Let’s hear it for the Quad!
DESPITE complaints that cellphones, streaming and blah blah weaken moviegoing, NYC can thank Charles Cohen of Cohen Media, who invested $3 mil and three years re-juicing 1970’s Quad Cinema, 34 W. 13th.
Now open daily, the multiplex — tickets, $16; less for seniors — has four posh red, white, blue and gray theaters. Also its own Quad bar — ice cream, candy, snacks, popcorn and $10 house wine.
Supernifty are state-of-the-john bathrooms. Giant mirrors, modern sinks, designer faucets. We’re talking the Can Film Festival. Honoring its year anniversary, the Quad, specializing in indies, honors celebrity requests. Alec
Baldwin wanted to see 1974’s “The Savage Is Loose” directed by George C. Scott. Greta Gerwig picked “Blue Velvet.” Streep’s been in, Turturro’s been in, Pacino wanted to watch Jessica Chastain’s “Salomé.” He should since he wrote, directed and starred in it, too. After finishing
Scorsese’s “The Irishman” plus having more masterworks than the Met — “Scarface,” “Serpico,” “Carlito’s Way,” “The Godfather,” and “Dog Day Afternoon” — Pacino says, “The Quad held a retrospective of 30 of my films.
“I never had that. Nobody’s done a retrospec- tive for me. Charles Cohen’s theater and this neighborhood are meaningful to me. Starting out, I was around the West Village and working a gypsy theater cafe, 16 performances a week. We passed the basket for money. “My first starring role was ’71’s ‘The Panic in Needle Park.’ Faye Dunaway [who starred in Jerry Schatzberg’s other film of that time, ‘Puzzle of a Downfall Child’] discovered me.” One more Oscar, and Cohen’s Quad bar names a popsicle after him.
Actor has vino
KYLE MacLachlan owns a vineyard. In Walla Walla. He says: “Washington state produces the world’s best syrah,” and his new variety’s out this month. In a video, he and a baby bear sniff the stuff and sip the stuff. The stuffed bear just sniffs. Unstuffed Kyle sips.
Please try to pay attention
BRENDAN Fraser: “I’m going away. Holiday’s when you get offered another job. Minute you leave — the phone rings. Whenever I’m doing something else is when they want me. If I want a job, I go to the car wash.” . . . AND forget shaking hands with Donald Sutherland, who says, “I threw out my shoulder. I’ve died too many times in films and fallen on it. The thing’s never going to heal.”
ENOUGH with springtime April’s lousy weather. Over a long winter, one romantically slow guy finally kissed his girlfriend. He did it this past week. He now thinks it was only puppy love. Why? Her nose was cold and wet.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.