Lincoln Plaza Cinemas is gone, and a co-founder of this legendary venue—Dan Talbot—died this past December. Last weekend, Michael Moore gave a heated eulogy at Talbot’s memorial service.

Eight years ago, Toby Talbot—author, professor of Spanish literature, translator, and (with Dan) proprietor and programmer of several cinemas on the Upper West Side, including the New Yorker Theater—published a memoir about independent cinema, its distribution, and the life of the cinephile in Manhattan and around the world:

“Moravia invited us for Easter Sunday lunch. We headed over with Bertolucci and Paola. Already present and sipping wine were Pasolini, Marco Ferreri and his wife, and we were joined by the writer Dacia Maraini… Pasolini sat to my right. How I wish that my Italian exceeded ‘Dov’e?’ and ‘antipasto misti’ so that I could read his poetry and novels in the original… That Easter repast was not given to religiosity but to the buzz of ideas and cinema. I remember the vast Sicilian Easter tart; if only I could remember what we talked about!”

 

Toby Talbot, THE NEW YORKER THEATER, AND OTHER SCENES FROM A LIFE AT THE MOVIES (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

Above image credit: Columbia University Press.

Below: The New Yorker Theater marquee. Photo courtesy of Photofest.