hi i'm tom mccarthy and i am in my favorite cinema the film forum on house history
i remember i was apartment shopping i had made about a couple of movies and i had just enough
money to like buy a place in manhattan my real estate agent showed me just two blocks on sixth
avenue apartment and i was like oh my god i'm like two blocks of film form this is amazing i love it
she's like you should see the apartment i'm like oh yeah we should do a walkthrough
and i just kept thinking this is my life i'm gonna sleep late go to movies write for
two hours go back to movie and uh those three years from like 96 to 99 where i really started
deep dive into cinema especially european cinema world cinema and that like has hugely
impacted my my life and my work it's around then that i was riding the station agent
and i kept coming to this theater for inspiration and seeing films and filmmakers i just never heard
of i was very uneducated at that point in my life my focus was on acting in the theater
although i appreciated and loved movies i wasn't a fan of real cinema i think that's pretty much
the mission of film form right what makes film form unique is that our mission is to present
films regardless of commercial value so we're not just about blockbusters our programmers are
incredibly dedicated and incredibly thorough we scour festivals watch over 700 films every year
all over the globe looking for the greatest cinema to present we don't show films as you
could find in the main theaters we show diverse kind of movies german movies spanish african
every time so i think everybody has some share in it it's not like age related you have schools
coming to see a movie old men youngsters coming so i see film forum as preserving that atmosphere
that uh idea that if i go to film forum i'll say something good the reason is because it's curated
by people who know and love movies right and they're putting movies together in certain ways
they're putting retrospectives together and if you just get like there's nothing more exciting when
i get the mailer from film form and i can open it up it's one of the few things i still keep
because it's just cool and i'll look at it when i'm bored you know and now my daughter's into
looking at it and finding like what appeals to her so that's a big part of this place but i
think for me this place is more about worlds in my european cinema and there's not many of those left
in the city not to mention the country so i try to support it every way i can
some form started out in the 70s with only 50 uh seats and one projector so when you're small like
that you have no choice but to be in touch with the community in 1980 we moved to watt street but
we came here in 1990. we've been here ever since i think we've continued that tradition even though
we're up to four projectors and almost 500 seats we haven't changed that
small mindset so film farm basically runs on the support of our generous donors we're not
affiliated with any other theaters and we are non-profit which is amazing because we're
the only one in new york and we're out of very few in the u.s so anybody that supported us by
becoming a member donating even buying a t-shirt or a tote we're here because of them
when i lived in this building at charlton it's a massive building it's the whole block
it really feels like new york the people in there they're just all sorts they're like
the weirdos that make up this great city and i consider myself a part of that and
that that building felt like that when you come here it feels like the guys with shopping bags
i almost got in a fight with these two guys at a douglas cirque movie i mean that just seems
sort of ironic but a little bit meta and it was like they were something i was doing what got they
got upset and they turned and like confronted me and i was with my editor and he was like
we can't get in a fight at film forum not in a douglas circ movie film forms community is very
eccentric but in the best way possible we really do our best to foster
everyone's excitement to go to the theater we have groups of people that come in regularly
that we know i think that connection between the customers that come here and the staff
that works here is really unique i love about this theater is inevitably someone will have a reaction
to a moment and then people will react to that reaction you know like this movie ended the other
night and some guy just goes ah and the whole place cracked up and i'm like okay we're not
just responding to the end responding to that gentleman's reaction to that shot and i'm like
that i mean that those are people who are paying attention those are people you're like damn it i
wish the filmmaker could have been here he might not liked it but but he could you you can't deny
the connection to it you know people who come to see movies over here kind of understand what
movies are so we try to maintain that kind of quality i quite remember a time where
these projectors are said that you can program them to run 25 frames per second instead of 24
and i didn't know accidentally i engaged the 25 format so the firm kind of run maybe
a minute or two faster so a customer walked out and he said no this print is not right
and i said no then i look on the projector and i realized that it was my mistake i mean just
imagine you have scorsese on it sometimes just he and his staff and sometimes just by himself
so you just imagine you have those people in the audience so you have to be very very
careful you have to be on top of your game to work here i think films are so important especially now
because it's a means of escape i don't know about you but i don't want to think about the past year
at all i want to come here in a cool ac room and watch amazing films and obsess about them for the
next day the next day and a half and i think everybody who comes here wants to do the same
i walked out of the scene left the scene the other night and i almost got emotional
just sitting in a movie by a filmmaker i didn't know anything about and being challenged by it
laughing by it i just felt like the past right now in a time where cinema is in a very confused
place and movies are in a confused place like that just gives me such uh i don't know gives me hope
i think sometimes people underestimate really deeply underestimate the experience of seeing
a movie with an audience and getting lost because i don't care who you are if you're in that movie
theater and you take out your phone and check your text or email someone will let you know right and
they should okay you're at home you can do that all the time you know and if you have to get up
to go to the bathroom you do at home you don't think twice about it you think twice about it in
the movie theater like how much longer do i have i don't want to miss this because it ain't coming
back you know and i feel like there's just no different it's just it's such a more immersive and
complete experience to see in the movie theater and you know anyone that feels differently i don't
think has a real true and deep appreciation for movies i don't know how they could say otherwise
still water yet the father of the american student yes ma'am my daughter came to france
from stillwater she's been in jail for five years there's a new lead you must accept her sentence
you were supposed to visit and come home you're gonna need to trust me on this that's not how
it works here i should have watched huh not what it will be a serious mistake to try to
get her out of there do you believe she's innocent i know she is still water rated r
you