Google Search... & Find!

Here is another view of the interior of the Suburban World Theater. The arched ceiling has hundreds of twinkle lights to simulate the night sky (many burned out!) and a cloud machine. More important, the food and friendly service was great at the Cartoon Brunch today and crowds are growing with more children. The owner is committed to making a go of it and is finding new promotion opps on the web such as this one which features a map of the location. Don liked my ideas for upcoming shows, including a special Santa Claus Brunch to run two weekends. The Suburban World
website is using my poster of the week and a link to the Youtube video I made.

This past week I was thinking about how Café Roxy showed up in Google and Yahoo searches about a week after I started the website. Who would actually google those two words besides me -- don't know! You can go google it yourself and Café Roxy has several links right at the top of each search engine result. Hooray for me! Big deal....

I was also thinking how "Cartoon Brunch" has an even better chance of catching on across the country. A brunch is a fun, special weekend activity and cartoons are still fun. Put the two together in someone's head and the new concept is a home run, or at least worth looking into and maybe trying. I briefly thought I needed a new website called Cartoon Brunch just to catch anyone googling the idea. Of course they won't think to google unless they first hear about it somewhere like discussed on the radio, TV or read it in some high profile blog. Then later they might google to find the website.

Then I noticed a week ago that some links from a Café Roxy search referred to this blog you are reading now. I'm not sure how that works but I won't turn it down! Therefore, I reasoned, all I needed was a blog called Cartoon Brunch to catch any googlers. Done! You can go read my rushed together first Cartoon Brunch Blog! It may be the first and last entry, because I don't need a separate blog. After finishing and posting I noticed that a google search on Cartoon Brunch turns up my Café Roxy blog post of last week! Of, well. If anyone does read Cartoon Brunch Blog there are links to Café Roxy website.

Here is an excerpt from Cartoon Brunch Blog, in hopes that I may have stated the concept concisely:

"So what is Cartoon Brunch anyhoo? If you have an eating emporium, create a special brunch menu for Saturday and Sunday. If you have a coffee house, then coffee drinks and donuts may be enough. It may take some effort to put in a large screen TV connected to a DVD player. If you are a Sports Bar, all done! Now all you need is a free poster that you can take right off my cartoon poster page. Drag any poster to your computer desk top, click and it will be ready to print full size. You can add your show date info in the empty area at the bottom. Display the poster a week in advance, talk up the Cartoon Brunch with all your regular customers, send out press releases, put the news on your own website, etc. Saturday rolls around and you start the cartoons at a set time. People come and go, order food, enjoy films and depart after they have seen enough. Each show runs one hour and repeats twice on a single DVD. You can re-start a show in seconds (every two hours) and let it run until the last customer departs."

FYI, my googling found a restaurant or bar actively doing cartoon brunches and free evening movies: EatBar in Arlington, VA. You can go check out their menu and film programs. The Saturday brunch showcases short cartoons from Disney, Warners, Lantz, etc., while Sunday brunch at 11 am features big family movies like Shrek, Dumbo and Charlotte's Web. This is more ambitious than my project to encourage coffee houses to show vintage public domain films. EatBar must be doing well to accommodate royalties for public showings, although that may be more affordable than I suspect and certainly something I should look into.


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With Matinee Memories!

Ideas have evolved since my visit to the Suburban World's Cartoon Brunch last Saturday. The 6 or 7 color Warner Bros. cartoons that were running when I walked in were not a satisfactory show because they were all too similar. Cartoons were made to be shown one at a time in theaters, and never meant to be watched one after another. At the very least, mix up the characters, studios, etc., for variety. The cook or waitress can't change discs every other cartoon. The owner, Don Driggs, agreed and wanted more vintage cartoons. This was a huge relief that he did not want current TV cartoons! He seemed pleased when he began the sample show I had brought that started with the silent era cartoon "Felix in Astronomeous." Black and white cartoons alternated with color; characters like Popeye, Betty Boop and Superman alternated with non-character cartoons like "Song of the Birds."

I walked in with a further idea to expand Cartoon Brunch into Matinee Brunch over the next few months. I included on my cartoon disc an 8-minute promo for Matinee Brunch that was similar to my "Matinee Jr. for Libraries" clip on Youtube, with the Flash Gordon serial chapter ending, W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, Balloon Land, Popeye, 3 Stooges, etc. clips. In fact, the promo was identical except for shots of the Suburban World and "Coming Soon" blurbs.

The promo clips went over very well because they were short, fun, added variety and addressed the "short attention span" syndrome. They worked so well that I had second thoughts whether this audience would sit through an entire 2-reel comedy. Would they watch all of W.C. Fields' The Dentist? Would they have more fun seeing the golfing segment one week and the tall woman having her tooth pulled a second week? Wouldn't they have more fun watching 3 minutes of a serial chapter ending than the entire serial chapter? Thus evolved:

Cartoon Brunch with Matinee Memories!

The name will remain Cartoon Brunch because it is simple and catchy. Most people enjoy weekend brunches. Most kids enjoy cartoons. Most families like new family activities and thus will try Cartoon Brunch at least once. Each one-hour show will include around 7 cartoons plus two "Matinee Memories" like coming attraction trailers to horror films, serial chapter endings, comedy gags, western stunts and whatever I think will entertain from the vast library of public domain films.

A promo for the new Suburban World Cartoon Brunch is now available for viewing! It includes some nice interior shots of the theater plus a mini-brunch show with both cartoon snippets and "Matinee Memory" clips of a chapter ending for Flash Gordon and the ever-popular Giant Claw Trailer. My thanks to the Woody Woodpecker public domain cartoon "Pantry Panic" for the image of Woody eating!

Cartoon Brunch may be the perfect program to build return audiences. Not everyone loves a diet of 100% cartoons week after week, but the live action trailers and short clips should spice up the menu and maintain interest over an hour as diners/viewers come and go throughout the show. That's the theory. I can test it myself by observing at the Suburban World starting next Saturday. (No brunch this week due to a special event.)



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Cartoon Brunch!

The Minneapolis Suburban World Theater, that I wrote about on Oct. 11, suddenly revived their Cartoon Brunch. The interior had been remodeled several years ago into dinner theater type seating with small tables in alcoves, and they have a kitchen as well as a full bar. Between 9am and 2pm every Saturday and Sunday the theater shows free cartoons on a giant movie screen while serving brunch. The new video projector gives a superb image.

The cartoon brunches began over two years ago. They were programmed and presented by my long-time friend David Mruz, who lives a block from the theater, and David got many of the cartoon DVDs from me. We even added serial chapters from "Undersea Kingdom" in an early attempt at what Café Roxy is programming now. The brunches became quite successful when some parent group mentioned in a newsletter that it was a great weekend activity where the kids could run up and down the aisles. It seems unlikely someone actually wrote that, but it's what David told me. The success was up to 400 diners/viewers each weekend, who all ordered food.

The brunches screeched to a halt when the kitchen staff was not increased to handle the demand. When you wait 40 minutes for an omelette you are not likely to return! The audience also died when summer came. There were problems with the films as well. Which disc was shown when? Most audiences don't want to watch an hour of Popeye, etc., at one sitting. Some had racial jokes. Many were copyrighted and should not have been shown in public. The cook ran the films. While I had attended one cartoon brunch, I live a half hour away and did not pay much attention to what David was trying to do each weekend.

So the brunches are suddenly back! I went to the one today and talked to the owner, Don Driggs, about programming future shows. As I walked in, color Warner Bros. cartoons were playing from one of the Looney Tunes discs. They kept playing one after another, some good and some bad, but all color Warners. Don wanted more vintage cartoons, so he ran the sample show I brought that contained the cartoons listed on the first poster (shown on left).

I can provide a different poster each week for him to post on the Suburban World Website, and also to print out for his front door. I list the specific cartoons in each show so that repeat customers can be assured they won't see cartoons they saw at the brunch last month or even last week. This should make it easier for the projectionist! All cartoons are in the public domain and so are legal to show. All are top quality. None are duds. None have racial jokes. I alternate color with black and white cartoons. Each show has a few rare or lesser-seen cartoons like "The Haunted Ship," "Song of the Birds" and "Humpty Dumpty" on this program.

Because the average diner only stays an hour, I only include about an hour of cartoons and then repeat them to make up a two-hour DVD that the projectionist only needs to re-start twice at most.

Apparently we have a deal for me to supply future shows. Because it is a bohemian, trendy area, young people are always willing to try something new. The popular Uptown Bar, next door to the theater, closed last week to be torn down and something or other rebuilt in the spot. The Uptown served breakfast, so the Suburban World is ripe for success. Don's main challenge is to get free publicity in the form of a newspaper article or TV spot. We'll see what he comes up with.




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Post Halloween Apocalypse!

Or watch classic horror year round!

I missed posting on Halloween, so here's a belated one. These notes were made for The Bijou Blog, and please check it out, but then cut because of space down to just the House on Haunted Hill review. Other contributors to the Bijou Blog Halloween post are Bob Campbell and Victoria Balloon, who meshed it into a single voice.

Johnny Legend
Behind the fearful beard lurks an American Rockabilly musician, actor, wrestling manager and film producer and archivist. Johnny released dozens of obscure cartoons, exploitation films, low-budget horror flicks and his popular Sleazemania series through Rhino Home Video. His rare and restored videos are currently ballyhooed at Legend House and Raunchy Tonk Video. Here are three Legend(ary) releases of Johnny's to chill your Halloween.

“House on Haunted Hill”
This high quality, 50th Anniversary Edition is presented in widescreen by Johnny Legend, a video pioneer who released low-budget horror and exploitation films in the early days of Rhino Home Video. William Castle’s 1959 thriller still shocks and mystifies with ghoulish plot twists. Vincent Price invites five random guests to stay overnight in a haunted house and get $10,000 for surviving. Not all of them make it. The bonus extras are true delights starting with two trailers for House, one trumpeting the “Emergo” process (skeleton flies over audience during climax), and trailers for Vincent Price and William Castle shockers -- The Fly, Tingler, Macabre, 13 Ghosts, Mr. Sardonicus, Zotz, Straight-Jacket and more. Mr. Castle appears in many trailers to explain his latest gimmicks. Johnny himself discusses the “House” today and actress Carol Ohmart. The disc closes with Vincent Price on the Jack Benny and Red Skelton Shows and as persecuted missionary John Hayes on “TV Reader’s Digest” from 1955.

Sweeney Todd and Crimes at the Dark House
Johnny Legend loves Tod Slaughter and you will too. Never shy about appearing in his own videos, Johnny relates how he discovered Tod in the late 1960s in Los Angeles’ Cozy Theater. This bonus is followed by British horror trailers, Slaughter poster art and a rare audio of Mr. Tod as Sweeney Todd.

Tod Slaughter, affectionately known as Europe’s Horror Man, is the ultimate old-fashioned melodrama villain. He laughs maniacally as he gleefully chokes his victims... in every single film! The fiend is simply mad. Tod’s over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek villainy is not to be believed until one sees it, which has made him a cult hero among Cinephiles. In most films Slaughter is a man of wealth or position who lusts after the heroine, often gets her by lies and murder, but is foiled in the end. This is the plot of Crimes at the Dark House (1940), based on the novel “The Woman in White.” Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936) is Slaughter’s career zenith that years later spawned the stage musical and Johnny Depp film. The maniac barber kills for money, but the detail about turning his victims into meat pies is barely hinted at. Tod as Sweeney coos: “What a lovely throat she has for the razor. How I’d love to polish her off! The razor’s nice and sharp.”

Halloween in Hell
Johnny roams Hollywood Boulevard on Halloween interviewing denizens between horror trailers, then on to talks with horror directors Tim Sullivan and Ray Dennis Steckler and cult legend Arch (Eegah!) Hall Jr. If more Johnny is not enough, how about two more Tod Slaughter films! In Murder in the Red Barn (1935), Tod not only seduces the heroine but murders and buries her, laughing all the while. The Face at the Window is the most traditional horror film of the four with a monster and mad scientist scene. Is wealthy Tod the sinister Wolf Man whose hideous face appears at windows when murder strikes? All four Tod Slaughter films are highly recommended for their exceptional quality and refreshing dementia!

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Matinee Jr. for Libraries!

Several observations unexpectedly merged into a new project this week. Some parents attending the Parkway Theater Saturday Matinee brought very young children, pre-schoolers who looked to be 4 and 5 years old, to see Flying Deuces. I'm sure they enjoyed the cartoons in a theater setting. I hope they laughed at Laurel and Hardy and who knows what they made of the serial? The point is, we had parents who wanted to introduce their kids to the vintage films but the show wasn't quite right for the extremely young. They surely won't be back for John Wayne or White Zombie, but maybe for the Our Gang / 3 Stooges festival that follows or for Gulliver's Travels.

On Monday Bob DeFlores offered to put up a Matinee flyer in a library where he had presented a jazz program and so he knew the program director quite well. Libraries are busy these days because the economy has driven families to seek free entertainment. Most libraries do give regular special programs in all-purpose meeting rooms that happen to be equipped with video projection. Library budgets keep getting cut, but the "Friends of the Library" parent group helps fund programs they feel are worthwhile. Bob had been paid $100 to introduce and present his jazz show. A Café Roxy show goes for $25, which is a library bargain.

Duh! An idea at last -- a Café Roxy series tailored to the special needs of Libraries. Thus was born Matinee Jr.

We felt library programs needed to be a short and snappy 65-75 minutes long. The solution for attaining that is ... drop the features! Shorts only. The idea was modified to abridge some features with an onscreen note such as: "Many Matinees included westerns. This excerpt from a Roy Rogers western gives a taste of the action and fun." This will allow the inclusion of John Wayne, Gene Autry, the Three Mesquiteers and obscure comedians like Joe E. Brown and Wheeler & Woolsey. Libraries don't have time to show features but excerpts will entertain and educate just as well.

Since all Library Matinees will be free shows, I will edit and abridge where needed to make each show educational, fun and family acceptable by deleting any racial content. The fun part is easy. The educational part is explaining in an opening montage what a Saturday Matinee was. While I dislike censoring innocent stereotype material, it is simply necessary because you can't expect young kids to understand and you don't want to offend anyone in a public library. It also easy to do without destroying a short. For instance, I cut a brief scene in the Our Gang "School's Out" where Farina salivates over eating watermelon. That's a stereotype that might offend today no matter how innocent in 1931. In the rest of the short Farina is just one of the gang and good friends with Chubby, Mary, Wheezer and Jackie Cooper.

So a typical "Matinee Jr." will include two cartoons, a serial chapter, comedy short and feature excerpt. A 3 Stooges/Our Gang Festival will include one short of each, two cartoons, serial chapter and that's it. Two longer shows in "Matinee Jr." will be serial chapter and Gulliver's Travels or serial chapter, cartoon and Flying Deuces. You can see the series develop as the 12 posters gradually appear at Matinee Jr. for Libraries.

We picked "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" as the best serial because of the science-fiction adventure, sets, spaceships, costumes, villain, and also because it has less fist fighting than a typical serial. Each chapter runs 20 minutes. Should five minutes be cut out of each to accommodate short attention spans?

The first response from Bob's library contact was great enthusiasm for the idea and the low price. They saw the value of reviving a lost chapter of popular culture -- historical, educational and, yes, still entertaining. One concern was that they could only run one show a month because of other programming commitments. That is OK with me. Run the first four shows one a month and schedule them more often if there is demand. Other libraries might be able to schedule a film show in every Saturday at 10am, noon, 2pm, or sometime.

The next step was to create a Sample DVD for libraries. Done! Like the Roxy Sampler, I will send a free DVD Sampler of Matinee Jr. to any interested Libraries. You can view Matinee Jr. excerpts that includes the library pitch, comedy and cartoon scenes, a chapter ending from Flash Gordon and a trailer for Gulliver's Travels. This is followed on the sample disc by 7 minutes from "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor," 9 minutes from Our Gang's "Bear Shooters," 7 minutes of the color Abbott and Costello film "Jack and the Beanstalk" where Lou first meets the giant, and the last 8 minutes of Roy Rogers' "Heldorado."

Onward to plan the shows, design 12 posters, tailor shows to the local library time and content requests, learn how to reach libraries all over the country and... onward!



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Laugh Out Loud!

I just finished editing comedy clips that will run in an upcoming exhibit in Tampa, Florida called "The Amazing You." It will play continuously, I assume as part of a comedy segment. They requested 10-12 minutes as the maximum time a viewer might hang around to watch in the same spot. My first version ran over that at 16 minutes, but then I heard they might want 20 minutes, so I sent the 16 minutes, a 12 minute abridgement plus an extra 14 minutes of out takes in case someone there wanted to edit further.

This comedy montage is for the MOSI project, but I was not sure what that was until after I finished and finally googled MOSI. I found it to be Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry, and also found a link to The Amazing You, a 12,000-square-foot exhibition at which guests are invited to explore the developmental stages of life, from the beginning through adolescence. Part 1 opened in May, while Part 2 (that promises to be funnier) opens in November.

Dave Conley at MOSI first broached the project to me about supplying comedy clips and later about editing them myself. I thank him for trusting my editing ability when he had no such work of mine to look at. In fact, I have only been learning how to use iMovie on my MAC computer this year, and only got a DVD ripper last month so I can take film clips off DVDs to work with. Once you import a clip into iMovie you can delete fractions of a second and move clips around easily to see how each edit plays.

Dave's only requests were that all films be in the public domain and that I include Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine because he always liked it. Fortunately the boys performed an exceptional version in a 1951 Colgate Comedy Hour that was never registered for copyright. The best version of the entire routine is on Youtube here. I excerpted four segments running 41, 31, 57 and 1:32 seconds and spaced them through the montage in order.

The rest of the film selections were mine. It was time consuming but fun to pull favorite clips, trim them to the absolute minimum running time, move them around so they flowed smoothly and then watch to see if I thought people would laugh today. This must have been the process Robert Youngson went through when he made clip classics like "When Comedy Was King."

Besides the TV "Who's On First," I included clips from Steamboat Bill Jr., The Boat, One Week, The Pawn Shop, Never Weaken, Stolen Jools, Flying Deuces, Road to Bali, Fatal Glass of Beer, The Dentist, Disorder in the Court, Beverly Hillbillies and cartoons Jerky Turkey and Betty Boop's Crazy Inventions. Looking at it from another perspective, the greatest slapstick comedians are included: Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, Hope and Crosby, W.C. Fields and the Three Stooges.

I was somewhat surprised by what I included over what I had expected to put in. In Fields' The Dentist, one first recalls the hilarious scene of the woman wrapping her legs around Fields as he tries to pull her tooth, but while editing I found the scene funnier when a piece of the ceiling falls into her mouth and she thinks he pulls out her tooth easily. "Why, it came out easily!" "Yes, yes it did. It surprised me."

I felt that splitting clips up from the same film was effective. For instance, Buster pulling his boat out of the basement and demolishing his house is followed a few clips later by Buster going down with the Damfino when the boat launches and sinks. Short jokes, quick laughs and on to the next clip. If an audience laughs the first time, then catches on that there will be more of the same later, they may well watch the entire montage. MOSI can of course edit out any clips they do not find funny. They may remove the 4 short clips from "Fatal Glass of Beer" where W.C. intones "It ain't a fit night out for man or beast." I thinks it's surreal hilarity, but someone who has never seen the film may not.

Youtube only permits films that are under ten minutes long, so here is a shortened version of my finished comedy montage minus the 4 segments from "Who's On First" that you can enjoy by itself. Have fun, and let me know if you laughed out loud!!!

Watch Laugh Out Loud! montage on Youtube!


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Spooky Wallpaper! Ooooo!

I stopped by the Minneapolis Suburban World Theater on October 5 to see what their video projection system looked like. Monday night football was running with the local Vikings beating the Packers. The picture looked awesome. Don, the owner, said the state of the art projector had been installed that afternoon. I may have mis-heard the price Don quoted so I won't repeat it. I don't want to discourage any future Roxy entrepreneurs from buying equipment. I know projector prices have come down in recent years while quality has gone up. State of the art, however, is not cheap, especially to project from the back of the theater. Let's just say the Suburban World's system is pricey.

Built in 1927, the Suburban World is truly a unique venue. Built in classic Granada Style, the Spanish facades and original stars still shine and clouds float by giving the effect of being in an open air Spanish courtyard. Originally called the Granada Theater, this historic building was designed by local architect Jack Liebenberg. His innovative design featured stadium seating in an atmospheric theater giving the illusion that viewers are seated outdoors in a Spanish courtyard.

The photo of the screen on the right here is so clean that it almost looks like an artist's rendering, but it is an actual recent photo. Note the tables near the screen. The entire lower area has been transformed into dinner theater seating, while the raked rear section still holds traditional theater seats. A full bar downstairs center serves guests.

The theater remains much as it was when the Granada originally opened. Stars and moving clouds adorn the ceiling - making it appear as if it has no roof. Stucco facades of balconies, statues and plants further enhance the illusion. These features led the Minneapolis City Council to place the Suburban World Theater on a list of historically significant buildings in 1991. It is the only surviving example of an atmospheric theater in Minneapolis and one of few remaining in the state.

In 1954, the theater became known as the Suburban World Theater and it was during this period that extensive remodeling was completed. Wrought iron doors that adorned the front of the theater, as well as the lobby's iron chandelier, were removed and replaced by more modern fixtures. Further restoration has succeeded in restoring much of the original façade of the theater.

The Suburban World programming is in a state of flux, meaning I don't know their imminent future and neither do they! It hosts concerts by local bands, private meetings and parties, independent film festivals and a recent talk by liberal radio host Bill Press. A few years ago the theater held Saturday and Sunday cartoon brunches, which became extremely popular with the locals.

I would naturally like the World to show a few Café Roxy programs. I keep pushing, at the very least, for them to show Reefer Madness since the theater is in the hip Uptown area of Minneapolis. Charge $2 and make money off drink sales. This may happen and I will discuss the theater more if it does. Don did say he could use some Halloween "wallpaper" to run on the movie screen during an upcoming party or some event TBA on Friday, Oct. 30. Costumed party goers might watch some of the trailers some of the time, or just party through the spooky ambience.

So I put together two hours of classic horror movie trailers, including the public domain cartoons "Mad Doctor," "Wot a Night" and "Magic Mummy." The poster on the left features Frankenstein. I hope the theater runs the disc and discover that the old classic films are still fun today, or rather that "Trailers" for the old films are fun. The Monster Mania disc is for sale. Too bad it is too close to Halloween for me to find many buyers. If you know any bar, café or eating emporium in your area that will be open Halloween night -- send them my way!

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