Mill Valley resident shares his love of film through online series
It’s safe to say that Mill Valley film historian Harry Chotiner knows a thing or two about movies.
Not only did he spend time in the movie business, working for Zoetrope Studios, CBS Theatrical Films, 20th Century Fox and Interscope Communications, but at one point he made it his mission to see 200 movies in the theaters a year — a number he hit once or twice but got close to often.
These days, Chotiner enjoys sharing his love of movies with others through his “Let’s Go to the Movies with Harry!” series, which runs for five weeks on Zoom starting Tuesday. The series, presented by the Lark Theater, features lectures by Chotiner and group discussions surrounding the films that he chooses and tailors for each group as the series unfolds. The first event will highlight Iranian Academy Award-winning film “A Separation” that he says is one of his favorite movies from the last 25 years.
“The course is really fun because the people who come are thoughtful and curious and open to trying things that are out of their comfort zone,” he says. “In my experience, it works really well because of them.”
Admission is $100. For more information and to register, go to larktheater.net/movie-category/special-events/moviesharry.
Q When were you exposed to movies?
A I was an upper middle class Jewish boy from West LA. There’s a real cross-pollination between the movie business and the Jewish community that goes back to the origins of the movie business. So I grew up with it in the sense that my parents’ friends were agents and other jobs in the business. And I’ve always loved the movies. I went to college, and then after college, I went to rabbinical school for a year, dropped out, went and got my PhD in history, and then decided to get into the movie business. I did that for five years. I had a whole bunch of lucky breaks. I started out as a reader for Francis Ford Coppola and ended up as a vice president at 20th Century Fox. And then I had a kid, and that work is 90 hours a week. And so I gave it up and moved to Northern California and raised my son there and taught high school for 15 years, which was a great experience. I loved it. My wife and I moved back East after the kids left home. And then the kids had grandkids, and they all came back to the Bay Area, so we came back to the Bay Area. When I got back to the Bay Area, I had been teaching film classes back East at NYU, and I wanted to do something here.
Q Has teaching this series made you see films differently?
A Being in the film business was incredibly fun. I really loved it. But, if you really want to have a career, you have to work 90 hours a week and socializing is absolutely instrumental to getting the job that you want to have. The other disadvantage is that when you look at a movie, it takes you out of the movie if you’ve been on the set too much. I wonder what they were doing just to the left of this shot, the way the frame was constructed in the shot. What was great about getting back to teaching was it was just pure movies without thinking about how they were made and much more analyzing them as either thematically interesting or as works of art. And doing it with other students is so great, because they see all sorts of stuff that I don’t see, and I learn from them and their openness to seeing a work of art in a different way and their capacity to listen to each other and build their own thoughts on other people’s thoughts and take them further. And that is just the best feeling.
Q How do you approach the programming?
A The first job I had teaching films was at NYU. And they wanted a theme. So I did a one-semester theme of films about siblings or films about Hollywood or films about rural America. And then I thought, I don’t wanna be tied to that. And so after a couple semesters, I had enough students who were interested in coming to class, and I was like I’m going to show you whatever films that I think are interesting in terms of their content and are valuable as a work of art. So that’s what these classes are, films that I think have value in that way. And people are generous enough to trust that the experience will be worthwhile.