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CAT PERSON Opens Friday; Director Susanna Fogel in Person for Conversations with Monica Lewinsky & Alex Winter October 12 & 13.

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“Margot met Robert on a Wednesday night toward the end of her fall semester. She was working behind the concession stand at the artsy movie theatre downtown when he came in and bought a large popcorn and a box of Red Vines.”

So begins Kristen Roupenian’s short story Cat Person. When The New Yorker published it in 2017, it struck a nerve with readers and was the first work of short fiction to ever go viral, spurring conversations around the world about the modern dating scene, seduction, and consent. After the film adaptation’s buzzy premiere at Sundance in January, Cat Person is finally where it belongs, at “artsy movie theatre[s],” opening this weekend at the Royal, Town Center and Glendale and October 13 at the Monica Film Center and NoHo. We’re also pleased to host two special screenings at the NoHo with the filmmaker Susanna Fogel in person for conversations with social activist and writer Monica Lewinsky on October 12 and  with actor-writer-director Alex Winter on October 13.

Director Susanna Fogel stated “Like the short story that stirred so much controversy, Cat Person will call upon you to reflect on romantic encounters you’ve had in the past, and to question the role (or multiple roles) you may have played. We’ve all been the victim in some narratives and the villain in others, and I hope you’ll walk out of this film with a strong opinion, ready to debate.”

Susanna Fogel. Credit: Roger Kisby/Getty Images for Disney
Monica Lewinsky. Credit: Greg Gorman
Alex Winter

“A film that’s funny in places, horrifying in others and all but destined to be a reference point in future discussions about courtship.” ~ Peter Debruge, Variety

“The relief…is in the filmmakers’ approach to these tense scenes: Fogel and Ashford loosen their grip, at last trusting us to sit in our discomfort, draw our own conclusions and sharpen our tools for the discourse.” — The Hollywood Reporter

“Once upon a midnight dreary,” Price, Corman, Karloff & Lorre! THE RAVEN 60th Anniversary Screening October 19.

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Update October 12: This screening has been cancelled.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 60th anniversary of THE RAVEN (1963), the fifth film of Roger Corman’s cinematic adaptations of the works of American literary titan Edgar Allan Poe. The movie, written by acclaimed horror, fantasy, and mystery author Richard Matheson, stars horror icons Vincent Price and Boris Karloff in a rare big screen collaboration, and co-stars Peter Lorre, Hazel Court, and future superstar Jack Nicholson early in his career. The horror comedy plays one night only, Thursday, October 19 at 7 PM at the Royal in West Los Angeles. For added fun there will be a Poe/Corman trivia contest before the movie.

 

Producer-director Roger Corman, who began his career in the 1950s, is one of the most prolific independent filmmakers in movie history. Corman specialized in low budget cinema and is regarded as the “king of the B movie” with a steady diet of exploitation titles that spanned six decades and multiple movie genres. In 1960 he turned to the works of an author he had read and admired growing up, Edgar Allan Poe, the nineteenth century inventor of detective fiction and master of mystery and the macabre, and made a stylish if frugal version of The Fall of the House of Usher, hiring Vincent Price for the lead and acclaimed author Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man, I am Legend, Somewhere in Time) to write the screenplay adaptation. The movie’s unexpected critical and commercial success spawned seven more Poe films in five years. The Raven, the fifth film, was released in January 1963 and was the first outright feature-length comic take on Poe’s most celebrated poem. The worldwide reception afforded the poem in 1845 made Poe the most famous American author of the 19th century, and he remains beloved in the 21st century for his pioneering detective fiction, horror tales, and haunting verse.

Matheson’s story lightens considerably the tone of the mesmeric poem, with the invention of sorcerer characters (Price and Karloff) who duel over Price’s wife (Hazel Court). Peter Lorre, transformed by Karloff into a raven, induces Price to help him break the spell and rescue Court. They are aided by Lorre’s son, played by Nicholson. Corman retained venerable cinematographer Floyd Crosby, production designer Daniel Haller, and composer Les Baxter from the prior Poe films to continue the atmospheric style which marks all the films. Matheson’s choice to inject humor throughout the movie led critics to pick up on the tongue-in-cheek tone, with one reviewer calling it “less of a Raven, and more of a lark.” Leonard Maltin found it a “funny horror satire [with the] climactic sorcerers’ duel a highlight.

This would be Matheson’s final Poe adaptation after writing House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and Tales of Terror (1962). Price would continue as the principal Poe player to the end of the eight-film series with Tomb of Ligeia in 1964. All the Poe/Corman films entrenched Price as a legendary horrormeister, but in The Raven he would demonstrate his comic chops along with unexpected humorous turns from Boris Karloff and an improvising Peter Lorre. A young Jack Nicholson is the bonus in this affectionate, amusing homage to the genius of Edgar Allan Poe.

ANOTHER BODY Q&A schedule at the Royal.

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Several screenings of Another Body at the Royal will feature Q&As. Here is the schedule:

Friday Oct 27 at 7:30 pm
Los Angeles Premiere screening followed by a Q&A with Directors Reuben Hamlyn & Sophie Compton, Producer Elizabeth Woodward, moderated by Emmy nominated and BAFTA winning Actress Juno Temple (Ted Lasso, Atonement).
 
Saturday Oct 28 at 7:30 pm
Screening of short film MARIANNE by Rebecca Ressler and Lara Porzak before the ANOTHER BODY screening.
 
Screenings followed by a Q&A with ANOTHER BODY Directors Reuben Hamlyn & Sophie Compton, Producer Elizabeth Woodward & MARIANNE co-directors Rebecca Ressler and Lara Porzak and Pulitzer-nominated Author Marianne Wiggins, moderated by Korama Danquah, co-hosted by Brown University Club of LA.
 
Sunday Oct 29 at 7:30 pm
Screening followed by a Q&A with Co-Director Reuben Hamlyn, moderated by Filmmaker and Actor Mojean Aria (Shayda).
 
Monday Oct 30 at 7:30 pm
Screening followed by a Q&A with Co-Director Reuben Hamlyn, moderated by Diane Becker (Oscar winning Producer of NAVALNY).
 
Tuesday Oct 31 at 7:30 pm
Screening of short film AIRHOSTESS-737 by Thanasis Neofotistos before the ANOTHER BODY screening.
No Q&A to follow the 10/31 7:30pm screening.

CAT PERSON Filmmaker Susanna Fogel in Conversation with Director-Writer-Actor Alex Winter October 13 at the Laemmle NoHo.

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Join us Thursday, October 13th at 7pm for the special screening of Cat Person at Laemmle’s NoHo 7 followed by a conversation between award-winning filmmaker Susanna Fogel and director-writer-actor Alex Winter.

Susanna Fogel is a director, screenwriter, and novelist. Most recently, she wrapped production on Winner, a feature biopic of American whistleblower Reality Winner starring Emilia Jones, Connie Britton, Zach Galifianakis, and Kathryn Newton. Her prior feature film work includes co-writing the hit comedy Booksmart and directing and co-writing Lionsgate’s The Spy Who Dumped Me. On the television side, her directing credits include the pilot episode of the HBO Max series “The Flight Attendant,” for which she won a DGA Award and was nominated for an Emmy, the first three episodes of National Geographic’s recent WWII limited series A Small Light, the pilot of the Amazon series “The Wilds,” and episodes of Gillian Flynn’s remake of “Utopia.”

Susanna Fogel. Credit: Roger Kisby/Getty Images for Disney

Alex Winter entered show business as a child actor with co-starring roles on Broadway in The King & I and Peter Pan, and came to prominence in movies such as The Lost Boys and the wildly popular Bill & Ted franchise. As a filmmaker, Winter’s narrative features include the cult classic Freaked and the critically acclaimed Fever, which screened at Cannes. Winter is the founder of Trouper Productions, which services his documentary work. In 2020, Winter released two new documentary feature films; Showbiz Kids, premiered on HBO to widespread critical acclaim, garnering a Critics Choice nomination. Followed by Zappa, the first all-access documentary on the life and times of Frank Zappa. The highly anticipated Bill & Ted Face the Music, opened in August 2020 as the number one movie both in the U.S. and the UK, and is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Winter just completed his next feature documentary, The YouTube Effect, which had its world premiere at Tribeca and went on to a sold-out theatrical run and is now being released worldwide on digital.

Alex Winter

Cat Person is a genre-bending thriller which after having its world premiere out of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival has become one of the most anticipated films of the Fall. The film is an all-too-relatable modern-day dating story that rapidly turns into a boldly provocative psychological thriller questioning the limit between fantasy and reality. Cat Person is a smart, darkly funny conversation starter.

CUP OF SALVATION Q&A Schedule

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Most screenings of the new documentary Cup of Salvation will feature Q&As at the Laemmle Glendale. Here’s the schedule:

Date: Q&A
Friday, October 6th
1:30 PM Anush Gharivyan O’Conner, Jason Wise, Armen Khachaturian
4:30 PM Anush Gharivyan O’Conner, Jason Wise, Armen Khachaturian
7:10 PM Kara Warner, Jason Wise, Armen Khachaturian
Saturday, October 7th
1:30 PM Jason Wise, Armen Khachaturian
4:30 PM Jason Wise, Armen Khachaturian
7:10 PM Jason Wise, Armen Khachaturian, Christina Wise, Jackson Myers
Sunday, October 8th
1:30 PM
4:30 PM Jason Wise, Armen Khachaturian, Christina Wise
7:10 PM Jason Wise, Armen Khachaturian, Eric Esrailian
Monday, October 9th
1:30 PM
4:30 PM Jason Wise, Christina Wise
7:10 PM Jason Wise, Christina Wise
Tuesday, October 10th
1:30 PM
4:30 PM Jason Wise, Jackson Myers
7:10 PM Jason Wise, Jackson Myers
Wednesday, October 11th
1:30 PM
7:10 PM Jason Wise, Vahe Keushguerian
Thursday, October 12th
1:30 PM
7:10 PM Jason Wise, Vahe Keushguerian, Claire Coppi moderator

Pedro Almodóvar’s STRANGE WAY OF LIFE with THE HUMAN VOICE.

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Sony Pictures Classics and Laemmle Theatres are pleased to present Strange Way of Life, the new English language short film by Pedro Almodóvar, starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke. Screenings begin October 6 at the Royal.

A man rides a horse across the desert that separates him from Bitter Creek. He comes to visit Sheriff Jake. Twenty-five years earlier, both the sheriff and Silva, the rancher who rides out to meet him, worked together as hired gunmen. Silva visits him with the excuse of reuniting with his friend from his youth, and they do indeed celebrate their meeting, but the next morning Sheriff Jake tells him that the reason for his trip is not to go down the memory lane of their old friendship….

Strange Way of Life will be followed by The Human Voice starring Tilda Swinton. Released during the pandemic, this is another chance to see Pedro Almodóvar’s first English language short on the big screen.

“One of the most perfect movies in the history of Japanese cinema,” UGETSU 70th Anniversary Screenings.

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By the time he made Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi was already an elder statesman of Japanese cinema, fiercely revered by Akira Kurosawa and other directors of a younger generation. And with this exquisite ghost story, a fatalistic wartime tragedy derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant, he created a touchstone of his art, his long takes and sweeping camera guiding the viewer through a delirious narrative about two villagers whose pursuit of fame and fortune leads them far astray from their loyal wives. Moving between the terrestrial and the otherworldly, Ugetsu reveals essential truths about the ravages of war, the plight of women, and the pride of men.

We will screen Ugetsu on October 11 at our Glendale, Claremont, Royal and Newhall theaters.

Pauline Kael wrote, “This subtle, violent yet magical film is one of the most amazing of the Japanese movies that played American art houses after the international success of Rashomon in 1951.” Japanese film scholar Donald Richie called Ugetsu “one of the most perfect movies in the history of Japanese cinema.” Many later directors, including Martin Scorsese and Andrei Tarkovsky, cited it as a personal favorite.

“With rare humanity, Mizoguchi reveals the toll these misadventures take on the souls of both men and their wives, many moments an uncanny synthesis of the realistic and the otherworldly.” ~ Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice

“Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi’s most widely heralded film, is a mysterious, incantatory, and gorgeous parable.” ~ Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine

“A ravishingly composed, evocatively beautiful film.” ~ Rod McShane, Time Out

CAT PERSON Screening + Conversation Between Award-Winning Filmmaker Susanna Fogel and moderated by Social Activist and Writer Monica Lewinsky.

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Join us Thursday, October 12th at 7pm for the special screening of Cat Person at Laemmle’s NoHo 7 followed by a conversation between award-winning filmmaker Susanna Fogel and social activist and writer Monica Lewinsky.

Susanna Fogel is a director, screenwriter, and novelist. Most recently, she wrapped production on Winner, a feature biopic of American whistleblower Reality Winner starring Emilia Jones, Connie Britton, Zach Galifianakis, and Kathryn Newton. Her prior feature film work includes co-writing the hit comedy Booksmart and directing and co-writing Lionsgate’s The Spy Who Dumped Me. On the television side, her directing credits include the pilot episode of the HBO Max series “The Flight Attendant”, for which she won a DGA Award and was nominated for an Emmy, the first three episodes of National Geographic’s recent WWII limited series A Small Light, the pilot of the Amazon series “The Wilds,” and episodes of Gillian Flynn’s remake of “Utopia.”

Susanna Fogel. Credit: Roger Kisby/Getty Images for Disney

Monica Lewinsky is a social activist, anti-bullying advocate, keynote speaker, producer and a Contributing Editor to Vanity Fair. Monica is an advocate for a safer social media environment and addresses such topics as digital resilience, privacy, cultivating compassion, overcoming shame, and equality for women. During 2014, Lewinsky authored an essay, titled “Shame and Survival” for Vanity Fair. ‘Shame and Survival’ overlapped Monica’s personal experiences and cultural observations. The essay was nominated for a National Magazine Award. In March 2015, Lewinsky was a keynote speaker at the annual TED Conference in Vancouver. Pulling from her unique experiences at the epicenter of a media storm in 1998, her TED speech, “The Price of Shame” has, to date, been viewed over 17 million times.

Monica Lewinsky. Credit: Greg Gorman

Cat Person is a genre-bending thriller which after having its world premiere out of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival has become one of the most anticipated films of the Fall. The film is an all-too-relatable modern-day dating story that rapidly turns into a boldly provocative psychological thriller questioning the limit between fantasy and reality. Cat Person is a smart, darkly funny conversation starter.