The Man Who Gave Us The Masterpieces

By Steve Holt

The demise of the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas four years ago left a huge hole in the hearts of Upper West Side movie lovers. Now, just as a successor organization, New Plaza Cinema, has found a semi-permanent home (at The West End Theatre, 263 West 86th St.), there’s a new book to help rekindle fond memories of the original, at the same time offering delightful insights into the man and the magic behind the beloved institution.

In Love With Movies: From New Yorker Films to Lincoln Plaza Cinemas [Columbia University Press] is a grand memoir by the late Dan Talbot, based on his journals, essays, and other writings, lovingly edited by his wife and partner Toby (also very critical to that magic!)

Dan and Toby ran the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas from 1981 to 2018, showing sophisticated films from around the world, not the popcorn fare available at most multiplexes (although there was popcorn for sale in the lobby). Before that, they delighted movie lovers with the pioneering programming at their New Yorker, Studio, and Metro cinemas.

But the Talbots were more than just theater owners. They were leading players in bringing the legendary films of the 20th and 21st centuries to America, helping to create and sustain a market for masterpieces that otherwise might never have been shown in this country, during what many aficionados consider a Golden Age of Cinema.

They became film distributors by accident: a movie they wanted to show didn’t have a distributor, so Dan decided he’d be one, taking a chance on a then-unknown Bernardo Bertolucci and his first film, Before The Revolution. Over 40-plus years, this snap decision led to New Yorker Films distributing nearly 500 movies, from The Marriage of Maria Braun to Aguirre the Wrath of God, from Shoah to My Dinner With André.

In Love With Movies is a delightful read, for a couple of reasons.

In addition to exuding the passion for film that drove the Talbots, it’s also a fascinating and frequently hilarious look at the business of making, distributing, promoting, and programming movies, the real story behind the scenes of all the tinsel and glamor.

Along the way we meet a pantheon of directors, from Roberto Rossellini, to Werner Herzog (who wrote the foreword for the book), to Jean-Luc Godard (who told Dan to take his share of the box office and go to 47th Street Photo to buy more film-making equipment!)

But more than a celebration of these wonderful films and the geniuses behind them, the book reveals Dan Talbot’s remarkable character: literate, generous, fearless, funny, sophisticated, smart. In just a few pages, you get the feeling that you know Dan, and that you’re very glad that you do.

His wife, sprightly and witty at age 93 (“I’m proud of my age!”), really misses him. In a recent interview at their beautiful Riverside Drive apartment, Toby is happy to show off Dan’s office, and the lifetime of memories adorning the walls: posters from all of the movie theaters they operated, celebrating now classic movies from all over the world; stunning photographs of some of the legendary directors whose work they championed, and who became friends; there’s even a shot of the Talbots taken at Jules Feiffer’s apartment by Richard Avedon, during a fundraiser for Fidel Castro (“who everyone thought was very wonderful at the time”). There’s also one of the poems Toby wrote for Dan every year on their anniversary.

The restless, inquisitive, exuberant mind on display in the home office comes vividly to life in the pages of the book. In fact, reading it is like riding the escalator at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, where you might have stood eagerly, clutching your ticket, knowing that at the bottom of the moving stairs, you’d be reminded yet again why you’re In Love With Movies.