NNB posed a few questions to Elizabeth Taylor-Mead, the associate director of the Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation and the curator of CCT’s Science on Screen series. (For more from Naure Network on films and science, check out this post or take the science fiction film quiz.)
What do you look for in the movies you choose?
Historic cinematic significance, quality filmmaking, cult status, quirky films that rarely get projected on the big screen – if not all, at least one or two of those elements.
Is it difficult to find movies, or hard to choose ?
We always have more pairings in mind than we have slots for, as we only do the program one Monday a month during the academic year. We’ve rarely had a great speaker in mind and couldn’t find the right film, in the sense of a film that’s not too obvious a choice. It’s happened once or twice, so then we just shelve the idea rather than come up with a pairing that’s either too much of a stretch or a film we don’t think our audience would come out to see.
Does science fiction qualify?
Sure. They can fall into the historic cinematic significance (The Day The Earth Stood Still), or the cult status (Night of the Living Dead). I dare anyone who came to either of those events to say they didn’t learn a lot, as well as being entertained.
What kind of audience do you attract?
A wide range, depends on the film and the speaker. Movie buffs, geeks, followers of particular speakers, general Coolidge fans, families, hipster couples. It’s one of our most popular series, so it has a big reach.
What inspired the Science on Screen series?
It was a lovely confluence, really. I came to the Coolidge from a career as a documentary filmmaker, and most recently had been working on a couple of PBS programs that were science and math related. As one of my roles at the Coolidge was developing special events and programs and I’m a firm believer in the mission of the theater, “to entertain, educate, and enlighten, building community around film”, I was interested in doing some science/film events, but the idea wasn’t met with much enthusiasm until one of our long-time members and supporters, Richard Anders came in to meet with me to advocate for a science program.
It was perfect because he wanted to help start a program that would combine a film and a well-respected speaker from the world of science and technology. He was in a great position to help with the task of finding speakers because had a company that found scientific advisers for business entities, and he offered to provide seed money, too. That was the component that allowed the program to get the go-ahead., as it wasn’t such a financial risk for a non-profit organization with very limited resources.
We worked together pretty closely in the beginning but he got too busy to devote much time to it, though he was still a strong supporter, and I wanted to move away from a very linear connection between the subject of the film and the speaker’s expertise – for example, to move from having someone who does research on the search for extraterrestrial life attached to the screening of CONTACT, to having a speaker who heads a team of people doing stem cell research presenting before a screening of Woody Allen’s SLEEPER. My focus and expertise is film culture, so I was more interested in developing a program that draws in the general public, who are primarily interested in the film and get caught by surprise at their enjoyment of some scientific “aha!” moments.
Do you start with the topic and try to find a relevant movie, or do you start with the movies?We see-saw. Cheryl White, who started out doing only the marketing of this series and then as Richard Anders had to cut back on the time he could devote to finding us speakers, took over that role, so we really do the series together. She develops rapport with the scientists very quickly and is also brilliant at doing both very targeted grass routes outreach and broader marketing to get the word out. I’m responsible for shaping each series of the program and I have final say on the film selection, but sometimes she’ll suggest a speaker she’s come across in her research or saw on video, or who has a new book out, and then I think of films that might be appropriate, aiming as much as possible for an unexpected pairing that will attract the widest possible audience. On the other hand, I always have some film titles that I’m dying to show and then we go out looking for speaker that would fit the bill. We’ve been doing it long enough that we really have the flow down now, and we’re always excited to think about the next line up.
A lot of the films deal with psychology. Is that because of the popularity of thrillers?Sometimes we know there’s a great speaker and a great film (all the Hitchcocks come into that category!) and so we decide that as long as there aren’t too many in that particular season, we’ll take the chance, rather than avoid that pairing because it isn’t “hard” science. We’re really spoiled in Boston because there are world-class scientists, technology pioneers, medical stars, and brilliant minds in the fields of psychology, anthropology, etc. Unlike the Seinfeld show, we actually like learning and hugging in our program!
Have you been approached by scientists or filmgoers with ideas? If so, have you adopted any?
Definitely. One of our best-ever SOS events was one proposed by a professor Cheryl contacted, as part of the normal outreach, asking him to pass on the information about our upcoming events to his students. He said sure, but would we be interested in doing a program about the zombie brain, as he’s a huge fan of zombie movies and had spent a lot of time thinking about it. Next thing we know, Dr. Steven Schlozman from the Harvard Medical School is here, enthralling a packed house with diagrams and video, talking about the function of the amygdala and how all representations of zombies in films relate to the neurobiology of the alligator brain. Amazing! Then we showed “The Night of the Living Dead” and even if you were a total zombie movie fanatic and had seen it a hundred times, you’d never seen it like that, looking at the film with all this new information. It was so successful, the audience was so pumped, that Dr. Schlozman actually wrote a book based on his presentation and now he and George Romero (director of TNOTLD) are phone buddies!
There is a photo on your web page of a terrified person in a device that is holding his or her eyes open. What movie is that from? Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”
Have you ever run a program and later said: “That was kind of a reach.”?
Yes, but not for quite a few seasons now. The program really has evolved as we’ve learned more about the audiences. We don’t ask the speakers to submit their presentation prior to the event, so we can never be absolutely certain that they’re going to talk about what we think they are, or won’t veer off in a direction we hadn’t anticipated, but fortunately, we haven’t had too many unpleasant surprises.
A short list of titles, speakers, and topics have appeared as part of The Coolidge Corner Theatre’s Science on Screen program. For a full list, click here.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
Film Synopsis: Mankind finds a mysterious, obviously artificial, artifact buried on the moon and, with the intelligent computer HAL, sets off on a quest. Directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Speaker: Marvin Minsky, pioneer in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT; technical advisor to Stanley Kubrick on the production of the film
Topic: Artificial Intelligence
ALPHAVILLE
Film Synopsis: Hard-nosed detectives, evil professors, surrealist poetry: French New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard mixed these elements and more together to create this visionary piece of sci-fi cinema, in which American private-eye Lemmy Caution is sent to the city of Alphaville on a search for a missing agent.
Speaker: Sheila Jasanoff, Professor of Science and Technology Studies , John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Topic: The interactions of law, science, and politics in a democratic society
THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1971)
Film Synopsis: A group of scientists investigate a deadly new alien virus before it can spread. Based on the bestselling novel by Michael Crichton.
Speaker: Dr. Alfred DeMaria, Chief Medical Officer and state of Massachusetts epidemiologist, Massachusetts Department of Public Health; Director, Center for Laboratories and Disease Control
Topic: Modern science’s ability to handle a new biological threat
AMERICAN BEAUTY
Film Synopsis: Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation for his daughter’s attractive friend
Speaker: Daniel Gilbert, Professor of Psychology, Harvard; author, Stumbling on Happiness
Topic: The nature of happiness and affective forecasting: the uniquely human ability to predict the pleasure or pain of future experiences and make choices based upon those predictions