Films this week 7/14 – 7/16/2023
by Gary Palmucci | 14th July 2023 | Gary's Corner
Released in June 1969 — a pivotal summer in American life — Midnight Cowboy has exerted an enduring fascination for generations of Americans, myself included. I first saw it at age fifteen, stayed up late to watch its Best Picture Oscar win, read the source novel, wore out the soundtrack, and over time showed it to friends and family.
In a new documentary joining New Plaza Cinema’s lineup this weekend, Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy we hear testimony from a diverse group of its creators and others still struck by its heroic influence, including actors Jon Voight, Brenda Vaccaro, and Bob Balaban, as well as Brian de Palma, Jim Hoberman, and photographer MIchael Childers, long time friend of the film’s Oscar-winning director John Schlesinger.
I’ve been privileged to work with Desperate Souls’ director Nancy Buirski on a couple of her previous releases, Afternoon of a Faun and By Sidney Lumet, and we’ll be very pleased to welcome her and producer Simon Kilmurry (whose credits include the excellent doc Strong Island) for a Q&A after Sunday’s 6 pm screening.
Another indelible figure from that era, novelist William Styron (Confessions of Nat Turner, Sophie’s Choice) looms large in our second new documentary addition to the schedule, In the Company of Rose. Author Rose Styron is his widow, at 95 still an articulate witness both to her decades-long work in human rights and to the couple’s complex, often turbulent marriage. Film and theatre director James Lapine first met her in 2014, and this portrait was the eventual result. The NY Times’ Glenn Kenny wrote in his review: “Lapine (a protean force in American arts who wrote the book for and directed Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, among others) has the means to spin a feature film out of such an encounter.”
Also this weekend: reprise screenings of Close to Vermeer, It Ain’t Over (in an open-captioned version), Make Me Famous (with another Q&A from its indefatigable producer and director Heather Spore and Brian Vincent), Scarlet, from rising young Italian director Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden), and the raucous Canadian biopic, BlackBerry.
New Plaza Cinema