Believe it or not, some people really love their jobs. Julia Marchese is one of those people. By her own account, she fell in love with L.A.’s New Beverly Cinema the first time she walked through its doors. Over the next five years, she asked owner Sherman Torgan for a job each time she visited. Her enthusiasm for the revival house paid off, as Torgan finally hired her, and now, years later, she has directed a documentary that gushes about the beloved theater.
As a result, Out of Print often plays like a promo put together by a perpetual Employee of the Month. Marchese has assembled a wide array of talking heads, including stars like Patton Oswalt and Seth Green and directors like Edgar Wright, Joe Dante and Kevin Smith. Prolific TV actor Clu Gulager, now deep into his 80s, professes his love for the theater—his presence at its double features is so frequent that the New Bev has dedicated a seat exclusively to him. Marchese gives her coworkers (including eccentric projectionists and nerdy concession staff) plenty of screen time, and she devotes attention to a handful of quirky regulars. Marchese also spends a good portion of the film in front of the camera herself, supplemented by slideshows of her involvement throughout the years.
At first blush, Marchese’s unbridled enthusiasm for the theater is excusable, and even endearing. But Out of Print’s greatest flaw is in its structure. The film is frontloaded with celebs, employees and random folks singing the New Beverly’s praises without a lot of initial context about what actually sets it apart from other independent theaters except its proximity to Hollywood. Some folks seem to strain to find something overwhelmingly positive to say. At one point, we’re actually listening to someone speak sentimentally about the smell of the popcorn and sounds from the soda fountain as if these refreshments weren’t also a staple of virtually every other movie theater. One random local recounts how his daughter had her 10th birthday party there. Not exactly spellbinding stuff.
Eventually, Marchese’s film begins to transition into the theater’s relevance. We get shots of a surprise visit made by David Lynch for a Q&A following a screening of Wild at Heart, along with an anecdote from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly about how he’d unknowingly happened to step out for a bite to eat moments earlier and will always regret it. There are also some compelling sequences about Torgan’s untimely death (Quentin Tarantino, who is conspicuously absent from the documentary, would go on to purchase and save the theater at the 11th hour), and Gulager’s recounting of how he’s used the theater’s classic double features to provide his life with meaning following the passing of his wife is genuinely moving.
The film’s tail end pivots to an argument for the preservation of 35mm film in the digital age, one that probably should have been introduced sooner. Marchese and her interview subjects are realistic about 35mm’s obsolescence, with storage and transportation of large reels cited as one of the chief reasons for the shift to digital. They argue merely for the preservation of as much existing 35mm as possible, and it’s a noble aim that comes from a good place, even if its importance is perhaps a bit overblown. And that more or less sums up Out of Print: a somewhat unwieldy film that’s nevertheless derived from a place of effusive love.
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