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50th Anniversary Screening of GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER with Karen and Kat Kramer In Person

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AC-Guess-WhoJoin us for a 50th anniversary screening of GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER on Wednesday, February 15, at 7:00 PM at the Laemmle Royal in West LA. Q & A after the screening with Karen and Kat Kramer, widow and daughter of producer-director Stanley Kramer. Click here to purchase tickets.

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER was nominated for 10 Academy Awards in 1967, including Best Picture and Best Director. It is one of a small number of films to receive Oscar nominations in all four acting categories. Katharine Hepburn won the Oscar for Best Actress, and William Rose also won for his original screenplay. The cast also includes Spencer Tracy (who received his ninth Oscar nomination for his final screen performance), Sidney Poitier, Katharine Houghton, Beah Richards, and Cecil Kellaway.

The picture made headlines for being one of the few Hollywood movies of the era to center on an interracial love story. The movie completed shooting just a few weeks before the Supreme Court ruled, in Loving v. Virginia, that anti-miscegenation laws still on the books in most Southern states were unconstitutional. So the film foreshadowed this historic decision.

Beyond its social content, however, the film is remembered as the last of nine movies that Hepburn and Tracy made together. Their irresistible chemistry was once again visible in their final collaboration, completed just two weeks before Tracy’s death, and adds considerable poignancy to the film.

Producer-director Stanley Kramer was the man behind such potent dramas as Judgment at Nuremberg, Inherit the Wind, On the Beach, The Defiant Ones, Ship of Fools, High Noon, and The Wild One. In addition to his many nominations as director and producer, he was awarded the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1961.

Q&A will be moderated by former Los Angeles Film Critics Association president Stephen Farber. Part of our ongoing Anniversary Classics series. For details, visit www.laemmle.com/ac.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5_gHO67qzg

I AM MICHAEL Filmmaker in Person Opening Night at the Monica Film Center.

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I AM MICHAEL writer-director Justin Kelly will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:10 PM screening at the Monica Film Center on Friday, January 27. Benoit Denizet Lewis, the author of the story upon which the film is based, will interview him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI19hoTNaC4

Adventurous Artist Documentary CARVALHO’S JOURNEY Screenings and Q&A’s Next Week.

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A real life 19th century American western adventure story, CARVALHO’S JOURNEY tells the extraordinary story of Solomon Nunes Carvalho (1815-1897), an observant Sephardic Jew born in Charleston, South Carolina, and his life as a groundbreaking photographer, artist and pioneer in American history. We’re screening it this Monday, January 30 at 7:30 PM and Tuesday, January 31 at 1 PM at the Claremont 5, Playhouse 7, Fine Arts, Town Center 5 and Monica Film Center as part of our ongoing Culture Vulture series.

Daguerreotypist Robert Shlaer is featured in CARVALHO’S JOURNEY as an interviewee and also on location, re-creating daguerreotypes along the route Carvalho traveled in 1853. He will participate in Q&A’s after the Pasadena screening on Monday night and the Beverly Hills screening on Tuesday afternoon. Filmmaker Steve Rivo will participate in Q&A’s after the Beverly Hills screening on Monday night and after the Encino screening on Tuesday afternoon.

Robert Shlaer, photo by M. Susan Barger.
Robert Shlaer, photo by M. Susan Barger.
“Born in Boston, an alumnus of Brookline High, Steve Rivo grew up in a film-loving family. He was exposed at an early age to many of the great films, but he always had a warm spot for Robert Aldrich’s “The Frisco Kid” (1979), in which Gene Wilder plays a rabbi assigned to a synagogue in San Francisco in 1850. To get there, the rabbi must cross the Rockies on horseback with a varmint played by Harrison Ford.

“Today, Rivo makes his own movies. He’s founder and owner of Down Low Pictures, an independent documentary production company based in Brooklyn. When he was offered a project about the painter and daguerreotypist Solomon Carvalho, a Sephardic Jew from Charleston, South Carolina, who accompanied legendary explorer John Fremont on his 1853 Fifth Western Expedition, the story’s resemblance to “The Frisco Kid” helped win him over.

“He talked about the resulting documentary, CARVALHO’S JOURNEY, on the phone from his studio in New York.”

Q. Did repeated viewings of “The Frisco Kid” give you an insight into Carvalho’s story?

A. That was kind of my only frame of reference. The comedic situations involved in having a rube on the trail, and not just any rube, but a classically Jewish character who has Jewish anxieties. Those elements of the Carvalho story were fun to play with. He was an observant Jew, so he couldn’t eat certain foods even when they were starving. And he wasn’t good at a lot of outdoorsy stuff like the rest of the party. He was a 38-year-old city slicker artistic type.

Q. The hardships of his trip were not so funny, though. More like “The Revenant.”

A. It is always surprising how physically difficult, challenging, and a little bit crazy it would be to get in a wagon and try to cross the country in the middle of winter. It’s inconceivable to us today. We get on an airplane and complain.

Q. What do you think viewers will take away from this film other than a new appreciation for air travel?

Solomon Nunes Carvalho. Dageerreotype courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Solomon Nunes Carvalho. Dageurreotype courtesy of the Library of Congress.

A. There are a lot of different things people have responded to — American Jewish history, Western expansion, the birth of photography, and a personal story of an artist. What attracted me was that it was a little bit of biography, but it was also kind of a travel story, and an adventure story through which you could talk about other things, the experience of outsiders in American culture. It’s a film about someone we didn’t know anything about.

Q. I understand you just finished a 10-part series for the True TV network on Hollywood comedies. Did you get to include “The Frisco Kid?”

A. I jokingly raised the possibility, but so few people have seen that movie. It’s the Solomon Carvalho of Jewish Western comedies.

Steve Rivo
Steve Rivo

THIS IS EVERYTHING: GIGI GORGEOUS Director Barbara Kopple and Gigi Gorgeous in Person at the Music Hall.

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THIS IS EVERYTHING: GIGI GORGEOUS subject Gigi Gorgeous and the film’s producers will participate in a Q&A after the 7:10 PM screening at the Music Hall on Friday, February 3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83jGTVHGj1Y

MR. GAGA Filmmaker in Person Opening Weekend.

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MR. GAGA director Tomer Heymann will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:20pm screenings at the Monica Film Center Friday, Feb 10 and Saturday, Feb 11; and after the 1:10pm screening on Saturday, Feb 11 at the Playhouse.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/196324325

IN PERSON: Alan Alda, Carol Burnett, and Bess Armstrong Following our 35th Anniversary Screening of THE FOUR SEASONS on 1/24 at the Royal.

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Alan Alda, actress Carol Burnett, and actress Bess Armstrong will participate in a Q&A following our 35th Anniversary screening of THE FOUR SEASONS on Tuesday, January 24, at 7:00 PM at the Royal Theatre. Click here to buy tickets now SOLD OUT.

JUST ADDED: 6:30PM screening with an introduction by Mr. Alda (No Q&A)! You can get tickets here: http://bit.ly/2k5sp68

THE FOUR SEASONS was one of the biggest box office hits of 1981. This wise dramatic comedy written and directed by Alan Alda centers on three long-married couples who have vacationed together for many years. But their friendship is threatened when one of the men leaves his wife for a much younger woman, which causes the others to examine their own relationships.

ac-aldaAlda also stars in the film, along with Carol Burnett, Len Cariou, Sandy Dennis, Jack Weston, Rita Moreno, and Bess Armstrong. The New York Times’ Janet Maslin wrote that Alda “succeeds in presenting a gentle, likable, frequently funny glimpse of everyday types doing their everyday best to get by.”

Alan Alda is best known for his starring role in the smash hit TV series, MASH, which ran from 1972 to 1983. But he has also appeared in many feature films, including Paper Lion, Same Time Next Year, California Suite, The Seduction of Joe Tynan (which he also wrote), Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, Flirting with Disaster, The Aviator (for which he earned an Oscar nomination), and Bridge of Spies. He wrote and directed several other films, including Sweet Liberty and Betsy’s Wedding. He returned to television with a recurring role in the award-winning series, The West Wing.

ac-burnettCarol Burnett starred in one of the most popular and beloved television series of all time, The Carol Burnett Show, which ran from 1967 to 1978. She has excelled on stage, on screen, and on television.

Other films include Pete ‘n Tillie, Billy Wilder’s The Front Page, Robert Altman’s A Wedding, Annie, and Noises Off. She won an Emmy for her recurring role on the popular sitcom, Mad About You, and played a number of dramatic roles as well.

ac-armstrongBess Armstrong made her feature film debut in The Four Seasons after starting out in television. She went on to co-star in High Road to China, Jaws 3-D, Nothing in Common, and the TV series My So-Called Life and House of Lies, among many other credits.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, including an upcoming screening of GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.

THEY CALL US MONSTERS Filmmaker Q&A at the Royal.

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THEY CALL US MONSTERS filmmaker Benjamin Lear will participate in Q&A’s after the 5:20 and 7:40 PM screenings at the Royal on Friday and Saturday, January 27 and 28, as well as after the 7:40 screening on Thursday, February 2. Representatives from InsideOut Writers, the screenwriting program for juvenile offenders featured in the film, will participate in the 2/2 Q&A.

https://vimeo.com/194588281