UPDATE: There will be at least one more screening at Bottleworks: That would be the showing of Five Element Ninjas on Wednesday, April 4. More info here.
Promotions at bars and restaurants can often be fleeting affairs, success measured in maintaining things for months, not years. That Strange Brew, an off-campus presentation of the Webster University Film Series, has had a run at the Schlafly Bottleworks since 2004 is nothing short of amazing within that context.
Last night, the 1999 dark comedy Jawbreaker played inside the multi-purpose Crown Room at Schlafly’s Maplewood facility. About two-dozen folks gathered, eating, drinking, and viewing cinema in a space that’s hosted everything from seed swaps and kundalini yoga classes to countless corporate parties and in-house beer launches. And it’s the centrality of beer, so much beer, that’s (maybe, possibly) moving the long-running Strange Brew to a new home.
Charles Orear, the amiable bossman of the Bottleworks, notes that the space will be shaved, allowing for more cold storage for the brewing operations on-site, with the room changing from an 80-seat operation to one that’ll host “something like 55-60 seated patrons.” In order “to continue to accommodate as many things as we can,” he says, an 82-inch, hi-definition TV’s been installed, and the room’s film screen will be affixed to the wall just over it, allowing both digital and non-digital screenings to continue.
But Jon Scorfina, presenter of the monthly event since 2007, says that the room wouldn’t have the same feel, or the needs of a ticketed theatrical event. While nothing’s set in stone, Scorfina suggested to the audience that WUFS’s arrangement with the Bottleworks may change before the April 4 screening of Five Element Ninjas. It may not, true, but the idea was enough to bring a few curious folks out, just in case.
“A lot of people came out because this was potentially my last one here,” Scorfina says. Then again, he says, there are “regulars who always show up. We don’t want to lose them.”
Scorfina says that “the most rewarding thing about this venue is that we’ve shown stuff in which the movie really represents a cult of people dedicated to that movie,” including niche films about BMX cycling, skateboarding and punk rock; though the biggest ever turnout came for Slapshot, screened during an NHL work stoppage and just days after the passing of star Paul Newman.
But Strange Brew’s programming has always featured a host of different cinematic influences, from all over the world and across all decades in which films have been made. As example, here’s the run list for a random year, 2014: 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, They Live, Tank Girl, Big Trouble in Little China, Gas-s-s-s, The Last Starfighter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Time Bandits, Baffled!, Cannibal: The Musical, and The Running Man. Pretty much any year selected, though, would reflect a similar blend of genres and moods, a curatorial choice that was largely Scorfina’s realm, with valued input from WUFS’s longtime director, James Harrison.
“I’m always kinda searching for something different, which you wouldn’t be able to see at other places,” he says.
With Jawbreaker (an odd, not-exactly-well-aged blend of Heathers, Weekend at Bernie’s and Carrie), Scorfina says “I came across a Vice article, an oral history of the movie. It talked about how it’s gained this cult following in the wake of its influence on Mean Girls. And I love rock’n’roll cameos, and it’s got that great Marilyn Manson sleazeball cameo.
“What I liked most is that we took chances on stuff you really wouldn’t see anywhere else,” he says. “We took chances on stuff that other venues would never try.”
Strange Brew was born of another screening series, Cinema in the City, which ran at Beatnik Bob’s inside of the City Museum in the early 2000s. Whether the series will have a new, third home is a decision that should be made within the next couple of weeks.
“It will happen,” Scorfina says, “somewhere.”
