T.S. Warren
Demarbre’s new Mayfair mixology
Raised a Catholic, Ottawa cult filmmaker Lee Demarbre likens moviegoing to a religious experience and a good movie theatre to a church.
So it would seem almost preordained that, at 36, the helmer of the cult hit Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter should find himself a saviour of the venerable Mayfair Theatre, as well as its programmer and secular pastor.
“If you really love movies, this is where you should be worshipping,” he laughs, gesturing heavenwards like an evangelical preacher to the Mayfair’s ornately painted Spanish Revival ceiling, crafted for the theatre’s 1932 opening.
“The Mayfair’s got history and a ton of fond memories,” adds the former Carleton film student, who first saw John Woo’s The Killer, as well as a slew of other cult classics, at the Ottawa South cinema.
Apart from technical upgrades, notably a Dolby Digital surround sound system, Demarbre and new co-owners and fellow film buffs John Yemen, Paul Gordon and screenwriter Ian Driscoll have done little to alter the theatre’s retro charm. A welcome upgrade for the city’s last pre-war cinema is the replacement of small, shabby theatre seats with handsome, modern seating, plucked from a cinema in Sarasota, Florida. They come with cup rests, which could be cradling alcoholic drinks should the new owners’ plea for a liquor licence get the green light. The bronze-hued theatre seats also offer considerably more legroom and added width for today’s more ample bums.
Of course, the challenge facing churches of
all stripes is getting the bums in the seats. Demarbre admits he has his work cut out for him, coaxing the download generation into the fold.
“I don’t know how many times guys have come up to me at The Dominion [Tavern] and said: ‘Hey, Lee, I downloaded your movie last night,'” he chortles, shaking his head.
“My job is to convince these people that watching movies isn’t like reading a book. It’s supposed to be a collective experience. It’s about seeing it with other people. And if we show a Takashi Miike movie and people are walking out, that’s part of the experience. How cool is that?”
Walking out? Translation: The Mayfair’s recent era of snoozy second-runs is over. Demarbre is shaking things up with a jazzy winter schedule concocted to give people an idea of the new programming style, or what he calls “the old Mayfair on Viagra.”
Along with a festival of James Bond double-bills and family matinees, including Ian Fleming’s vehicular musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the January cinema cocktail includes 13 Ottawa premieres. They include the Canadian-made cannabis double-bill Growing Op and Down to the Dirt and a midnight mini-festival of Extreme Asian cinema (featuring Miike’s grisly Visitor Q), as well as the Ottawa premiere of the aforementioned Japanese director’s Sukiyaki Western Django, starring Quentin Tarantino. Come February, the pastor’s planning an erotic film series to honour St. Valentine, and everything from Spike Lee’s Malcolm X to so-called blaxsploitation films to mark Black History Month.
“I think Ottawa filmgoers deserve more than they’ve been getting. The cool movies go to Montreal, the cool movies go to Toronto, but we get skipped. It’s time we got some risky programming on the big screen.”
To date, Demarbre’s had one complaint about his approach, sparked by the poster for the downbeat Canadian comedy Confessions of a Porn Addict, playing Jan. 16-18.
“We had an old lady walk by and saw the poster [a guy in a bathrobe watching a TV] and she lost it. ‘You got to take that poster down. You can’t show that movie. Eight-year-old boys walk by, they’ll wonder what he’s doing.’
“I kind of want that reaction. It means people are noticing. I’d hate to have to program a Merchant-Ivory festival in a few weeks.”
If Ottawa has been a backwater for unconventional cinema, then it’s been a wasteland when it comes to bringing in out-of-town filmmakers, let alone honouring its own.
The Mayfair officially reopened Jan. 2 with Metropolis, preceded by a program of shorts from IFCO (Independent Filmmakers Co-op of Ottawa), and, later in the month, the talent behind Brookstreet Pictures’ Ottawa-made shocker Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer will be in attendance.
A larger-than-life player on the local film scene, Demarbre’s Odessa Filmworks will have several new reels out by summer with a movie theatre to showcase them. He hopes to corral porn-star Sasha Grey, the comely star of his new horror-comedy Smash Cut, to the premiere, and maybe even rising star Ashley Greene (Alice in the mega-hit Twilight), the star of his forthcoming Summer Blood.
“The Ottawa music scene is definitely as hip as Toronto or Montreal, now we just have to make sure our small film community feels the same way.”