch the video (which by the way is separated into five short parts.) Enjoy!

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All Eyes on Wisconsin

For the next month or perhaps longer, the state of Wisconsin will be one of the most scrutinized parts of the country. It’s an important swing state that could determine the outcome of the election, while simultaneously being one of the worst hotspots for the coronavirus. In the meantime, the good folks at University of Wisconsin in Madison are helping to keep their community sane by having an online film festival. 

The Wisconsin Film Festival was meant to be part of the “Searching for Mr. Rugoff” national tour last spring, and of course was cancelled along with the rest due to the pandemic. The festival has now morphed into a series of screenings available virtually, only for the UW community. Not only are they showing my film, but they are also showing “Gimme Shelter,” which was originally released by Don Rugoff through his company Cinema 5. In conjunction with those screenings, I was interviewed for their Cinematalk Podcast. It’s a pretty in depth interview and was a lot of fun to do. You can listen to it below. Thanks to the University of Wisconsin Cinematheque for their interest.

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Evangeline Peterson – Rest in Peace

Photo by Jacques Perrin

I’ve just been made aware of the passing of Evangeline Peterson. Some of you may know Evangeline as the wife of Don Rugoff, the subject of my film “Searching for Mr. Rugoff.” It is no exaggeration to say that Evangeline was (is) the star of the film. She added parts of the story that no one else would have known, and her intelligence and radiance jump off the screen. 

When I first thought about making a film about Don Rugoff, I had no idea how his family would feel about it or if they would be willing to cooperate. I first reached out to Don’s son Ed and, over an extended lunch, we discussed the project. It seemed as if he was willing. He also mentioned that his mother, Evangeline, was still alive and living in Medford, Oregon. I remembered Evangeline from brief encounters at the Cinema 5 offices when I worked there in the ’70s. She was a beautiful and classy woman; one wondered what she saw in Rugoff, who was not the least bit attractive and a not-very-nice person. Ed promised that he would approach his mother about doing an interview for the film. Continue reading “Evangeline Peterson – Rest in Peace”

Galway Q&A

Among the many film festivals that my film “Searching for Mr. Rugoff” was scheduled to play at, most were cancelled. However, some, like Cleveland and Galway in Ireland went on in a virtual form. For you indie film wonks out there, in both cases screenings were geofenced to the immediate area of the festival and tickets limited to the capacity of the theater it would have played in physically. Below is the virtual Q&A that I did with Galway Film Fleadh Programme Director, William Fitzgerald.

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#DigitalPerspectives Panel

Further to the back and forth with Wendy Lidell via our Indiewire articles, Wendy & I had a sort of “debate” as part of the #DigitalPerspectives series sponsored and hosted by Together Films. You can watch a replay of it HERE.

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How Virtual Cinema Could Help Arthouses Secure Their Future in 7 Easy Steps

I wrote the following article, which ran in Indiewire on July 1st. Here it is in its entirety, with a couple of added points at the end…

As a believer and crusader for the theatrical experience, the closure of movie theaters all over the world was a punch in the gut. There was an immediate consensus among pundits of all stripes that this was the end of theatrical moviegoing. People would just get used to the idea that they could see what they want at home, so why would they ever go out to see a movie again?

Yet in the art films world, a remarkable thing happened: Several independent distributors created something called “virtual cinema.” Pioneered by Kino Lorber, Magnolia, Oscilloscope, and others, they made their stranded films available, online, in partnership with the independent theaters where the films were scheduled to play. Theaters used their patron lists to market the films; in return, they took a percentage of the gross as if they had presented the films in their physical theaters. Continue reading “How Virtual Cinema Could Help Arthouses Secure Their Future in 7 Easy Steps”