The Verdict: A relatively robust turnout this past Monday for this Sidney Lumet courtroom drama, written by David Mamet and starring Paul Newman, considering the weather. It also felt a little arbitrary on the calendar—why now? Why this movie? There’s no anniversary, no restoration, nobody associated with it died in the last few years. It’s not obscure, at least to those who were alive when it came out, but there’s no reason anybody should be seeing this movie now, on a Monday night under tornado watch. I’ve trudged through the snow and dodged flying refuse when necessary, and have usually ended up in a theater with maybe six other people, tops. In the summer of 2019, I went to a Thursday night screening of Yasujiro Ozu’s The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, newly-restored after being unavailable for years. Maybe six other people, tops.
That changed after the pandemic, and now the revival programs at the Charles and Senator are busier than ever. The programming has shifted to fewer screenings with more movies, sustaining an audience of teenagers and twentysomethings who never got the chance to see Zodiac, Adaptation, Hellboy, Mean Girls, Idiocracy, or Jennifer’s Body in a theater. I looked at the calendar and then, on Sunday, the weather, and figured this would be the best test of the revival program’s popularity. The Verdict, the kind of good but not great movie that people took for granted, drew a crowd of 45 under tornado watch. Pretty chatty crowd, too, but they all GASPED! when Newman slugged traitor Charlotte Rampling in the face. If you’ve seen the movie, you know she deserves it—everyone clapped at the end on Monday. Newman didn’t lose the audience because he was magnetic, honorable, an exaltation of the everyday—everything missing from modern movies and modern movie stars. The people are still waiting for something new, something good.
Serial Mom: In his hometown, John Waters’ movies draw the most hilarious crowds: Roland Park couples, teenage stoners, crab-shirt tourists, drifters, film geeks, and people with wild hair wearing leather. Waters’ post-cinematic celebrity is far tamer than his movies, which still manage to overwhelm the audience with their uniquely cynical and perverse vision. Forget Pink Flamingos, which can still stun an audience into silence 54 years after its premiere; even later works like Serial Mom play crowds like symphonies, with different demographics getting different jokes. The loners and drifters laughed every time Kathleen Turner said “PUSSY!” to a horrified Mink Stole over the phone, and the Baby Boomers in front of me howled when Sam Waterston found his wife’s mail, including presents from Richard Speck and Ted Bundy.
I understand that Waters’ films play on the coasts, but he always struggled more than peers David Cronenberg and David Lynch, who never consistently had hits—or work—either. The fact that he can’t get his film Liarmouth financed is a disturbing indicator of the industry’s health; ditto failed productions by Todd Solondz, Gus Van Sant, and Todd Haynes. Even after Lynch’s death, when Ted Sarandos of Netflix was lambasted for not greenlighting Lynch’s final project, there isn’t a single financier or consortium willing or able to put up the cash for a new Waters or Solondz movie. The homophobia that inhibited Waters’ commercial prospects through the 2004 release of A Dirty Shame must not be the problem—Alexander Skarsgård is gay right now in Pillion, distributed by Warner Brothers (but produced by the BBC). One wonders what’s keeping that money from changing hands—after all, can’t be more than $15 or $20 million.
But maybe that’s the problem: Serial Mom cost $13 million to make in 1994 ($28 million today), and Cry-Baby, his most expensive film, cost $12 million to make in 1990 ($30 million today). Nobody’s getting $30 million for original movies right now except rising star directors like Ari Aster and Emerald Fennell, and even their time in the castle is limited.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NickyOtisSmith
