By Andrew Repasky McElhinney.
“Cinemagic” is a Magic Word
Twenty years ago, late September 2006, my phone rang — it was Gina Renzi, the director of The Rotunda, where I curated a monthly screening series, Andrew’s Video Vault from 2003 to 2017.
Gina’s breaking news was that UPenn had acquired the recently closed, small, Cinemagic 3 multiplex movie theater at 3925 Walnut Street, and the grimy venue was open for activity before its imminent demolition.
I love theater spaces, and decayed ones at that, so I whipped up an 11-page screenplay in a few days: The Things We Do for Love: A Cinemagic. As I was in the middle of shooting of my fourth feature film, the period romantic comedy, Animal Husbandry, I had a camera, lenses, some lights, and my best friends ready and game.
The Things We Do for Love: A Cinemagic follows a Guy at the Movies who is sent, mid-film, by his Girlfriend to fetch some popcorn. The quest proves more difficult than expected, as Guy navigates all types of agitated rough trade cinema dwellers in the search for popcorn… or anyone who actually works at the tri-plex. It’s a dry, acrid, silly slapstick of frustrated desires and troubled, febrile, maybe fraying, relationship bonds.
The Things We Do for Love: A Cinemagic was filmed in chromey miniDV at the height of my years working in the office of The Five Spot Nightclub (1996-2007) and co-co-directing its Peek-A-Boo Revue neo-burlesque show. The Cinemagic’s cinematographer, Colleen Joy Kucera, and performers Melissa Elizabeth Forgione, Anna Maria Frangiosa, Kate K Milo & Brie Wildau came from the club. They joined radio DJ Dan Buskirk & wife, Kerri Farrow, with their newborn son. Terry Jones from A Maggot Tango and Magdalen rounded out the main cast, along with some true Philadelphia theater royalty; Mary McCool, Greg Giovanni & Lee Ann Etzold. Everybody worked for free. I can’t thank them enough. Truly, the Cinemagic was done for love.
We shot the script in about twelve hours on Thursday, October 5, 2006 – starting around 11 AM and wrapping just before midnight. The actor who I wrote the role of Guy for, couldn’t get off work day-of, so I stepped into the part. Peter Price helped with set-up and carried boxes and boxes of extension cords into the Cinemagic. Colleen and I were the only crew. She had an established professional background in photography and created unique visual ideas as I directed and performed. Colleen and I also bickered a fair amount. Cast dropped into the Cinemagic when they could, and we’d shoot the scenes as quickly as possible. Brie was originally going to play Mary’s character, and vice versa, however the schedule of the extras for the theater scenes dictated that they switch roles (…and to marvelous effect).
The 11-minute end result, edited by my long-term editor, the late, great Ron Kalish (1942-2018) is something of an outlier in my work because it’s an out-and-out comedy and a short. I love that it happened, and loved revisiting the movie twenty years later — perhaps even because of its fly-by-night, low-rez roughness. Some of the people in this movie are dead now, and some have moved, and a few of us are still here in Philly. The Things We Do for Love: A Cinemagic is a wonderful snapshot of a youthful Eden before it was lost.
And now, after having completed my sixth feature film, the epic 252-minute Casual Encounters: Philadelphia True Crime Confessions movie this past September — a fourteen-year process — I must say, making another comic short quickie perhaps again appeals.
The Things We Do for Love: A Cinemagic streams online through November 2 here.
Museum of Modern Art artist Andrew Repasky McElhinney is an independent filmmaker and experimental theater director known for his audacious, genre-bending movies including A Maggot Tango, Magdalen, A Chronicle of Corpses, Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye, Animal Husbandry, & Christmas Dreams. McElhinney is also the author of the screen studies work, Second Takes: Remaking Film, Remaking America. He has just completed the 252-minute epic, Casual Encounters: Philadelphia True Crime Confessions. ARMcinema25.com.