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5th Avenue Cinema ain't much to look at. Aside from the Smurf-sized marquee, it resembles a Carter-era administrative office. Inside are two auditoriums with all the gray glamour of lecture halls—which, during the day, they are. The theater's office looks (and smells) like the living room of a punk house.
But it's one of the few places you can learn to operate 16 mm and 35 mm projectors, handle film stock and understand the business of managing a repertory theater. The popcorn is always free, and the programming includes some of the most unusual movies you'll find on a Portland movie screen. This season's soft theme, for example, is "flops."
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"I like an ambitious movie that for some reason was not received well in its day," says Dan Molloy, the 20-year-old projectionist who started at 5th Avenue over the summer. "This season, our program is guided by what we feel strongly about, and I've got a fondness for box-office flops."
On Sept. 30, 5th Avenue is kicking off its fall 2016 program with the Coen brothers' 1991 Palme d'Or-winning Barton Fink, a critical darling notable both for being the Coens' breakthrough picture and for failing to recoup the $9 million it cost to make. This season is a big one for the theater, with this year's crop of programmers not only doubling the number of films they're showing from 10 to 20 but also working with a new reel-to-reel projection system.
"My heart's racing just thinking about it," says lead projectionist Shannon Neale. "It's going to be a lot of work, a lot of film handling, but we're confident and we hope that a lot of people are going to come to the films."
5th Avenue—formerly PSU's bookstore—was converted into the niche market Cine-Mini theater in 1970 under Larry Moyer, the lesser-known brother of now-deceased Portland real estate and movie theater magnate Tom Moyer. Moyer bequeathed 5th Avenue to PSU in 1989 to be run as a nonprofit. Since then, 5th Avenue has been managed by students like Neale and Molloy, who are responsible for programming and operation of the theater.
To kick off 5th Avenue Cinema's fall season, I asked Neale and Molloy to pick some of their favorites from this season's program. Here are three films you should watch at 5th Avenue this fall after you see Barton Fink this Saturday at 7 pm.
Three O'Clock High (1987), Sept. 30-Oct. 2
"It's High Noon, but in high school," says Neale about Phil Joanou's semi-autobiographical high-school comedy. In Three O'Clock High, a flop since reborn into a minor cult favorite, a misunderstanding between a high-school newspaper reporter and a bully leads to a parking-lot showdown after school in the style of the 1952 Western. "It's super-stylish, and very funny," Neale says. "This is a title I'd never heard of before last year, when I watched it with some friends at home. Perhaps I had just the right amount of beer in me, but it's the most fun I've had at a home screening in a while."
Ishtar (1987), Nov. 18-20
"Ishtar is one of the films that I listed that recently made an impact on me when I applied for this job," says Molloy about Elaine May's legendary flop. A comedy about two hard-luck musicians who travel to a fictional country in the Middle East for a job, Ishtar was doomed from the start by enough production disasters, on-set infighting and bad press to warrant a dramatization of its own. The film infamously ran $30 million over budget and was brutally panned by critics, getting called "a lifeless, massive, lumbering exercise in failed comedy" by Roger Ebert.
"People thought it was the worst movie ever when it came out because it was ravaged by bad production stories, but Ishtar is actually hilarious and gloriously stupid," Molloy adds. "It's a big, insane, globetrotting comedy with amazing performances by Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. I'm excited to see people's reactions to this movie, because many people will come to it knowing that it is a notorious bomb."
The Long Day Closes (1992), Dec. 2-4
Not every film 5th Avenue is screening this season bombed. Set in postwar Liverpool, this quiet drama from English director Terence Davies about an 11-year-old boy and his family has recently been reappraised as a deeply important part of queer cinema, being called "the greatest gay film ever made" by critic Armond White in 2015.
"The Long Day Closes is a seemingly unknown queer cinema masterpiece," Neale says. "I first happened upon it at the Cleveland Cinematheque because its director, Sir John Ewing, listed it as one of his personal favorites. The film is completely alive with an atmosphere billowing underneath its loose narrative, capturing the way things feel and look when you're small: the way you would stare at the rug in the living room, or the way the metal prongs of the railing project the shadows over your porch. I want to share this movie with everyone, though not everyone will appreciate a film this tender."
5th Avenue Cinema's fall program begins Sept. 30, with Barton Fink screening at 7 pm. See 5thavecinema.com for showtimes. Free for PSU students, staff, faculty and alumni; $3 for other students and seniors; $4 general admission.
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