Interview Talking The Rep with Morgan White

With its live burlesque shows, special guests, and rotating festival programming, the Toronto Underground Cinema has made its name in the past year or so specializing in so-called “event cinema.” While there’s plenty of handwringing about the collapse of independent film, video culture, and supremacy of the multiplex (especially in a city where the major art house cinema more or less functions like one), the Underground has managed to get by, nudged along diligently by the tireless efforts of its management. But beyond being certified as Toronto’s Best Repertory Cinema, the Underground functions as a microcosm of global rep cinema culture. Or so says Morgan White.

If you’ve ever been to the Underground, you’ve probably seen White. A constant fixture at the theatre, he minted his web series, The Rep, to document the trials and travails of running an indie cinema. Now The Rep has spun into something bigger—a feature-length documentary about the rep cinema as an institution, and as an establishment that may be wobbling on the verge of extinction. In the past year, White’s been touring rep cinemas across North America, amassing hundreds of hours of interview footage which he’s now in the process of winnowing down; he aims to have it ready in time to submit to the 2012 Hot Docs Festival. Along the way, he’s become something of an expert on the subject of rep cinemas by closely observing how some stay afloat, bolster local film scenes, or flounder despite all the best intentions. 

Featuring interviews with programmers, archivists, critics, and filmmakers (Kevin Smith and John Waters pop up in a recent trailer), the doc focuses on the process of running the Toronto underground Cinema while looking out to grander issues facing film-going culture. So far, the response to the trailer has been terrific, with a cinema in Australia even volunteering to film an interview for prospective use in the film. To find out more, we topsy-turvied things on White for a bit, talking to him about his travels and the current state of repertory film-going in North America.

The A.V. Club: So you just got back from New York?

Morgan White: Yeah, it was amazing. I had two days of vacationing—I’d never been there—and then I interviewed Bruce Goldstein, who runs rep at the Film Forum. It was amazing. Usually, I can cut down an hour-long interview to 10 minutes, but his was 20 minutes. He said so much good stuff. Then I spoke with this man Dan Talbot, who ran a theatre called the New Yorker in the 1960s. That was one of the very first repertory cinemas—well, the new form. They actually date back to the 1920s, to these places called “little cinemas,” which were essentially hoity-toity film societies that played old Eisenstein movies and films like The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari because they didn’t think anything Hollywood was producing in the ’20s was of any value.

AVC: That’s interesting, because when you read about the popular history of cinemas and movie-going in the United States, it seemed to emerge as a crass, almost sub-blue collar activity, where people were hollering and spitting on the floors.

MW: Right. I think that emerged from the silent era. A lot of it was comedy and a lot of it was slapstick, so I think it pushed people to be a little more crass in the theatres. But the movies at that time were always part of a whole night of stuff. It was a whole vaudeville show, and the movie was just one of the elements.

AVC: But these little cinemas almost seem more like the first art house cinemas in America.

MW: That’s exactly what they were.

AVC: So how do you distinguish from these little cinemas, or the old rep houses, and a place like the New Yorker, which you referred to as a “new” type of rep cinema?

MW: There’s not really that much of a difference between them, but to me, it was the way that they were run. So the New Yorker was run like a theatre. It was run as a cinema, where you had patronage come in. The little cinemas, as I understand it, were more for film societies and high-class people who wanted to watch movies over again. It was a club. The proper rep cinemas were theatres. They just happened to show old movies.

AVC: So how many cinemas have you traveled to now? Do you have a running tally?

MW: I do. I think I’ve done 16 theatres.

AVC: And it’s predominantly across the States?

MW: It’s predominantly across the States, yeah. I went to Montreal, to Blue Sunshine and Cinéma du Parc, which technically is not a repertory cinema; it’s a first-run arthouse. But he does throw in repertory stuff.

AVC: What are the conditions of these theatres? Are these all operational, or are some of them abandoned?

MW: No, the 16 are all live theatres. I’ve visited maybe 30 or 40 closed theatres. They’re not abandoned, per se. A lot of them have been converted. 

AVC: Converted into what? The Elginton was renovated into an event hall after the theatre closed.

MW: That happens a lot. Churches, a lot, especially in the States. When you think about it, movie palaces back in the day were designed after churches. So it’s fitting, in a way, that they go back to being churches. There’s a really good example in Toronto of ones that have been poorly converted. There’s one on Roncesvalles that’s a convenience store now. When you walk in, you can see the slant on the floor. And they have a row of fridges. When you walk past, the screen is still there!

AVC: How long have you been working on the film?

MW: A year and a half.

AVC: Even talking to you now, you sound like an expert on the subject. Is this something you’ve always been interested in, or did you just feel it out as you went along?

MW: I just learned as I went along. I’ve always loved cinemas. I have lots of great memories from being a kid of going to theatres—mostly megaplexes, but old-school megaplexes with three screens. And mall cinemas. I have great memories of this one shitty mall cinema in Sault Ste. Marie, where I grew up. But I was never an expert. It started when I was doing the web series. Then I realized there was a bigger story. I wanted to look at how the world of repertory cinema works. Now I’m just sort of learning about theatres and how they work.

AVC: How do you look at rep cinemas these days? Even the idea of doing a documentary about them seems to suggest that the culture of film-going in this context has collapses, or is on the verge of collapse.

MW: It’s always on a theatre-to-theatre basis. It depends. It’s difficult to look at one the whole. There are totally successful reps, and then there are totally fucked-up rep cinemas that will never be successful. There’s no real middle range. Well, there are some. I think the Bloor would maybe be considered in a middle range.

AVC: How do you mean?

MW: Well, it just kind of plugs along. It’s financially viable. But as it was before, it would have never been financially viable to fix that theatre up and make it perfect. It just went a long for a while, and it was fine. And Toronto’s full of theatres like that.

AVC: What do you attribute the large number of rep and indie cinemas in Toronto to?

MW: Well, it’s tough to even categorize these as repertory cinema. A true repertory cinema is a cinema that works through a classic repertoire of classic films. The New Beverly in Los Angeles? That’s a repertory cinema. They play two films a night, sometimes three, and it’s on a rotating schedule. But they only play things for two or three days, and then it’s gone. 

AVC: Gone gone? Or like back on the shelf until next month?

MW: Gone gone. They can pull from so much stuff. They have access to studio archives. And the fact that Tarantino owns the place—basically he bought the building and doesn’t ask them to pay the rent, so they can do a ton of cool stuff.

AVC: The other big one in the States, which it seems like the Undeground is trying to model itself after, is the Alamo Drafthouse. What was visiting that like?

MW: It’s amazing. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. They just get it. They built a multiplex. They have, I think, four different theatres in Austin, and all of them are multi-screened. The Alamo is now a chain, but they play tons of rep content—really good rep content. 

AVC: They seem really good about developing a strong film-going culture as well. Does this help? Obviously Quentin Tarantino buying your theatre and not charging you rent is not a viable option for every cinema.

MW: No, it’s not. The theatres that will survive have to find something that works for them. They have to stand out. The Alamo has figured that out. But it’s also Austin—Austin is a very supportive place. Also, you can eat food and drink beer while you watch the movie. It’s not just popcorn; you can get burgers. They come in and take your order and bring it right before the meal starts.

AVC: Is that not annoying, listening to someone mow on a burger during a film?

MW: No, you hardly notice because the seating is sloped. That’s how they work. They serve you food and you do dinner and a movie at the same time. It’s all pub food, but it’s really good pub food. They’re successful because they stand out. 

AVC: It must be harder for theatres to distinguish themselves in Toronto, just because there are so many.

MW: Yeah, I think the city could support these theatres a lot better than they do.

AVC: You mean with subsidy?

MW: Well, to some extent. But I don’t mean “the city” as in, like, the City, but people living in the city. I think there could be more support for these theatres. They all do reasonably well, and they’ve all kind of found their niches. But if a couple of them disappeared, it’d make things easier.

AVC: Has your relationship with the guys running the Underground changed at all since you started making the movie?

MW: Well, it’s weird, because now they’re my friends. And I really care about that theatre, because I’ve seen so much stuff happen there. It’s hard for me not to care what happens to it. I look at what other theatres are doing and realize that the successful ones are successful because they put everything into it. And they take chances, and people recognize that.