Off The Wall Cinema
15 Pearl Street,
Cambridge,
MA
02139
15 Pearl Street,
Cambridge,
MA
02139
15 people
favorited this theater
Showing 101 - 110 of 110 comments
Yikes! Maybe it’s time to clean out that wallet, BJY! Anyway, remember that OTW started as film nights in someone’s home. If you want to recreate the atmosphere, that might be a good way to start.
Oh I would never part with it Mr LaFong.
Membership card #1763.
More nostalgia for me, the same old wallet also held my projectionist license, expired in 1984.
I was really pleased to see so much interesting information and affectionate words about Off the Wall. I thought I might be the only person left who remembered it! A few footnotes:
“Vincent” was an early short film by Tim Burton. It definitely set the stage for his career path!
The effort to move Off the Wall to the old Sears building in Porter Square was a cynical maneuver on the part of the developer to get some buy-in from the local residents. Even the owners of Off the Wall were divided about whether to pursue it or not. To be honest, it’s likely that the theatre’s unique atmosphere would have been lost as part of a multiplex.
The opening date of Off the Wall depends on what you consider the genesis. It developed out of casual film nights in someone’s living room (in the years before home video, this was a much bigger deal than it would be today). At what point it became a “theatre” is hard to pinpoint.
Deeberg, you were right; it WAS one of the coolest places in the world. BJY, hold onto that lifetime membership card! Because you never know… ;–)
Got to agree with you, Off The Wall was a really unique place and the short films shown there were almost impossible to see anywhere else. I remember being totally amazed by ‘The Wizard of Speed and Time’ short by Mike Jitlov and a collection of parody shorts that was hysterical. Seeing such hilarious shorts as Hardware Wars, Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind and Porklips Now all done with little cash and just a desire to have some fun. I actually just found my Off The Wall membership card that I bought the last year they existed.
Off the Wall and the Orson Welles Cinema were special places, I doubt you could recreate them again today, but I do wish someone would try.
1986- new to Boston from Arkansas, I saw my first ever animation festival at Off the Wall in its Cambridge location. The festival included a claymation of “Vincent” about a kid who wants to be Vincent Price, “Agatha Makes Soup” (or something like that) also a claymation, and a beautifully haunting story called something like “Skywhales”. Sitting on a car seat, drinking hot tea, thinking I was in the coolest place in all of the USA!
I fell in love with independent film that night, and over the past 18 years have been a regular at the West Newton, the Boston Library series, the Somerville, the Coolidge,(including 10 years straight at the SF Marathon’s at Somerville and Coolidge) the Brattle, and more recently the Embassy and Kendall Square theaters.
There are still great theaters out there, but not any quite as quirky as this one was…
Yes, Where’s Boston did show only during the day.
The theatre itself was a rather souless affair very unlike Off the Wall’s old home.
The biggest crowd they ever had at Faneuil Hall location was a Disney cartoon retrospective which also put them badly in debt.
At Cambridge they had a Betty Boop cartoon show that ran for months.
Also they had the infamous Heart Throbs adults only shorts show that was shut down at least twice by the local police.
Some newspaper articles say that Off the Wall started in 1974 rather than 1976. I’m not sure which is correct.
During their few months at Faneuil Hall Marketplace in 1979-80, they shared a theatre with the “Where’s Boston?” multimedia slide show, which introduced tourists to the city. I assume that the slide show ran during the day and Off the Wall programming at night, but I’m not sure.
It was the then-owners of the Harvard Sq. that wanted to build in the Porter Sq. Sears' building, pre-Sack/USA ownership. I am personally very glad they didn’t because it would surely have doomed my current workplace, the nearby Somerville Theatre. Still, it always grates my cheese when nit-wit NIMBY’S stop a reasonable development like a movie theater, especially when it would improve an otherwise empty space.
Either Sack or the Harvard Square Theatre owners wanted to open a multiplex in the Sears building, with one screen given over to Off The Wall. Unfortunately, the neighbors didn’t want a multiplex and the idea died. The Sears building subsequently became a small shopping mall, Porter Exchange, with many Japanese shops and restaurants. Lesley University now owns it.
There was talk of the Off-The-Wall Cinema re-emerging within the former Sears building in Porter Square, Cambridge shortly after it was renovated and re-opened in December of 1988 as the Porter Exchange indoor shopping gallery, talk that regrettably never became anything more.