The chairman of the American Cinematheque, which for 23 years owned and programmed the 101-year-old movie palace, had just spent a few hours inside the freshly renovated theater, and he was beaming.

“I thought it was terrific,” Nicita said, standing in the forecourt of the theater. “I mean, I’ve seen prospective photographs, but that never does the trick.

“It felt right,” he said. “That’s what it was. It’s an imagining of how an old movie palace should be now.”

The Egyptian Theatre reopens Thursday, Nov. 9 with a special screening of “The Killer,” followed by a Q&A with director David Fincher.

That film is a Netflix production, and its arrival at the Egyptian reflects the 2019 purchase of the theater by Netflix and the subsequent $70 million restoration of this cinematic landmark and living piece of Hollywood history.

As Netflix co-chief executive Ted Sarandos explained on stage at the Egyptian for a press preview on Monday, Nov. 7, the streaming giant bought the theater from the American Cinematheque in 2019 but will share its screen with the non-profit.

Netflix will use the Egyptian to release its movies, hold premieres and special events during the week. A Netflix store, selling merch from Netflix shows such as “Stranger Things,” “Bridgerton,” and “Squid Games” has already opened in one of the retail storefronts built on one side of the courtyard with the theater in 1922.

The American Cinematheque, now free of the expense of maintaining the theater, will program its eclectic mix of classic, art, and rare and restored films – often accompanied by in-person talks and Q-and-As – on the weekends.

“Welcome back to the Egyptian Theatre,” Sarandos said at the start of the preview, which also featured as speakers Nicita, Scott Stuber, head of Netflix Films, and Angus Wall, the director of a new Netflix short film on the history of the Egyptian.

“One hundred years ago in the silent film era, it was home to the first Hollywood premiere, the first red carpet,” he said. “Charlie Chaplin, Audrey Hepburn, and Marlon Brando sat in the seats where you’re sitting.”

Even before the renovation, watching a movie at the Egyptian could feel like time-traveling back to the era of silent films, the early talkies, the Golden Age of Hollywood, or the films of one’s youth, depending on which film was screening that night.

Now it feels the same, only it looks and sounds better than ever before.

“As you can see, the Egyptian really was a magical place,” Stuber said at the conclusion of Wall’s film, “Temple of Film: 100 Years of the Egyptian Theatre.”

“We want to make sure it entertains and inspires film lovers for another century, just like it did the last hundred.”

Inside the restoration

Architect Peyton Hall of Historic Resources Group in Pasadena served as the historic consultant on the renovation. After the public presentation, we walked with him from the theater to the forecourt to talk about what it took to bring the Egyptian out of the past and make it ready for the future.

The Egyptian Revival architecture and decoration of the original theater remain, Hall said. The original walls and ceilings are the same, the painted designs have been cleaned and retouched as needed.

“There’s a lot of authenticity,” Hall says. “Both in terms of the original elements and things that have been recreated or preserved in place.”

On the arch above the stage, the most ornate of the original design elements – an Egyptian scarab beetle, a disc that represents the sun above its pincers – gleams brightly. A sunburst design spreads across the ceiling from it, all of it the original precast plaster pieces that artisans fastened to the ceiling more than a century ago.

“The sunburst is a screen that hid the pipe organ,” Hall says, pointing out the circular opens through which pipes from the organ in the theater attic once blasted music over the audiences below. “So your sound was coming from up there. And you were probably having an experience of shaking in your seat.”

Much of the renovation will never be seen by moviegoers. The entire foundation of the building was removed and rebuilt. The concrete-framed walls were filled to strengthen them to today’s earthquake retrofit standards. Those things, while costly and critical to the safety of the building and those in it, don’t change the moviegoing experience.

But the project also replaced much if not most of the audio and visual capabilities of the theater, Hall says. Some of it simple but important – changes to the lobby and entrances to the theater now will block all outside light and sound, such as the sirens that used to be audible inside the theater as firetrucks raced past on Hollywood Boulevard.

Because the Egyptian was built for silent films with live accompaniments its acoustics were never good, Hall says. Now, with speakers suspended and angled on cables above the 516 seats of the theater, the Egyptian sounds better than ever it has.

The renovation also removed the balcony and a small second theater to streamline and restore its layout closer to the 1922 design. The projection booth, while upgraded multiple times over the life of the theater, was rebuilt at a better angle for projecting images on the screen.

A high-tech control room allows projectionists to deliver state-of-the art pictures and sound. The addition of a projector and safeguards to allow the screening of silver nitrate film – an early film stock so volatile it can self-ignite – now makes the Egyptian one of only five theaters in the United States that can show such films.

Outside the theater, its neon sign rises over Hollywood Boulevard, while inside the courtyard, the original fountain has been restored in the exact spot where it originally stood, with water cascading down the original turquoise tiles.

Historically Hollywood

The lobby walls between the doors into the theater now feature displays on the history of the Egyptian and its history in Hollywood. And what a glorious history it was when the Hollywood pictures – and promotional razzmatazz – were big.

The photographs and display placards show the Egyptian’s role in those days.

When director John Ford’s silent western “The Iron Horse” played the Egyptian in 1924, a full-sized steam locomotive from the film was parked on railroad tracks in the forecourt. Two years later, the Douglas Fairbanks silent film “The Black Pirate” brought a pirate ship into the forecourt.

In another display case, a poster of the 1922 film “Robin Hood,” also starring Fairbanks, pays tribute to the film that opened the Egyptian Theatre on Oct. 18, 1922, and in doing so, became the first-ever Hollywood premiere.

At some point early in its history, showman Sid Grauman ordered Egyptian-ish costumes for his usherettes. A hand-tinted photograph of them in front of the hieroglyphics and Egyptian pharaohs on a theater wall is delightful, as are the photographs of Fairbanks and Grauman hamming it up in the theater for publicity photos before it opened.

Some images make you miss what was lost in the decades since it opened. While the scarab ornamentation and sculpted sunburst on the ceiling are spectacular, they once towered over a frame around the stage and screen that replicated the Egyptian patterns and designs that still existed on the walls outside the theater.

Still, there’s a feeling here, Nicita says, that can’t be matched by almost any other cinema.

“I truly think that it’s a sensory thing,” he says. “It’s not just the visual, which is state of the art, but that can be duplicated. Not just the audio, which also is great but that be done.

“What you can’t duplicate is the aura,” Nicita says. “The feeling when you sit down and you look and you listen. Then you kind of go, ‘Oh. Oh. Here I am.’ It’s time traveling.”

Coming attractions

The Egyptian Theatre is located at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. It reopens on Nov. 9 with a sold-out screening of “The Killer,” a new Netflix movie directed by David Fincher.

Nov. 10-21: The American Cinematheque Presents: Ultra Cinematheque 70 Fest 2023. Screenings in the widescreen 70mm format including “Alien,” which premiered at the Egyptian in May 1979, “Alphaville,” in a newly restored version of French director Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 sci-fi film, “Spartacus,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Boogie Nights,” and “Lawrence of Arabia.”

Nov. 21-Dec. 7: “Maestro,” the biopic on conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, starring and directed by Bradley Cooper with Carey Mulligan.

Dec. 5: “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” a short film by Wes Anderson, and a selection of other shorts curated by Anderson.

Dec. 8-14: A selection of classic films including the Los Angeles premieres of restorations of “Days of Heaven” and “L’Amour Fou,” a 50th-anniversary screening of “Don’t Look Now,” and the world premiere of a new 4K restoration of “Lone Star,” followed by a Q-and-A with director John Sayles.

Dec. 15-21: The exclusive 70mm run of director Zack Snyder’s new space opera “Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child Of Fire .”

Dec. 22-24: The holiday classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” screened in a 35mm print.

For more: See Egyptiantheatre.com for information on the theater, film series and special engagements. See Americancinematheque.com for information on its screenings at the Egyptian as well as programming at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica and the Los Feliz 3 in Los Feliz.

“My research skills as a filmmaker go no further than checking the newspaper,” he says, laughing. “Here’s somebody doing an incredible humanitarian relief effort, but in the United States, where you might not expect it’s needed.

“But he has this incredible backstory, whereby he’s an English public school boy who fled his stuffy school to become an Amazonian cowboy, and was later discovered by U.S. wildlife TV producers.

“And then he has an epiphany.”

Brock, who died in 2018 at 82, was nearing 50 when he realized the rugged life he’d led – cowboying on the massive Dadanawa Ranch in Guyana, cohosting “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom,” and starring in a series of low-budget adventure films – no longer brought him satisfaction.

In 1985, Brock left all that behind to found Remote Area Medical, a healthcare non-profit that brought free medical, dental and vision care to those who might otherwise never have it.

“Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story,” is the documentary film Angell made over years of filming Brock and RAM volunteers and patients, at pop-up clinics across the United States. It debuts in 700 movie theaters around the country with a special one-night screening on Nov. 14 before it eventually becomes available to viewers on other platforms.

“I straight away realized that this was the sort of person who could carry a documentary film about healthcare, and give it some form of entertainment aspect where he had this incredible story behind him to explain his motivation,” Angell says.

“So after reading the article on Sunday evening, I thought, I’m just going to Google this organization. I’m so buzzed up about this I’m going to call them now,” he says. “I call and somebody picks up the phone like, ‘Hello, Remote Area Medical, Stan Brock speaking.’

“Wow. So what I’d read about his commitment to the cause is not a mirage,” Angell says. “This guy really walks the walk. At that point, I thought I’ve got to get this guy.”

Brock on board

Getting Brock on the phone was one thing. He lived a simple, monk-like life, sleeping on a bedroll on the floor of his office inside a ramshackle former school building near Knoxville where RAM was located at the time.

Getting him to appear in the film was another thing entirely.

“Yeah, it took a bit of persuasion,” Angell says. “The reason he thought about is that he’s an incredibly modest guy who’s a doer, not a talker, and I kind of forced him to talk with to me.

“I think he’s much happier just getting stuff done and making a difference,” he says. “I think the reason he was finally sold on it is because RAM had a kind of DIY startup ethos to begin with. It was just Stan, an old pickup truck, and, I think, two volunteer dental nurses.

“I think he looked at our operation and it was, like, these guys don’t have a penny,” Angell says. “Not that established, clearly want to grow something. So we’re very lucky that he saw some sort of parallel in the way that we did things.”

It’s clear from the film, and conversations with both Angell and Poppy Green, RAM’s marketing manager, that Brock had a knack for spotting talented people who just needed a nudge to join him on his mission.

Green was a student at Hamilton College in New York in 2013, procrastinating on finding an internship. He stumbled onto video clips about RAM, called a friend who lived in Knoxville and headed down to volunteer for eight weeks which eventually turned into a career.

“Stan had this ability to look at you and ask you to do something,” Green says. “The way he communicated, he displayed this trust you would do it. Very hard man to say no to.”

Back at school, Brock would call Green as he put together a new RAM mission.

“The phone would ring and it would be Stan,” he says. “He would say, ‘We’re going down to the middle of Florida, and we need your help.’ It would be Wednesday and I was planning to go to the pub. You need me in Florida, Friday at 9 a.m.? I’d say sure. Put gas in my car and drive down.”

Racoons and anacondas

Angell initially thought his film would be purely observational, and he pitched Brock the idea of living with him at the crumbling old school.

“I remember asking him if I could sleep at the old schoolhouse,” he says. “He said, ‘Oh, absolutely not. It’s too dangerous. We don’t have insurance and there’s racoons falling out of the ceiling.’ I think he had insurance, but there were racoons falling from the ceiling.”

He suggested pitching a tent on the grounds, which Brock also shot down.

“He was never going to let me spend every day with him,” Angell says. “It would have just gotten in the way of his work.”

Then, too, the filmmaker realized there was just too much great material, stories and archival footage, to let the Stan Brock story unspool through the passive medium of observation.

“When I met Stan and heard the true richness and depth of his past, and the stories he had, I realized you can’t get somebody to tell you those kinds of stories on the hoof when they’re washing the dishes, you know,” Angell says. “And say, ‘Oh, let me tell you about the time I wrestled an anaconda.’

“You need to sit down in a chair in a formal setting and really calmly and quietly speak and listen to them. That was the only way to do justice to the drama and all his stories.”

Still photos and old film footage also added context to the story of who Brock was before he decided to serve the underserved. In addition to clips from Brock’s time on “Wild Kingdom” and B-movie action flicks, Angell discovered rarer stuff such as the outtake of Brock, up to his neck in a river, a massive anaconda snake wrapped around him, asking a cinematographer which camera he should look into.

“Can you imagine the moment I discovered that shot existed?” Angell says. “So that’s out of Stan’s personal filing cabinet, an old VHS tape.

“When he’s saying, ‘Which camera? Which camera?’ it really summed up a man getting toward the end of this so-called exciting film career,” he says. “He’s starting to see it’s not that glamorous, but good, old Stan, he really wanted to do a job, didn’t he? He really wanted to get the anaconda in the right position.”

Other bits and pieces he found included film of Brock at home in Guyana, a monkey and cougar wandering through his house, and a pair of early BBC documentaries that predated Brock joining “Wild Kingdom.”

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, wow, this is golden,’” Angell says of the footage of Brock, reclining in his rattan chair, stroking the head of his cougar. “There’s another aspect of his character which is like Doctor Dolittle, the man who charms the animals from the trees.”

Kindness and dignity

In the film, Brock is a hands-on leader, greeting patients as they enter RAM missions in Tennessee, Virginia, and, here in California, Sacramento and Anaheim. Many camped out overnight to make sure they had a chance to see a doctor, dentist or optometrist. Brock treats all with kindness and dignity.

“I spent years working alongside him,” Green says of what motivated Brock to dedicate the last half of his life to RAM. “I would see him in the morning, going to work out and see him eating out of his single pots that ate from. There was always this element in which he seemed to understand no other way of living.”

Brock lived a solitary life, refusing to take a salary from RAM. He was married, briefly, but it didn’t last due to his dedication to his cause. He had no children.

“I know what excited him in conversation,” Angell says. “It was three things: healthcare, horses, and aviation. Any mention of a horse or a plane on the way to a clinic, that’s like the ideal conversation for Stan.

“I think he was a man looking for a home, and he was very fortunate to find that home in America. And then people, the RAM volunteers who form around him, they become his family. And by extension, the patients. There truly was an emotional connection there.”

Once, when Brock was still managing the remote Guyanese ranch, he was injured badly and realized he was 26 days by foot from the nearest doctor. Another time, one of the vaqueros working with him became sick and died before he could reach a doctor.

Those stories in part motivated the creation of RAM, which originally was intended to work in the developing world before Brock realized there were also many in the United States facing similar difficulties.

“I think Stan was on some sort of journey, whereby he had been forced to be a very macho, tough, and emotionally closed-off person to survive the first two chapters of the Stan Brock story,” Angell says. “But in the following three chapters, Stan realizes that he has to change.

“This what makes the story a beautiful story, he says. “Stan learns to care. Within the passage of this film, he goes from being a tough vaquero cowboy, who needs to be very robust to control the situation he’s in. And later on, he becomes the ultimate humanitarian.

“That’s a lesson to us all. You don’t have to go full Stan Brock. You don’t have to take a vow of poverty, sleep on the floor and never take a salary. But you can steer your life towards being beneficial and doing service to others. And that’s what what he learned.”

‘Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story’

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14

Also: The documentary will be accompanied by a short documentary with updates on Remote Area Medical’s work since Brock’s death in 2018.

For more: To find a movie theater near you and purchase tickets see Fathomevents.com/events/medicine-man. To find out when and where there will be more opportunities to watch ‘Medicine Man’ in theaters or at home see Ramusa.org or see the ‘Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story’ pages on Facebook, Instagram or X, formerly known as Twitter.

The worldwide showing, dubbed “Dolly Parton’s ‘Rockstar’ Global First Listen Event,” will include the track “Circle of Love,” a holiday song recorded during the pandemic, and a rendition of her famous “9 to 5.”

“I am excited to know that my fans around the world will be able to come together and be the first to hear a sneak peek of my ‘Rockstar’ album,” Dolly Parton said via a press release. “I am so proud of this music, and I am humbled by all the wonderful artists who joined me. I cannot wait for people to hear it!”

A portion of ticket sales will go to Music Will and its global partner organizations. Music Will stands as the largest non-profit music program within the U.S. public school system, working to empower students through music education. Tickets for the event are now available for select movie theatres at dollyrockstarevent.com.

The 30-track record will feature a handful of rockstars like Paul McCartney, Elton John, Rob Halford of Judas Priest, Miley Cyrus and a cover of Prince’s “Purple Rain.”

Parton joins a recent lineup of artists who have embraced the cinematic experience to connect with fans. Big-name artists such as Beyoncé, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift have also introduced screenings of their record-breaking world tours this year.

Swift’s “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” captured the hearts of audiences, making a triumphant No. 1 debut during the weekend of Oct. 13, while Beyoncé’s highly-anticipated “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” is set to premiere on Dec. 1.

Parton’s hourlong program will begin at 7 p.m. Here is a list of some of the Southern California theaters hosting “Dolly Parton’s ‘Rockstar’ Global First Listen Event.”

Los Angeles County 

Regal LA Live, 1000 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles. regmovies.com.

Laemmle Glendale, 207 N. Maryland Ave., Glendale. formovietickets.com.

iPic Pasadena, 42 Miller Alley, Pasadena. ipic.com.

Regal Edwards Long Beach & IMAX, 7501 East Carson, Long Beach. regmovies.com.

Orange County

AMC Orange 30, 20 City Blvd., Suite E., Orange. atomtickets.com.

Regal Edwards Irvine Spectrum, 500 Spectrum Center Drive, Irvine. regmovies.com.

AMC Tustin 14, 2457 Park Ave., Tustin. atomtickets.com.

Cinemark Lake Forest Foothill Ranch, 26602 Towne Centre Drive, Lake Forest. atomtickets.com.

Riverside County

AMC Tyler Galleria 16, 3775 Tyler Street, Riverside. amc.com.

Regal Edwards Corona Crossings & RPX, 2650 Tuscany Street, Corona. regmovies.com.

Century The River and XD, 71800 Highway 111, Rancho Mirage. atomictickets.com.

San Bernardino County 

Harkins Mountain Grove 16, 27481 San Bernardino Ave., Redlands. atomtickets.com.

AMC Dine-In Ontario Mills 30, 4549 Mills Circle, Ontario. atomtickets.com.

Laemmle’s Claremont 5, 450 W. 2nd St., Claremont. formovietickets.com.

For a complete list of theaters, go to dollyrockstarevent.com.

It’s a signal that this film has stories to share about the 82-year-old folk singer and political activist that have never before been told.

That wasn’t the original intent, Baez says with a wry smile on a recent video call.

“It was going to be about the last tour,” Baez says of a run of 2018 farewell shows. “Then at a certain point, I realized I had to let them in farther than just that.

“I literally handed them the key, the three directors, to the storage unit,” she says. “In the film, when I walk into it, that’s the first time I I’ve ever been in there.”

With that key, co-directors Karen O’Conner, Miri Navasky, and Maeve O’Boyle entered a chamber of treasures that Baez had forgotten existed.

“I knew that my mom had kept some stuff,” Baez says. “In the back of my head, I knew that. I didn’t know that she kept everything. All of my father’s footage from moving pictures and stills. Every drawing from when I was five on. So we dipped into all of that and used that to make the film cohesive.”

The home movies show Baez, the middle child between sisters Pauline and Mimi, traveling the world on trips her parents took them on. The drawings are used beautifully in the film, her original work getting animated to illustrate different moments.

And there’s more: Diaries and letters and audio tapes that Baez recorded to send home from her travels.

“It’s different having a 21-year-old say to the mom, ‘I’m going to march tomorrow with probably 40,000 people and it’ll be with Dr. [Martin Luther] King,’” Baez says about how the audio letters gave voice to her thoughts as they were then. “Here’s this 21-year-old whose mind is blown by all this going on, instead of me retelling the tale.”

O’Conner was a longtime friend before she, Navasky and O’Boyle directed the film, and Baez gave the trio free rein to use what they wanted and tell her story as they saw fit.

“I signed on for this, so there was nothing I could do about it,” Baez says, laughing. “They did the film. I wanted to leave an honest legacy, and I was serious about it. So it’s warts and all.”

What about Bob?

Much of Baez’s public life is well known.

At 19, she exploded onto the folk music scene and quickly escaped the confines of genre to become one of the best-known singers of the ’60s. She was with Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington and at countless protests against the Vietnam War. She’s in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a Grammy winner, a Kennedy Center honoree.

As well, her private life at times broke into the public realm.

Baez’s romance with the then-little-known singer-songwriter Bob Dylan united the two biggest stars in folk in the early ’60s for a time. Her marriage to the anti-war activist David Harris produced her only child, Gabriel Harris, while David was in prison for refusing to report to the military after he was drafted.

The ramifications of both of those relationships are explored in much greater depth in “I Am A Noise.”

Her relationship with Dylan started out like a fairy tale, and the film includes footage that makes their love for each other clear, including one special clip of the two singing Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” when she was already a star, and he still needed to be introduced when he joined her on stage.

“That’s one of my favorite parts of the film,” Baez says. “It was so happy and so innocent.

“I was already established, but as a ballad singer,” she says. “I didn’t write for years. So here we are bouncing around upstate New York, and it was really, really fun.”

Fun turned to sorrow in 1965 when on the trip to England that was filmed for the Dylan documentary “Don’t Look Back,” Dylan casually dismissed the significance of their relationship, essentially ghosting Baez even as she occupied the same room as him. Baez admits in “I Am A Noise” that the relationship was both her greatest love and her worst heartbreak.

“It would be different if I hadn’t had a come to Jesus moment about five or six years ago,” she says of finally reaching a place of peace in how she views her time with Dylan. “I was painting him as a young man, probably a 21-year-old, and I put his music on and I started to cry.

“And everything, all of the animosity, whatever (stuff), just vanished,” Baez says. “It just drifted off me and it’s stayed that way. So that’s a different answer than you would have gotten off me 10 years ago. I was still struggling.

“I mean, I still make jokes about him because he’s nuts,” she says, laughing. “But that’s different from holding a lot of resentment.”

Seeing herself

Baez first watched the film as a rough cut, but has since seen it many times at film festivals and screenings. The journey it takes through her life has been revealing in many ways, she says.

“Part of it was an education,” she says. “Seeing my sisters, for instance, say what it was really like, how I really had affected their lives (with early fame and stardom). I mean, I kind of knew it, but because they knew Karen and trusted her, my older sister, who would never get in front of a camera, was willing to say her truth.

“And then Mimi to say hers,” Baez says of her younger sister, who as Mimi Farina was also a well-known folk singer though never the star that Baez became. “That for me was surprising. I’m grateful for all of it.”

Baez and her son for years had a difficult relationship. She was drawn to the road for concerts and protests, and Gabriel grew up feeling the distance between him and his mother, as the film explains.

“My son, I knew pretty much about what had gone on between us,” she says of Gabriel, who appears in the film both as a member of her 2018 band and in archival footage. “He was so forgiving and so eloquent, talking to Karen also. So I learned the extent of his abandonment issues when he was little.”

Other moments bring nothing but joy, she said. Seeing footage of her first trip to France and the red carpets and photo shoots she was part of was fun.

“And the women backstage in Selma, Alabama, after the end of the concert,” Baez says of a moment in 2018 when several women approached her and thanked her for her civil rights activism. “They were just standing in front of the theater, and I went over to talk with them. That was so beautiful.”

Still, at different moments, other more difficult parts of the film might surface for her, Baez says, forcing her to consider anew the history, visible or hidden, of her life.

“I’m still reacting to new things when I see it,” she says. “There are a couple of things that I’d prefer that they weren’t there. And then I look at it. I think this is part of what knitted this whole thing together, so in the end, I am just delighted with this film.”

Secrets and memories

Early on the film foreshadows the secret life it will reveal. As a young singer, Baez wrote in her diaries and letters about a darkness that came for her at times, delivering panic attacks and depression.

Closer to the end, its source is revealed as Baez talks about the intensive therapy sessions she and her sister Mimi separately started more than 30 years ago, which eventually led them to believe their parents had been sexually inappropriate or abusive to them as children.

The film uses letters between Baez and her parents, and audio tapes from eight years of therapy which the filmmakers pulled from her storage locker, as well as drawings Baez made while in therapy and her own more recent interviews.

“I didn’t learn much from that part of the film because I lived it so fully going through it,” she says. “Nor have I ever listened to those tapes. It’s insane to tell somebody to go ahead and listen to eight years of therapy tapes, but we did.

“I think the answer to that question is I have felt so complete since completing that work,” she says of what has come from mining her memories. “There is one scene in the film, not that it wasn’t true, because it was, but right now it’s very different. That was the scene in Istanbul when I’m having like a mild version of a panic attack, and it’s not representative of me now.”

In a way, the film is a testament to the act of remembrance, and how even in places where solid proof is absent, memories can be true to those who hold them.

“It clearly comes up throughout the film about memory,” Baez says. “Which is why I say even in the film, I can’t prove anything, say, about the dramatic stuff. And all of us, or anybody who writes about their past is going to have their own version of it. I mean, I’ve seen somebody fight about the most petty things. ‘No, I know that dress was blue’ – ‘Uh-uh, I thought it was red.’

“You resist, but those are your distinct memories,” she says. “And so, keeping that in mind, it was a journey through memories, after biting off, you know, what I needed to bite off to get started.

“Those were memories in one way or another that freed me from the darkness of my past.”

CHICAGO — Henry Winkler’s smile is the smile of an old friend seeing you for the first time in years, or a smile of sincere affection for an unexpected new friend, or a smile that nudges into a laugh. It’s a smile so warm and real that you hate yourself for wondering how any human can generate such feeling, a dozen times a day, for 50 years of public life.

And yet, there was that smile again, at 8 in the morning, in suburban Rosemont.

You see it in a hotel Starbucks, where Winkler commands a small crowd despite the hour; they stare in awe of him, as if a 12-point buck just wandered in. You see it over breakfast in a hotel restaurant, which, for Winkler, means a sip of coffee, a taste of food, then a stranger approaching cautiously to ask for a picture, telling him he was their entire childhood, again and again. You see it waiting for a table at the hostess counter.

A long slender man in jogging clothes turned offhandedly and noticed Winkler and turned back in a double take and interrupted what Winkler was saying and exclaimed:

“Henry!”

“Oh! Kiefer! Hello!” Winkler replied to Kiefer Sutherland, who, like Winkler, was also in town for a few days, doing one of those fan convention autograph marathon gauntlets. They chatted a bit and Sutherland apologized for “Ground Control,” a 1998 film with Sutherland and Winkler in a small role — there’s a good reason you’ve never heard of it.

Winkler waved off the apology, and they agreed to plan to catch up soon. “‘Ground Control,’” Winkler said to me later, “worst movie made by a human being. But look at that — Kiefer Sutherland! A lovely actor. I am so excited by that!”

Winkler understands the effect he has on people, yet wholeheartedly reserves the right to gush over others, all the time. In his new memoir, “Being Henry: The Fonz… and Beyond,” he writes about meeting Joaquin Phoenix once at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and Phoenix said, “I can’t believe I’m meeting you,” and Winkler replied, “You can’t believe you’re meeting me?” To the hostess, he said: “How are you? Lots of obstetricians in the hotel today.”

“Opticians,” she corrected. “But so nice to see you.”

“I’m Henry,” he said.

“Well, yes… I know,” she said. “Having a good time in Chicago?”

“Unbelievable time,” he said, big smile.

At our table, the waiter asked if Winkler would like coffee. Winkler asked where the man is from. Bangladesh, the man said. “Nice!” Winkler said.

“Far away,” the man said.

“And the flooding,” Winkler added.

“Right now, yes.”

“Your family is fine?”

“My family is here!”

“Oh, well — good!”

On and on like that, all day long. Winkler’s voice carries a melodious New York City working-class lack of presumption and flows without many staccato thoughts or half-completed sentences, and almost never ends with a negative thought. Years ago, he told himself to never let a negative idea sit in his head. “Remove it any way you can,” he told me, “‘I don’t have time for you,’ ‘I don’t want you in my life,’ and that changes your whole countenance, then you get to be here, having breakfast, this morning, right now.”

In fact, though I would normally never write this about a famous person, should you see Winkler in public — and he will be in Chicago this week, for his book release and a sold-out appearance at the Chicago Humanities Festival — you should introduce yourself. He actually likes meeting new people. When we met for breakfast, he said he just ran into Christie Brinkley’s agent, “who was at William Morris when I started. I met a woman at the medical convention at the hotel. And a woman who started law school at 50. I met a doctor whose 9-year-old daughter is like me, dyslexic. That was just at Starbucks.”

A woman approached our table and said, smiling, “Oh my God!”

“I’m Henry,” he said.

“And I am shaking,” she said. “All these opticians … does Henry Winkler need glasses?”

“I do!”

“Nice to meet you! I’ll see what I can do!”

Fame has not always been like this, but since the mid-1970s, it’s often been like this. In his memoir, he describes a publicity event in Dallas for “Happy Days,” the TV series that made him as culturally ubiquitous during the 1970s as disco and “Star Wars.” He was there with his co-stars, Ron Howard, Donny Most, Anson Williams, when a crowd of 20,000 blocked their limo. He had made a rule for himself to never summon the tough-guy cool of his character, Fonzie, but here, as Fonzie, he yelled: “You are going to part like the Red Sea!” Then, not unlike how Fonzie controlled electronics with the bump of a fist, the crowd parted — until one teen, watching Winkler closely, yelled, “He’s so short!”

Winkler wheeled around: “(Expletive) you, I’m not short.”

Henry Winkler is nice but he is not made of wood. He told me, “I went with instinct. Ron and everyone were scared. It gets claustrophobic. But I’m dyslexic, I go with instinct.”

These days, when he’s recognized by anyone younger than Generation X, it’s for being in Adam Sandler flicks; for being murdered in the first “Scream” movie; for playing Dr. Lu Saperstein on “Parks and Recreation” (he delivered most of the cast’s fictional babies); for playing administrator Sy Mittleman on the cult comedy “Children’s Hospital”; for playing Barry Zuckerkorn, the worst lawyer alive on “Arrested Development.” And of course, for embodying a needy, has-been acting coach on HBO’s “Barry,” the role that finally, in 2018, after a few acting nominations across many years, landed him an Emmy.

Indeed, those are the poles of his creative life — “Happy Days” at one end, “Barry” at the other, separated by 45 years, many forgettable TV movies and the pang of typecasting. He began playing Fonzie in his mid-20s and left the role when he was in his mid-30s. He’s 77 now. He says that when “Happy Days” was canceled, he didn’t have a plan B.

For decades he feared he’d been typecast beyond employment. He became a curious kind of cultural royalty, indelible, endearing, but without a vast, austere body of work. That can be hard for an actor who made it the through Yale University’s School of Drama. Some actors recede into roles. It took Winkler a long time to acknowledge that whomever he plays, the Fonz lurks. He embodied the Fonz so completely that there’s a statue in downtown Milwaukee, the Bronze Fonz; it’s not a statue of Winkler, yet it is. There’s a lot that’s bad about that, but also, these days, a bunch that’s good. In the past decade, the Fonz became a layer to Winkler’s roles, there but no longer the only thing there. He notes a smidge of who he was — and the recognition that an audience knows.

“It took me until now to do the TV I’m doing,” he said. “I couldn’t have done something like ‘Barry’ back then. I was not authentic — to be perfectly honest. I knew who I thought I should be but I am only now comfortable with who I am. And it is so frustrating that it’s taken me 40 years. All the cliches: ‘I wish I knew then,’ ‘I wasted time.’ It was wonderful then, but I am so neurotic the best times were marred by the angst of who I wasn’t yet.”

At the peak of his fame in the late 1970s, he turned down the role of Danny Zuko in the film version of “Grease.” He didn’t want to be typecast as a greaser. Today, he said, “I would just see it as work and I would do it.” But it stings. He turned down the part and went home and had a ginger ale, he said. “John Travolta went home and bought a 747.”

The woman who asked about eyeglasses returned to our table. She had put down her coffee, forgot it, the cup got cold. “Well, now you don’t have to blow,” Winkler said.

“Haven’t heard that in a while,” the woman said with a wink.

Winkler slapped the table, laughed and turned to me: “Now did you think that would come out of that woman? Make people comfortable, you learn so much about them!”

He asks strangers where they are from, what they did before they do what they do now. He is friendly but speedy and grimly serious when asked about acting. Any fleeting hint of annoyance gets softened with verbal word balloons like “Yowie!” and “Holy moly!” And when strangers talk to him, their faces soften, they stare, because, though the word “iconic” gets abused, Winkler is so iconic, if you were a kid in the 1970s, he was not a man but a plastic doll, a T-shirt, a magazine cover, a board game and a lunch box.

The irony being, the man is more interesting, a paradox of resolve and timidity.

His parents were Jewish refugees of Nazi Germany, and as his book makes clear, tyrannical toward him, and he was not a fan of either of them. He has since co-authored, with Lin Oliver, more than three dozen children’s books, most with strong empowerment themes, including the popular Hank Zipzer stories about a dyslexic child. But for a long time — until recently — he saw himself as second-rate. As a young actor in Hollywood in 1973, he worked out of a friend’s office to use the phone and scrounge for acting jobs, sometimes pretending to be speaking to agents, so he didn’t look like a failure. Yet he was auditioning for Fonzie only a month after moving to Los Angeles.

“I was defined by working,” he told me. “I didn’t have enough self to wait and quell the anxiety. I was nobody, I was nothing, and I grew only half an inch with every new job.”

Still, despite being a young actor offered a big break, he had the self-worth to insist Fonzie show vulnerability, and even sadness, before accepting the role. In an early Christmas episode, Fonzie is caught in a lie by his surrogate family the Cunninghams: He insists he has family to spend the holiday with, then they find him home alone, cooking for one. But as the character became a monolith, ennui was quickly abandoned for a near-paranormal control of jukeboxes and, infamously, the ability to jump sharks. Even his catchphrase, “Ayyyyyy,” was less organic than a response to Jimmie Walker and “Good Times” turning “DY-NO-MITE” into stiff competition for “Happy Days.”

As his star rose, family cashed in with quickie paperbacks. Yale — initially snotty toward his sitcom work — asked for money. Most painfully, being Fonzie meant becoming an albatross to coworkers who lived in the shadow of his wingspan. Read any “Happy Days”-related memoir and they all say the same: They loved Henry but they hated the focus on Fonzie. ABC wanted to rename the show “Fonzie’s Happy Days” and when Christmas came, the network gave the entire cast wallets — except Winkler, who got the latest home tech, a VCR. “I found out from Ron how he felt,” Winkler said. “I remember thinking how stupid I was. How insensitive! It was ultimately great for him because that treatment became the impetus to become a director. And to change the name! People would be hurt. An acting ensemble like that depends on keeping cohesion at all costs.”

Decades later, Winkler is so attuned to the shifting fortunes of fame and acting that, as he writes in his book, he has a small speech ready to capitalize on his name, should he lose everything: “I could roll up to somebody’s house and say, ‘Hi, it’s Henry Winkler, I know this is crazy, but do you have leftovers?’ … I have literally plotted out that scenario.”

When our breakfast ended, we stood and Christopher Lloyd approached Winker and hugged him. Then the great character actor Danny Trejo approached. Random as this sounds, it’s not when you’re Henry Winkler. Everyone took pictures with him. Next, a mother and son. Then a stranger walked by and said: “I love your outfit!” Winkler, wearing lime green pants and a bright plaid sports jacket, replied: “I love color!”

The more he did this, greeting friends and strangers — a kind of receiving line that never ends — the more I assumed he was schooled in improv. He dabbled. But what Second City does, he told me, no way. He once got on stage at an improv night with “Parks and Recreation” co-star Ben Schwartz and “I was so far over my head. We were on different continents. He’s brilliant, and I wanted to know how to melt into the wall.”

There, another paradox: Two of his best moments as an actor were improvised. In his first “Arrested Development” episode, he surreptitiously nudges pastries into his briefcase. In his best movie, “Night Shift,” in 1982, directed by Ron Howard, co-starring Michael Keaton, Winkler runs out of cash and change for an insistent subway saxophone player and begins writing checks. Both of those bits were unscripted.

Winkler works best in the moment.

The next morning, at the autograph convention, I found him in front of his table at least 40 minutes before he was scheduled. Every other famous name — Susan Sarandon across from him, Peter “RoboCop” Weller beside him — sat behind their tables, receiving fans during set hours. Winkler stood and approached each fan in turn. His line was never the longest, but it was the steadiest, and his smile was definitely the biggest.

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©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

“The Nightmare Before Christmas” is, today, a proud Disney property. You can find its spindly hero Jack Skellington across Disneyland during Halloween and Christmastime, and his skeletal smile adorns everything from pillowcases to backpacks to Build-a-Bear stuffed creatures. It’s one of the company’s most unique artistic achievements and a proven moneymaker, even 30 years on.

In 1993, though, a Halloween-Christmas film hybrid starring a slightly demented but well-meaning skeleton in a bat bowtie who nearly gets Santa killed was no easy sell. Worried the film would frighten young viewers used to “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin,” Disney released the film under its Touchstone Pictures banner, reserved for titles with more mature themes than standard Disney fare (a few years earlier, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” got the same treatment).

The film made a modest box office dent upon release. But many viewers who found the film over the years, usually on home video, appreciated its impressive puppets, offbeat rhythm and many seasonal earworms. Audience support led to multiple rereleases, elevating the film from a cult classic to a must-watch movie during both Halloween and Christmas.

Thirty years later, Disney has wholeheartedly embraced “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” The company has incorporated the film’s characters into its Haunted Mansion attraction at Disneyland in California. It’s re-released the film several times. And no longer are Jack Skellington and his motley crew of undead dreamers relegated to Hot Topics and novelty shops — now, “Nightmare” characters are sold as stuffed animals and figurines alongside Ariel and Mickey Mouse.

Disney is commemorating the deliciously bizarre film’s 30th anniversary with a theatrical rerelease. Here’s how a small film about a bunch of undead dreamers enchanted viewers — and became an essential offering among Disney’s holiday entertainment.

‘Nightmare’ wasn’t an immediate hit

“Nightmare” was masterminded by Henry Selick and Tim Burton, who got their start as animators at Disney in the 1980s. They found it hard to nail Mickey and other Disney stalwarts, preferring to sketch off-kilter characters: “We weren’t the typical Disney people,” Selick told A.frame, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ digital magazine, earlier this month.

Burton’s first iteration of “Nightmare” was a poem, populated by ghoulish characters who tried their hand at Christmas. Disney didn’t bite at the time. But after the “Beetlejuice” filmmaker departed the studio and proved his success in helming his first “Batman” film, Disney returned to the project. With Burton directing a “Batman” sequel, Selick was brought on to lead the meticulous stop-motion film, whose production would stretch to over three years, he said.

The beefed-up story saw Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King and beloved resident of Halloween Town, yearn for a chance to do something other than scare trick-or-treaters. He finds his chance when he stumbles upon Christmas Town, the cheery center of Santa’s operation. He decides to give the man in red the year off, with disastrous results — the evil Oogie Boogie gets his hands on “Sandy Claws” and puts Christmas in peril. Meanwhile, the living rag-doll Sally, who pines for Jack from afar, helps save Christmas — and Jack’s undead life.

Even though Disney execs tapped Selick to bring Burton’s dark-but-big-hearted vision to life, they didn’t expect the film to be a huge hit, Selick told IGN in 2006, ahead of the film’s 13th anniversary rerelease. They feared its cast of murderous child sidekicks, warty witches and a “clown with a tearaway face” would prove too scary for young audiences.

“They never felt (“Nightmare”) was a Disney film,” Selick told IGN. “Their biggest fear, and why it was kind of a stepchild project, was they were afraid of their core audience hating the film and not coming.”

“Nightmare” got a wide release on October 29, 1993, without Disney’s name attached. It made $50 million at the US box office in 1993, a mild success (meanwhile, the highest-grossing film of the year and another dark but crowd-pleasing classic, “Jurassic Park,” made over $357 million in its domestic release). It also earned an Oscar nomination for best visual effects, losing to the aforementioned “Jurassic Park.”

“​​(It was this initial) small success,” Selick told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018 for the film’s 25th anniversary. “It made double its money, and they made a few toys and it went away. And then it slowly became this other thing.”

‘Nightmare’s’ popularity grew with at-home viewers

In the years after its release, “Nightmare” was embraced by audiences at home who found the film on VHS and, later, DVD. It connected with people, even and perhaps especially young viewers, who felt, like Jack, that they were misunderstood or destined for more than their circumstances allowed.

Roger Ebert said as much in his glowing three-and-a-half star review of the film in 1993: “This is the kind of movie older kids will eat up; it has the kind of offbeat, subversive energy that tells them wonderful things are likely to happen.”

Disney warmed to the film in the years after its release: In October 2001, Disneyland debuted Haunted Mansion Holiday, a “Nightmare”-themed overlay of the classic Haunted Mansion attraction that featured Jack and company redecorating the spooky home for Christmas.

Jack and Halloween Town denizens were also mainstays at stores like Hot Topic, which catered to customers with alternative tastes, where “Nightmare” merchandise was sold year-round. And in 2006, Disney finally released the film under the Walt Disney Pictures banner, this time in 3D, earning more than $8.7 million in the US.

“Disney didn’t know what they had, but eventually they figured it out,” Selick told A.frame.

Its cult success also set the stage for other macabre animated children’s films like “Corpse Bride,” also by Burton, “Paranorman” and the Henry Selick-directed “Coraline” — proving, Selick said, that kids’ fare can be dark and age-appropriate.

“It wasn’t too dark, too scary,” Selick told IGN. “Kids love to get scared … Even little, little kids, as young as three, a lot of them love (“Nightmare”) and respond well to it.”

The latest rerelease has earned over $7 million, and “Nightmare” remains a marquee title on Disney+, where it’s highlighted among family-friendly scares and Christmas classics. Selick and Burton have fended off rumors of a sequel for years, and though Selick has expressed some openness to the idea, he’s content with what he’s made — and the comfort it’s brought to proud weirdos the world over.

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These films – now more prevalent and popular than ever – do more than merely list facts: They tell a story, a narrative shaped not by the subjects (except in the cases of a few celebrities), but by an unseen person behind the camera. People agree to be in documentaries for a variety of reasons but often don’t realize how much control they are giving up about their life stories. 

The new documentary, “Subject,” explores this topic and the ethical issues around it, interviewing people who were in the documentaries “The Staircase,” “Hoop Dreams,” “Capturing the Friedmans,” “The Wolfpack,” and “The Square.” (The film will kick off its Los Angeles theatrical run on Nov. 3 at Laemmle Glendale.)

Of course, these people are now subjecting themselves to the process a second time, but filmmakers Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall say they were committed to a more open and moral way of making documentaries. Tiexiera spoke recently by video along with Margie Ratliff, who serves as a producer but also appears on camera – she was thrust into the spotlight as a young adult when her father, Michael Peterson, was accused of murdering his wife, a story captured in “The Staircase.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q. What motivated you to tackle all these topics?

Tiexiera: Camilla was a journalist for the Financial Times in the Middle East before she made her first documentary. When she entered this world, she was shocked that there were no rules whatsoever. It’s like the Wild West.

I had been a film editor for about 15 years and found myself making these really intense decisions about people’s lives or communities in the edit room without ever meeting them or knowing their hopes and dreams for the project. The better I did my job the more sensationalized some of these decisions felt, which led me to producing and directing. So we were having these existential crises, but the third part of the mix is Margie – this film would not exist without Margie.

Ratliff: I met Camilla and Jen five days before Netflix released all those episodes of “The Staircase,” which was dredging things back up for my family.

When Camilla told me about “Subject,” I liked the idea of finding a better way that we can treat people in our films. I said, “Maybe I could consult – I don’t want to be in it, for sure.” It was only later when the HBO Max Series was beginning and I met Jesse Friedman [the focus on “Capturing The Friedmans”] and the rest that I realized I can’t hide from this and if I can start to make it better for other people, then I can kind of sacrifice myself.

Q. How was your process different from a typical documentary?

Tiexiera: After we did our rough cut – the process was extremely lengthy – we had each participant go through their own sections and ultimately have creative agency and then sent it to the other directors interviewed in the film and made sure that they felt represented correctly. And we gave each of the original directors of the films we focused on the opportunity to workshop with us as long as they wanted. Some went on for months and there were long, awkward conversations but they ultimately made the film so much stronger because it was so much more representative of everyone’s point of view.

In the first cut that [“Capturing the Friedman’s” director] Andrew Jarecki saw, he said, “I’m just not feeling that the closeness of me and Jesse” and he was right because that relationship he has with Jesse is separate from his relationship with “Capturing the Friedmans.”

There wasn’t anything where we disagreed and it became problematic. It wasn’t like things got omitted but it’s more that we were able to protect people’s mental health and not re-traumatize them. That’s also why we brought on a psychologist to be available after interviews.

We are huge supporters of DAWG, the Documentary Accountability Working Group, which put together a framework of things to consider when making a documentary where there is this power imbalance between the filmmaker and community or potential participant. 

Ratliff: I’ve luckily been able to travel around the globe with “Subject” and talk to so many different filmmakers from different areas about the connection that you have to the community, to the story. Why are you telling it? And are you thinking about the impact that you want the film to have and how your participants can be a part of that impact? And I think those are all such important questions to talk with your participants and really figure out before you even start picking up the camera.

I’m now taking real steps to make change. I’ve started a nonprofit, the Documentary Participants Empowerment Alliance, that deals with legal access,  advocacy, and mental health to guide filmmakers for a duty of care for participants.

Q. The film also includes the idea that film festivals bear some responsibility. Is that changing? 

Tiexiera: At Sundance, there have been films with really questionable methods as far as the treatment of the participants. But last year for the first time on the Sundance application was a question about participant wellness and care and the steps that were taken during the filmmaking process. And that was a huge win for all of us. 

Q. So are you hopeful that we will see substantial change in the next few years?

Ratliff: One indicator is at universities – we’ve been showing “Subject” and having conversations with film departments and legal departments about these provisions for ethical making. There are new classes being taught about how to make your films ethically. 

Tiexiera: The question will be, How do we fit these changes into small and shrinking budgets? But there’s always a way to figure it out. 

On my last series with HBO, we had therapy in the line item budget. We had three different therapists from production through airing on HBO. And we also did trauma training for the entire crew because we were going to be dealing with survivors of trauma and abuse. On our next series, Camilla and I have the same sort of infrastructure, and we have support from HBO and partners like Bad Robot. So this is not a pipe dream. 

In “The Royal Hotel,” director Kitty Green’s gripping, grubby Australian Outback noir, the Royal Hotel is a comically unregal place lit by the dead glare of fluorescent lights, dotted with predatory eyes lurking in the shadows.

The eyes belong to the men working for the local mining company. At this remote, two-story dump in the middle of nowhere — part saloon, part boarding house for temporary workers — two American women arrive to make some quick money behind the bar. Sensible and wary Hanna, played by Julia Garner, and her more reckless, up-for-anything friend Liv, played by Jessica Henwick, (both superb) realize very quickly that they’ll be putting up with trash talk, harassment, uncertain pay schedules and worse.

They’re expected by the owner of the Royal, the frequently drunk Billy (Hugo Weaving, a long, shaggy way from “The Matrix”), to perform the usual female paradox while they’re there and the customers are thirsty: Shut up, take it and smile. “You’re driving ‘em all away with that attitude,” he warns the cautious Hanna. “The Royal Hotel” tightens its screws with every scene, taking the premise into ever-darker territory without losing its authentic sense of place and people.

Liv, whose financial duress leads to them taking this gig on a wing and a prayer, at first just wants to see some kangaroos. Hanna goes along for the ride. By the end of the first day and night in the pub, navigating a nasty but never caricatured variety of men, Hanna wants out. But she stays. There’s a harsh kind of beauty here, especially at night, with stars brighter than she’s ever seen. But in daylight or in moonlight, the sounds of fear and knife-edge trouble are everywhere.

Green co-wrote the taciturn screenplay with Oscar Redding; this is her second narrative feature (she’s made two feature-length documentaries as well). Her previous drama, “The Assistant” (2019), drew a remarkable performance from Garner as a film executive’s assistant caught in the crosshairs of a Harvey Weinstein-style predator. See that film if you haven’t; it’s a minimalist marvel of precision and perception.

The simple, sturdy plot of “The Royal Hotel” demands something other than minimalism, but Green’s sophomore triumph is no less precise than “The Assistant” in its staging, editing and perceptiveness about what women put up with most every day of their lives. Kasra Rassoulzadegan served as editor; Michael Latham’s cinematography is spot on, in seductive sunshine as well as the murk of the bar itself. Every supporting performance feels perfectly cast and shrewdly delivered, with standout work from Ursula Yovich’s Carol, the Aboriginal Australian cook whose life with the bar’s owner has plainly been a bleak one.

The film’s reception along the festival circuit has been respectful but the movie deserves more than that. I was with it right to the last line; Garner and Henwick are doing the kind of acting that looks easy but isn’t. It’s a film of flickering doubts and accumulating, justifiable paranoia.

Green has made two very different, extraordinarily efficient and compact movies in a row. That, too, may look easy but is anything but — unless you’re a filmmaker and writer of her particular gifts.

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‘THE ROYAL HOTEL’

3.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for language throughout, sexual content and nudity)

Running time: 1:31

How to watch: Now in theaters and streaming on Prime Video

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©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Reputed mob boss and Bonanno crime family member Vincent Asaro has died, the Daily News has learned.

Asaro was 88 years old when he died last week, his criminal defense attorney Liz Macedonio confirmed Sunday.

“He was a larger than life client who lived life to the fullest,” Macedonio said. “He will be deeply missed by his family and friends.”

The 64-minute $6 million robbery was one of the largest cash heists in U.S. history. The stolen cash and jewelry has never been recovered.

The Five Families capo was put on trial for his involvement in the sweeping robbery and other crimes in 2015, but was acquitted of the most serious charges, including murder and racketeering.

In 2017, he plead guilty to ordering an associate to burn the car of a man who cut him off in Queens. During the trial, he was accused of threatening to kill a federal prosecutor, The News reported at the time.

While being held in federal prison in 2019, Asaro suffered a stroke which made him unable to speak in complete sentences, feed himself or use the bathroom independently.

He was released from prison by a Brooklyn judge in 2020 amid the COVID epidemic and the mobster’s rapidly declining health.

Judge Allyne Ross ruled that given the Brooklyn native’s state of health he would not “put the public at a significantly increased risk of danger.”

Asaro’s lengthy rap sheet dates back to 1957 for crimes including rape, bank robbery, kidnapping and assault. In many of the cases, the charges were dismissed.

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©2023 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

LOS ANGELES — Burt Young, the Oscar-nominated actor who played Paulie, the rough-hewn, mumbling-and-grumbling best friend, corner-man and brother-in-law to Sylvester Stallone in the “Rocky” franchise, has died.

Young died Oct. 8 in Los Angeles, his daughter, Anne Morea Steingieser, told the New York Times on Wednesday. No cause was given. He was 83.

Young had roles in acclaimed films and television shows including “Chinatown,” “Once Upon a Time in America” and “The Sopranos.”

But he was always best known for playing Paulie Pennino in six “Rocky” movies. The short, paunchy, balding Young was the sort of actor who always seemed to play middle-aged no matter his age.

When Paulie first appears in 1976’s “Rocky,” he’s an angry, foul-mouthed meat packer who is abusive to his sister Adrian (Talia Shire), with whom he shares a small apartment in Philadelphia. He berates the shy, meek Adrian for refusing at first to go on a Thanksgiving-night date with his buddy and co-worker Rocky Balboa, and destroys a turkey she has in the oven.

The film became a phenomenon, topping the box office for the year and making a star of lead actor and writer Stallone, who paid tribute to Young on Instagram on Wednesday night.

Along with a photo of the two of them on the set of the first film, Stallone wrote “you were an incredible man and artist, I and the World will miss you very much.”

“Rocky” was nominated for 10 Oscars, including best supporting actor for Young. It won three, including best picture. Young and co-star Burgess Meredith, who was also nominated, lost to Jason Robards in “All the President’s Men.”

Paulie was also an eternal pessimist who was constantly convinced that Rocky was going to get clobbered by his increasingly daunting opponents. His surprise at Rocky’s resilience brought big laughs.

“It was a great ride, and it brought me to the audience in a great way,” Young said in a 2020 interview with Celebrity Parents magazine. “I made him a rough guy with a sensitivity. He’s really a marshmallow even though he yells a lot.”

Born and raised in Queens, New York, Young served in the Marine Corps, fought as a professional boxer and worked as a carpet layer before taking up acting, studying with legendary teacher Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.

On stage, in films and on television, he typically played small-time tough guys or down-on-their luck working class men.

In a short-but-memorable scene in 1974’s “Chinatown,” he plays a fisherman who throws a fit when Jack Nicholson’s private detective Jake Gittes shows him pictures proving his wife is cheating on him.

Young also appeared in director Sergio Leone’s 1984 gangster epic “Once Upon a Time in America” with Robert De Niro, the 1986 comedy “Back to School” with Rodney Dangerfield, and the 1989 gritty drama “Last Exit to Brooklyn” with Jennifer Jason Leigh.

In a striking appearance in season three of “The Sopranos” in 2001, he plays Bobby Baccalieri Sr., an elderly mafioso with lung cancer who pulls off one last hit before a coughing fit leads to him dying in a car accident.

He guest-starred on many other TV series including “M*A*S*H,” “Miami Vice” and “The Equalizer.”

Later in life he focused on roles in the theater and on painting, a lifelong pursuit that led to gallery shows and sales.

His wife of 13 years, Gloria, died in 1974.

Along with his daughter, Young is survived by one grandchild and a brother, Robert.