Last week saw the film exhibition world descend upon Las Vegas for the orgiastic promotional frenzy known as Cinema-Con. It’s here where the studios line up talent-heavy presentations to unveil new promotional materials and get the theater owners hyped to show their upcoming slate of releases.
That’s not the side of the business today’s newsletter is about.
Sure, I’m a card-carrying member of AMC’s A-List program, but I spend more money supporting independent art-house theaters that show the kinds of movies I want to ensure have a space in our culture. (Even if you don’t go all that often, consider becoming a member at one near you to make a tangible display of support for their continued existence.) The ability to live so close to a number of them factored highly in my decision to move to New York in 2017 — not just to consume the movies, of course, but to be a part of a community that cares enough about them to support such an ecosystem.
A similar calculus impacted my decision about where to go to college. While I knew I wanted somewhere north of Texas and south of the Mason-Dixon line, I wasn’t sure how many of those places would have an outlet for my incurable cinephilia. (Mind you, the streaming revolution was still in its very early stages when I searched for colleges in 2009 and 2010.) Seeing that Winston-Salem, NC could sustain a then-fledgling indie movie theater, a/perture cinema, helped convince me that Wake Forest was the perfect place to pursue the next stage of my education. The rest, as they say, is history.
There are probably few people as responsible for the continuation of Marshall and the movies as a/perture cinema’s founder, executive director, and curator Lawren Desai. For starters, she hired me as her marketing intern from 2012-2015 (a gig that was also helpful in my non-writing career), a job for which my payment was the ability to see any movie at the theater for free. I took full advantage of this, getting an NYC/LA-sized glimpse at the contemporary cinema from my college town.
She then referred me to a local news site that was looking for a film critic, giving me some of my earliest bylines and professional critical affiliations. That then snowballed into more outlets willing to take a chance on me, especially out of film festivals. It all started after college covering Sundance, and I was only able to afford that because Lawren let me sleep on the floor of her condo at a steep discount for two years.
So yes, I have a deeply personal stake in a/perture and its continued success. A Frank Navasky in You’ve Got Mail, if you will. But I also think a/perture cinema is an extraordinary success story that defies so many trends in the exhibition arena. The theater has become an integral piece of a Winston-Salem downtown community that sprung back to life in the past decade or so, and it’s been inspiring to watch as Lawren continues to find ways to integrate it into the city’s cultural fabric.
And now, Lawren is in the content game herself with a podcast What’s Up with the Slash? It’s well worth your time to listen, whether you’ve sat in one of her auditoriums or not. As the show’s description states, “From curating films to navigating the business world and embracing female entrepreneurship, this podcast is your backstage pass to the unfiltered, no-nonsense stories of my journey.”
The description also promises: “No drama, no fluff – just candid conversations, practical insights, and a peek behind the curtain of the slashes that shape my world.” I figured I’d bring the same free-wheeling spirit to this conversation, which Lawren and I shared over breakfast in New York City earlier this month when she was in town. Whether you’re looking for insights about the business at large or just curious about which 2023 Best Picture nominees performed the best for her, there’s something in here for you.
As you're coming up on 15 years in operation, how has your approach to programming changed? Since I graduated and left the theater in 2015, I even felt it shifting then.
It changed after the pandemic out of necessity. What did you see change in 2015? That's hard for me to think back to.
It was still mostly kind of like your A24s, your Sony Classics, and now there are more mainstream titles.
Definitely on our bigger screens, because we would not survive. When we showed Totém1, maybe 8 people showed up. We can't exist [without them]. That's why we have to use the bigger films to be able to still play the arthouse films. But we can trailer in front, and maybe they'll come back and try something different.
In 2023, you showed Barbenheimer and Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. Do you see eventizing movies as the future?
Sure, but I don't think that can be it. You can't do that for every film. Not every film needs that. Plus, it's a lot more work. I think it works to like draw audiences, but you also make your space some place they want to come back to. And I think they do! They always have a good time. Like, "Oh, man, we've never come here before! This is really great, we're gonna come back."
Tom Rothman, the head of Sony, has a great quote: "Young people don't go to 'the' movies. They go to 'a' movie." Do you feel like that's the case?
Maybe. Certainly, people do, but now people also think about it as a cool thing to do. Not necessarily multiplexes, but cinemas like a/perture.
What do you what do you see as the main competition for the two to three hours of time that the people would be at a/perture?
Being outside, reading, sitting at home on the couch…
What has the impact of streaming been on your business? The year I graduated was when Netflix bought Beasts of No Nation and began priming people for the idea that there can be good movies going to streaming that bypass theaters altogether.
Yeah, but I think that's come back around. This fall, Netflix had some films that just got lost. We played Maestro because we had a week before it went on Netflix, and people came out to see it. I just wish Netflix would change their strategy and respect theatrical. I don't know why they don't. Stuff gets lost when it hits Netflix. I don't think that it's the scary thing, the death of movie theaters that people thought it was
How has the non-first run programming, like working through some of the movies on the Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, done?
Sight & Sound has been really fun, but it's grant-funded. It's pricey when you're licensing each one! The whole idea was that I could try to build an audience every two years for these films. And I do think, post-pandemic, people are more interested in rep titles ... at least in Winston-Salem. We have to cultivate that audience. They're not just doing it. I think it's working, but it's so title-specific. A lot of people came out for 2001: A Space Odyssey but not as many for Daughters of the Dust2. We have Vertigo this month.
Have you done Jeanne Dielman yet?
We did that the first film.
Did that get a good turnout?
I mean ... for the film3? We did it in January after the list came out because I was like, "Obviously, you've got to start with the new number one." I still feel like I can play the films I want to play.
What's the balance between playing to what the audience knows and likes vs. having to push them a little bit?
Oh, I've got to push them! We're playing About Dry Grasses4 now. Somebody drove from Virginia to see it! Which, if you're like the only person that comes because you drove, that's pretty cool. Somebody drove from Charlotte to see Love Lies Bleeding the other day.
That's a nice reversal. I would have to drive to Charlotte to see things when I was just really impatient and didn't want to wait the extra week for something like Whiplash.
A24 and Sony Pictures Classics still platform a long stretch, and maybe sometimes Neon. But everybody else's platform is like a week or two.
Do you still feel like the platform release is valid, or is it just annoying at this point?
Sometimes it is. I think it was valuable with The Zone of Interest. Sometimes I wish others platformed. Word of mouth is still huge.
What was the last big word-of-mouth sensation that's stuck around for a long time?
Everything Everywhere All at Once, and that was in the spring! Parasite is still our longest-running film.
Do you feel the impact of these indie films going to VOD within three weeks?
Oh yeah, I have noticed it. I don't pay attention to it in advance, but I'll be like, "Oh wait, we're still playing this film, and it's already on VOD. That's stupid." It discounts people's willingness to wait for things. There were ways things were done, and not all of them were right. but I do think that there's some rationale [to it].
I do feel like I've noticed a shift, even among friends who like to go to the movies because they know something they aren't dying to see will be available at home soon.
Is it the price?
I think it's more convenience than the price. Rather than having to leave the house, align the times, to pay maybe marginally more, they can just have it ready.
But don't you think there's a thing where to see a film in a theater you just remember it much more? Like reading a book on Kindle, I have no idea what books I've read on it. But if I own the book, it sticks with you more. It's not just the movie. It's the experience of it and everything you do before after. Maybe you go out and talk about it after. You think about it on the subway. You don't do that at home. I mean, YOU probably do!
No, but even at home, it becomes another piece of content that you're consuming indistinguishable from anything else.
Like an episode of TV.
How have you worked on cultivating the community aspect of the theater? Getting more space has helped, but I'm also thinking about the expanded ways that you engage partners and local organizations.
Coming out of the pandemic, it took a while for us to do panels or Q&As. When we started, people weren't really coming out. I was like, "Oh, it's not gonna be [a thing]?" This year, we showed God and Country TWICE because the first time it sold out. Somebody actually volunteered to have a panel, and then I got people like, "Oh, we want to do it again and We want to do a panel." We'll do that all day if people come to me. It's usually a lot of work to try to find people to do one.
And what about your movie prom?
It was good! It's not really a great fundraiser, but it's a good, fun event for building our brand.
Obviously some of this is going to be mitigated by COVID, but do you feel encouraged by the arthouse film scene right now?
Past Lives was perfect in every way. People loved that, and it excited them. There were some really good films that echo back to the films that would have been in Studio One and Two5 five years ago. But I can see our membership demographics shfting. We're getting teens and young adults. For them to become members, it means they really care about it.
I had a few friends of mine from Wake Forest afterward, especially the ones who did a fifth year, told me, "When all my friends were gone, I went to a/perture all the time." I was like, "Really, interesting! And it was like pulling teeth to get you to go with me in undergrad."
At Wake, there's just so much to do. I get it. We have a board member now that works at the Office of Community and Civic Engagement who says students just have so much going on.
I hear from some of the professors I still keep in touch with, and they say it's different for students now. Now, it's difficult to talk about sensitive subjects or things with them.
That's really scary. Films open the door to being able to bridge a conversation.
In my freshman year, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo came out. I was in a film class at the time where someone was talking about how upsetting they found some of the scenes of sexual violence. Our professor said, "Have you ever considered that maybe that was the point? Something like that is supposed to feel really uncomfortable to watch and should make you squirm! If it was pleasant, that would that would also sit weirdly with you."
I was talking two years ago to some faculty at [University of North Carolina] School of the Arts, and an older [professor] who's been around for a while said, "I can't teach Before Sunrise because students find it so creepy. They think he's stalking her. And I'm like, "Okay, but can't you just talk about it and understand this is a time period in which that was not thought of like that?" How can you not read or watch things even before you see them?
You've seen a growth in younger people. Was it tough to get some of the senior citizen base back in after COVID?
Well, they came back, but they just didn't come back as frequently.
So more title-specific?
I think they just held back a little, but I feel like that's changing. Maybe they're coming back more regularly.
Are there any successes in the exhibition space that you find really interesting?
I always admire FilmScene in Iowa. I always look to cinemas that are in comparable metropolitan areas. If a cinema in the Midwest can cultivate an audience...
Was that a challenge settling back into North Carolina? They're not going to be motivated by the same things as a New York film crowd.
For a while it was like, "Oh man, they had to have somebody on the poster that they recognized." I remember showing a not amazing film with Michael Douglas front-and-center on the poster6, and I was like, "Why are people [seeing this]?" I was like, maybe it's because they know him. I think it's definitely changed because I do think people see stuff come across their feed on social media, and then what do we have it, it's like, "Oh, okay, I've seen this before."
That's good it can be like a word-of-mouth generator of some sort. Are there any surprise hits you think that were driven by things like that? Everything Everywhere All at Once is probably a very good example.
I mean, I don't know what the thing with Past Lives was because it was so early on. That would be an interesting word-of-mouth study. We played all 10 Best Picture nominees for the first time ever, which is cool. American Fiction ... I thought it'd be a crowdpleaser when I saw it at TIFF, and I was like, "God, I really hope that people give this film a chance because I think they'll have fun with it." I think that platform release worked out really well. If we got it earlier...
I can see that: it needs a little bit of validation.
The Holdovers didn't do as well. I don't know if it was the timing when it came out.
Too Northeastern?
Maybe? I feel like it would have been huge years ago for us.
I understand from an awards perspective why they put it out in October, but that would have been a great Christmas Day release.
It's going to be a film people every Christmas! It's such a holiday film.
Do you have much in the way of recurring films you show every year?
We used to show It's a Wonderful Life every year, but then it was on moratorium, so I had to find something else. I haven't really gone back to it. We used to have a bank sponsor it, and you could donate canned goods.
Is there anything you're excited to play coming up?
This spring is gonna be a challenge, I think. Maybe Challengers. I'll probably play some commercial titles. And then Yorgos Lanthimos' new film.
Did Poor Things do well for you you?
Yeah. I didn't call that. We had people come out. We opened it on Christmas Day, and I was there working. This older couple with their probably twenty-something son walked out and were like, "Oh, that's a porn. That's not what we wanted to see on Christmas Day." Well, not really, but whatever... Some of our friends took their 14-year-old because they didn't read anything. And they were like, "Yeah, we were not expecting this." But they knew it was their fault, and he'll have a story about that forever. We'll be in his memory.
Thanks for reading, and if you happen to be in Winston-Salem, NC, give a/perture a visit! Or if you ever come across an exhibition venue that’s trying to do something a little against the grain, give them a chance.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall
A small Mexican release from earlier this year that’s really wonderful. I interviewed the director!
An elliptical but extraordinarily influential Black film by Julie Dash. Much to think about for why people weren’t as interested…
It’s a 201-minute film fixated on the repetitive tasks in the life of a housewife. It’s incredible, and you must watch it.
A Turkish film that runs over three hours in length.
The largest auditoriums at a/perture.
We’re pretty sure this is Solitary Man. “Not amazing” is generous.