I had to say goodbye to Spencer for the day to set off for the San Rafael Film Center, a gorgeous, restored 1938 neighborhood movie theater located in the heart of downtown San Rafael, a city in Marin County, California situated just over the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. I hadn't taken a road trip on my own since visiting my friend Alan Watson when he lived in New Mexico (in 199-...um, MANY years ago) and although it would be a roughly twelve-hour round-trip drive, it seemed easier and less expensive than flying and renting a car, plus it would give me a chance to decompress from the stressful final push to get the Archive's restoration of RASHOMON ready for its premiere this Thursday. Spencer was nonplussed when I told him that I wouldn't see him that evening because I'd be away. He told me he'd see me in the morning. Well, after he woke up from his nap on Saturday anyway.
While I was driving and listening to some mix CDs and old episodes of the NPR show THIS AMERICAN LIFE, Lydia was dropping Spencer off at his first French preschool class. There are only three or four other children in the class and it's all about fun...but in French. Spencer kissed his mama goodbye and was good to go. When she returned a couple hours later, Spencer was proudly displaying a picture of a train he had colored and his knowledge that the French word for "blue" is "bleu."
Lesson learned: the offramp for I580 is on the RIGHT (not the left, damn Magellan) and a lot of cars are in line to get on that particular freeway during Friday afternoon rush hour. After a long detour over a bridge I still can't quite name, I got snarled in traffic which seemed determined to try and impress a diehard Angeleno with its shittiness. No chance. L.A. still has the worst traffic in the U.S.
I checked into a small, 16-room neighborhood hotel with theme rooms. Mine was "Lady Chantrall's Boudoir." I was told the Jungle room was the best but it was booked. The best selling-point for the Panama Hotel was that it meant I didn't have to get back in the car: downtown was only a ten-minute (very pleasant) walk away.
The Rafael Theater was re-configured very elegantly for the 21st century. The balcony of the original 1938 theater was converted into two small screening rooms while the main floor of the original auditorium was restored to its 1938 appearance down to the original chandeliers.
It was a great place to watch LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN again. The audience was probably 100 - 125 people strong and they seemed to enjoy and roll with the movie very well. Although that's not hard: LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN stars Gene Tierney as an emotionally unbalanced woman who marries an unsuspecting writer, Cornel Wilde, and tries to eliminate anyone and everyone from their lives so she can have him all to herself. Murder, melodrama, and stunning Technicolor cinematography from master Director of Photography Leon Shamroy ensue.
Having done this a few times before, I was pleasantly suprised when nearly every audience member stuck around for a Q&A afterwards where we talked about Technicolor, digital film restoration, and the troubling fact that there is no such thing as "digital preservation." After about a half hour, our host ended the session but seven or eight die-hard cinephiles stuck around to talk for another half hour.
I'm glad I snapped the photo of the marquee when I did. By the time I came out of the theater, the signage had already been changed to Saturday night's feature, the Archive's restoration of William Wyler's 1958 epic Western, THE BIG COUNTRY. There was somebody else's name below the "introduced by." By 9am the next morning, I was already on my way back home.
No comments:
Post a Comment