While Dan Talbot may be in love with movies, I was in love with the stories he told in this book. Despite the famous company he keeps throughout the stories in this book, I never once felt that he was bragging. Offhand comments about having meetings with the likes of Werner Herzog (who penned the introduction) or any number of other famous actors, directors, producers, and distributors were related as someone just talking about their fun evenings with friends.

What became completely clear to me as I read about Dan's love of film, is that I have only scratched the surface of the history of great films from around the world. My only regret in reading this book now is that Dan Talbot is no longer with us and didn't get the chance to see the book published. I'm sure he would have loved the feedback provided from the book, even if he didn't fully agree with all of it.

Rest in peace Dan, and thank you to his wife Toby for sharing his words with us.

What a unique document of contemporary art house cinema history! I ate it up.
Happy to include this wonderful book of insider reminiscences in “Hollywood Moment: 12 New Books on Tinseltown,” my recent round-up of movie-related reading for Zoomer magazine’s Books section ahead of the Oscars. (review at link)

Truly, how do you comprehend how incredible Talbot's life story and career was? He clearly had one of the most unique front-row seats to the film industry imaginable--not just a veritable Forrest Gump, mind you, but also an active mover and shaker that, without question, helped introduce great films to an immeasurable amount of people.

Containing nigh-unbelievable anecdotes, instructions on running a theater, and how one might obtain a great film from a festival (to start), it's what it advertises itself as: A love letter to movies.

A foreward by Werner Herzog certainly doesn't hurt things, either.

Within its pages you'll find a heck of a library of movies to ensure that you've seen (I know I did) and, knowing now how difficult it became to just obtain them for public viewing, a much greater appreciation of what you'll be seeing.

Much respect to Mr. Talbot, and hopefully his wisdom, along with his wife's, remains at arm's length for us for generations to come.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the advance read.

Daniel Talbot, In Love With Movies, Columbia University Press 2022

Thank you, Net Galley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.

Daniel Talbot’s, In Love With Movies, is a delight, from the first chapters about the early years in independent theatres; though Those Who Made Me Laugh in Part 2; Part 3 which, in Unsung Film Pioneers, covers collectors, early distributors and exhibitors; part 4, Acquisitions is an engrossing wander through some of the films shown in Talbot’s theatres; Directors In My Life, enumerates those such as Yasujiro Ozu, Nagisa Oshima, Ousmane Sembene, Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Gordar, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, and Werner Herzog; Parts 6, 7, 8 and 9 with ‘a memory project’, includes more directors, Criteria and Reflections; Portraits, including friends and legendary a film critic, in Part 10; followed by more on independent theatres in Upper West Side Cinemas; and an epilogue written by Toby Talbot who edited the book. There are excerpts from Dan Talbot’s Festival Notes, an interview between Talbot and Stanley Kauffmann, and an intriguingly titled, Dreams on My Screen.

Werner Herzog’s foreword creates a sense of nostalgia for the period in which Don Talbot, and others like him, made going to the movies something rather different from today’s experience. He tells the story of Talbot visiting his Lincoln Plaza property, to see a film and attend to business on December 22, 2017. The theatre lease was not renewed when, a week later, Donald Talbot died. Herzog goes on to tell us how young people view movies – not in a plush, (or possibly creaky) seat in a theatre, but streamed to their homes or mobile phones. Horror of horrors, some even increase the speed if the movie is too slow. I wonder what this sort of audience would think of my friend and I swiftly departing a cinema when instead of subtitles the film was dubbed – and we were poor students, having paid adult prices to see it! However, maintaining my intrusion into this review, surely all is not lost, when film groups form and show specialist films, others discuss films and television series from the past in Facebook groups, and in Canberra the National Film and Sound Archive steadily retrieves films and restores them, and show specialist films in their cinema. This must not be unique to Australia. One encouragement to maintain the Talbot dream is the vivid recall of that dream in this engrossing book. Indeed, Talbot does recognise the role of the Museum of Modern Art as a source of interesting showings, but his fulminating about the problems of small theatres’ limited ability to finance some sources remains valid.

The material Talbot uses began as a journal, beginning with his love for movies established in the Bronx where he spent all day in the cinema with a meal packed by his mother – from the amount it seems that this was a family affair, replicated on Sundays. He and his friends then lived the life of the movies in their everyday life, drawing guns and mimicking film dialogue. The extended family also travelled by train to Radio City or the Roxy, eating locally after sating themselves with films. His life with Toby, his wife, began with movies also. The personal, often whimsical, often business like, but always fascinating, approach continues throughout the book.
For people who have experienced the small independent theatre and films that are rarely shown at the complexes this is a wonderful reminder of a time when people watched the film to the end, giving every contributor, whether star or crew member; location; piece of music rapt attention rather than rushing out before the credits begin. But that is only the start to enjoying Talbot’s journal entries that have become an engaging narrative.

The business side of choosing and locating movies, distribution, filling seats, and even the simple story of moving the drink machines so that their clatter did not interrupt the film showing is interesting. Directors and films provide a host of stories and information – a joy to the serious study of the creative side involved in providing film to suit a range of for audiences. An almost aside about the way in which a film compacts into a minute, or even seconds action or emotion that may take a page of several in a book is instructive – the futile argument about whether the book was better than the film is made redundant by this succinct observation.
I found this a wonderfully nostalgic but also optimistic look at the past and future of movies.

The journey is full of information, useful to an academic study of this world, as well as a pleasure for the more casual reader. A list of all the films mentioned in each chapter is provided at the end of the book – running into several pages.