The movie theater is a sacred place and individuals like myself love the escapism. In the latest documentary, Only in Theaters directed by actor Raphael Sbarge takes audiences on a fascinating inside look at Greg Laemmle and the long history and legacy of the Laemmle Family and their theaters. For 85 years the Laemmle’s have been running film independent arthouses all over Los Angeles including Hollywood, Santa Monica, Lancaster, Beverly Hill, and more. The film that chronicles the family-run business took over nearly 3 years to film and includes interviews with Ava DuVernay, Leonard Maltin, Mark Ulano, and more. This documentary isn’t the first for Raphael to direct as he previously directed The Tricky Part (2019), LA Foodway (2019), and Lewis MacAdams: A Celebration of Life (2020). When Raphael is not busy sharing and exposing the world to important stories, he can be seen in front of the camera as well. Raphael has been seen in the TNT series Murder in the First (2014-2016) as Inspector David Molk, Once Upon a Time (2011-2018) as Jiminy Cricket/Dr. Archibald Hopper has had guest appearances in various TV shows including the most recent Julia Roberts and Sean Penn series Gaslit (2022). I recently had the chance to have a zoom interview with Raphael to discuss his latest project, Only in Theaters and the importance of Laemmle’s family-run business, and the magic of going to the theater.
Kristin: Since this is like a whole theatergoing film experience if you can describe your favorite theatergoing experience, that would be amazing.
Raphael: Basically, you know, I’m an actor, right? That was that’s my first love. My mother was a theatrical costume designer. She did 20 shows on Broadway while working as a professor at Yale. My dad was a playwright. They met at Yale and I’m one of those kids who grew up, you know, grew up in a theater. I used to play backstage. I used to help my mother with the costumes and play with the actors and run around. The theater was sort of my home away from home. And it was sort of like the circus. It always felt like a warm, wonderful place to go. I did my first play at seven. I did my first Broadway show at 16 and I love the magic of going to the theater. It’s for me and it’s a sacred experience. It is where we get to go and kind of have, you know, particularly live theater that has a remarkable experience. It’s like those Tibetan sands, the sand mandalas that basically spend months making. And then they’re gone. It lives in this remarkable place of the immediate in the now. There’s something about it that adds to the art form that makes it so compelling and so electrifying. I’m also a filmmaker, right? The story is I got introduced to Greg Laemmle because I made some films and was living in Los Angeles at the time. As I say in the movie, if all the filmmakers in New York knew the gold standard of where you want to show your movie, it would be at the Laemmle theaters. So, I called the local theater, and I got Greg Laemmle on the phone which is kind of astounding to get, the man above the title on the phone. He talked with me and worked with me and essentially it was clear that he really wanted to support the process, but he was also a good businessman, with a wonderful combination of feeling like I was being supported and then given a platform. As filmmakers, you work, and you work and you work and you work, and it doesn’t feel like work to me. For many of us, it doesn’t really feel like a film until there’s that sort of precious moment when the actual work itself meets an audience. There’s a space between the screen and the seats and the patrons. You know, precious, remarkable, ephemeral space where the magic happens and that no matter how many films we all have on hard drives as filmmakers, it doesn’t feel like a movie until it’s actually been in a theater. I’m told and I don’t know this for a fact, so I can’t verify it, but you know, the fact that we’re opening in theaters, the fact that Only in Theaters is not opening only on streaming was a very determined thing for me. I really wanted to have a theatrical run because it’s about the kind of support and the reminder of what the theatrical experience is all about. Going to theaters is a sacred experience. I don’t care how big your home system is. Being in a dark space without interruptions, coming in with strangers, and leaving as friends because you all have shared this experience. It’s an effect on us that is more powerful than just maybe the sum of its parts. It has a transformative quality to it. In a world where we’re constantly distracted and we’re constantly inundated with more information and trying to keep up going to a space where we’re just about the movie and transported by this, the vision is so valuable.
Kristin: It is! I go to the movies all the time and I love when I get to bring my loved ones because it’s such a bonding experience. Everybody’s quiet for almost 2 hours and like what you just said, you have this shared experience and then if there are other audience members, you become almost united with them because you either share that same feeling or different feelings. Sometimes you talk to everybody afterward about what you had seen. One other question I have is since there are ongoing changes in the film industry, why do you think this film was important to release not just in theaters but why is it important to release this film now?
Raphael: Here’s the amazing thing about the making of this movie was, we shot it over two and a half years. That was not by design. Literally, I thought the movie was going to be done any number of times. I got pulled in by the legacy story. Then a series of things happened, and we stayed with it. The fact is that over the period of the last two years, there have been so many changes. The day and date stuff, all the new streaming stuff, Disney+ came online, Paramount came online, all these other things. What we kept trying to do is be able to talk about the fact that this is a changing landscape. It isn’t just streaming that’s affecting us. There are other forces at work, like, for example, Tik Tok or video games or any number of other things that are sort of distractions. People used to go to the movies three or four times a week, back in the forties, right? And then back in the sixties again after, television came in, it kind of wiped out a lot of theaters and then people came back too again. That is, of course, the template that we hope that we’re going to sort of be, you know, come back to. Will the movie-going be cool again? That’s where we’re going back to. Where we tried to land on this was really talk about a changing landscape and show it against a family and really show how the family was trying to keep up with the changes and keep up with this sort of shifting seismic. Without getting too stuck in any of the specifics of the details of who was doing what, when, because every week it seemed like there was another change and another headline and, oh my God, did you hear about so-and-so and, and this and that. We’ve teamed up with this family who has, I mean the end of the day, theater royalty, the Laemmle family. There’s been a Laemmle in the movie business since there’s been a movie business and because of that, there’s been this kind of sense of how do you tell the story about movie theaters right now without getting too stuck in any newsy item. Well, we know that it’s changing. We know that the landscape is shifting. We know that theaters are closed. I mean if you know New York, you know, that Cinépolis closed a week ago (at the time of this interview the Cinépolis Chelsea theater closed its doors on January 8, 2023). How many movies I’ve seen there including, all the stuff from Tribeca and everything else? For Chelsea. I mean, that’s again, such an anchor of a theater that is gone and gone forever. What does that mean? And what does it mean for the art form? What does that mean for the filmmakers? What does that mean for patrons? You know, when you don’t have a place to go and when you’re then just stuck at home like, hey, there are no movie theaters anymore, we can’t go to them because they’re all closed. So, you just have to stay home and watch, how depressing would that be? Right! Hopefully, the opportunities to be able to kind of remind people, and by being in theaters, it’s a way to kind of also, force people to come out. I do love this, it does matter, and I do care about it.
Kristin: What documentaries did you look at that and that inspired you?
Raphael: I love documentaries. I mean, I love there are so many different documentaries. I mean, what’s thrilling right now is that documentary as a form of storytelling has been elevated to a point. I still think being a documentary filmmaker is sort of like being a poet. It’s like I felt the film is equivalent to being a poet, extremely difficult. It’s, you know, it’s not necessarily financially remunerative. But at the same time, it’s a noble profession. I think people are looking for authentic experiences and are interested in learning about things that they didn’t know about. Obviously, some of the benefits of streaming channels is that we’ve been able to be introduced to things that we might not necessarily have known. That’s good news! In terms of the films that have inspired me, there are so many different ones. Without giving specifics, let me sort of say this. There are the documentaries that I was most interested in that inspired me and then there are documentaries that start with one thing and then end up with something else. There was that documentary about the bikers and the Russian doping scandal (he was referring to the 2017 documentary Icarus). That movie had an interesting take and that made me think a great deal because it kept being like, okay, so wow, you start with one movie, and then you think it’s this movie. You think, okay, I’m going to go in and tell this because you have to come in with a point of view, right? It’s like a thesis and you come in like, okay, that’s what I’m going to tell. Then what happens is at some point something happens, and it goes, no, that movie ain’t what you think you’re going to and that’s not the movie anymore. The movie’s actually going this way so then you have to decide, well am I going to go that way or not? Am I going to just be determined and stick with what I want to do? Or do I take the trip and go? With that everything else that happened is that I had to sort of pivot and then kind of follow it to its end. There was a great deal of faith in that. There was a great deal of this that will make sense, but not quite know where the end would be. The thing that kept being encouraging to me was the fact that every day, particularly over the last year of making it, there was another headline about the exhibition, about what’s happening with the exhibition, what’s happening with streaming, or what the questions from big filmmakers asking about what’s important. Ava DuVernay said, Netflix has been very important to my career. She said, showing my movies in 250 countries, that’s massive! That’s been a giant part of her reach. However, she said, showing my movie in a theater is huge and it’s important. It’s equally as important to me and again, I think that’s why so many of these filmmakers spoke to me. James Ivory talks about how important it is to be able to see his movies on a big screen. He loves and one of his favorite films is, Jefferson in Paris (1995). There is that amazing sequence of the balloon, you know, coming up over the building. This man in his heyday was making movies every year and was making the next Oscar winner. He talked about how his partner, Merchant, would gather very specific places that he hoped they would get in the Laemmle in L.A., the Paris in New York, and theaters that he knew where his audiences would be. They were so important to be able to kind of find that community and connection with that audience. That’s the magnificence of being in a theater with a big screen bigger than us. Not our little thing (Raphael picks up his iPhone), but bigger than us and allowing us to be carried away into the story that will transport us. This is where the magic happens!
Kristin: I was watching this, I’m not sure if you know the filmmaker, April Wright. She has directed a couple of theater-going experience documentaries. She directed Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive-in Movie (2013) and Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace (2019). She also directed another movie called Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story (2020) and other films that look at the theater-going experience, and Hollywood. She’s an excellent filmmaker that came to my mind when I was sitting watching it and I could see the similarities you brought to the film yet making it a piece of your own. What was it like bringing on some of the most powerful people and artists? How did you get Ava DuVernay, Nicole Holofcener and Cameron Crowe to all say “yes” to taking part in the film?
Raphael: It wasn’t easy I tell you, but I mean look at Ava DuVernay, James Avery, Cameron Crowe, Alison Anders, Nicole Holofcener, Leonard Maltin, Kenneth Turan, and Bruce Joel Rubin who won the Oscar for Ghost (1990), and David L. Snyder was nominated for the Oscar for Blade Runner (1983). Some of them I knew and some of them, three of them were friends or who I had worked with before like Bruce who is a dear friend. The big ones like Ava, Cameron, and James as I’m told Cameron never does any interviews with anyone.
Kristin: Yeah! It’s very, very rare.
Raphael: So very rare. When we approached him about the subject, he apparently really lit up. Also, Ava DuVernay I guess the story was that she made her first film which won Sundance. What happened was she called Greg just like I did, and basically said, can you give me some shows? He did because he did, then she was able to call New York and say, well, I got a show in New York. Are you going to let me show in L.A.? And that’s what kind of help launch her career. That was why she would speak to me and she spoke to me for 20 minutes. I didn’t know until really moments before that she was going to show up because she’s so busy and because apparently, again, she doesn’t do a lot of interviews. James Ivory, whom we reached out to through a third party. I think he’s 94 and he’s still working. He just won the Oscar a couple of years ago. The subject was compelling and important, and it seemed timely that there was sort of an accidentally — we backed into a zeitgeist telling this movie and this story was, I guess the future of cinema and the future of movie theaters and what’s happening with the exhibition. The vehicle to tell the story is this very loving Jewish immigrant family who has this outsized influence on the history of cinema, having won the French Legion of Honor for their support of the French New Wave and introduced foreign films to Los Angeles at a time when there was no such thing at the epic center or transmission point for affecting so many other Hollywood movies. This involved all the support they’ve done for filmmakers; their mission has been for 85 years to support the art of film and the filmmakers who make them. Then it’s also nurturing to the audiences who really care about this kind of art form. I love arthouse. I also love going to big Hollywood movies as well. I liked Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and Black Panther (2018) and I’m not a purist in that. I am going to the movies and the theater is important to me. As I say, having grown up in theaters, it was a natural extension of something that was easy to feel a part of. Being in a theater feels like home to me and so that was hopefully what we tried to translate.
Kristin: You did that perfectly. For someone like myself, the theater is my second home and because of that, I try to go to the theater at least once a week. One of the final questions I have for you is, you teamed up with the Collaborative, a nonprofit organization for the film. How did you get connected with them and what was your experience like working with them?
Raphael: Greg recommended that I talk to them, which was kind of cool. I couldn’t premiere a film called Only in Theaters, not only on streaming. I know ultimately this film will reach a wider audience on streaming. We have Kino Lorber who is doing our DVD and is going to be releasing and taking the film over in their catalog. We’ve sold our ancillary rights and there will be an afterlife of this. But it was what I loved about the film Collaborative which was their commitment to being an understanding event cinema and the importance of being in theaters, how important it is to bring people out, all the things that I feel, all the things that mean to the art form, all the things it means to us. We’ve all been locked in our houses for two years and like how important it is to get out and be in a theater around other people and socialize. I mean, we’re social animals. How important is that? There are so many reasons why this matters. These seem to get in on all the points. So, they were really interested in making sure that we had a theatrical run. Now we’re opening literally in cities all over the country, which is exciting. I just had a lovely little letter from a theater in Corvallis this morning saying thank you for making this movie. It’s really an important film. It reminds us of why going to the movies matters so much. So that touches my heart and makes me so happy.
Kristin: It is extremely important, and we cannot lose the theater-going experience. Well, I just want to wrap up and say thank you so much for your time. It was lovely to speak with you.
Raphael: Thank you, Kristin. Thank you. Thank you for loving going to the theater, too.
Be sure to check out the documentary Only in Theaters available in select theaters now.
