A few things to note about Pioneer. One, the theater rarely made money, this was much more a labor of love and an advertising/promotional thing than it was a for profit theater. The owner of Two Boots/Pioneer was Phil Hartman, not the actor. He kept that theater afloat partially due to his love of movies and because his restaurant across the street and the pizza place/video store above made enough to support the theater.
I knew two of the programmers, Ray and Leigh (Lee?), and both were incredibly nice to me and my girlfriend. Possibly because many times we were the only people in the theater, but that still didn’t mean they had to be nice to us. One time Ray invited us to bring our dogs by to run around the audience during a werewolf Halloween marathon to do a little William Castle-esque scare tactic. What basically happened was my dog went and found the food some customer snuck in and ate it all!
I saw some AMAZING films there, including my first viewing of The Last Picture Show with Peter Bogdanovich there for a Q&A, The Warriors (before it was a regular repertory film), Donnie Darko (The Director’s Cut) which played there midnights for what seemed like forever, and many rare, old, foreign, indie and horror films no one has ever heard off. I also saw some amazingly god awful stuff, but that was just part of the risk of seeing something made with no money, or no promotion, or even no story!
I remember seeing a modern silent film called Soft For Digging that was a horror movie with no dialogue. It was the director’s birthday, so he showed up and we all had cupcakes. I also saw the porn version of Re-Animator there, and remember the shock on the programmer’s face when he realized how hardcore this production was. The audience was filled with Burning Angel porn stars!
I cannot tell you how many times we hung out with people there, friends, actors, directors, and other fans of film. Judah Friedlander would show up sometimes, Larry Fessenden was there every week or two it seemed, and tons of guests would show up for Q&A’s and parties. Sometimes free pizza was even supplied!
As others have noted, this place was not a money maker, and gentrification did not kill it, at least the way it did so many other places. Two Boots, their first restaurant, was there before many other places, when the neighborhood was still considered bad by many people. Those of us that were there during the not so great times did not view them as the enemy, as we do most of the newer places now.
For a while the theater also ran The Den Of Cin, which you entered from the pizza place by taking stairs to the basement. There they showed some really cheesy films on a screen which was projected by a pretty terrible projection device, something you could buy for your home in the 1990s. I think they mostly showed VHS and DVDs from the rental place upstairs. They did that once a week and always had free pizza and it was cheap, like $5.
I could go on and on, but I will stop for now. It’s always sad to see a neighborhood place close down, and a movie theater at that.
@hardbop, mp775 is correct, it was the Loew’s Hollywood that was on Avenue A between 6th and 7th Street. He posted the link to this site, so here are a couple others with some pics to boot:
This is the theater that debuted Viktor Und Viktoria, the German language original that was remade into First A Girl and much later, Victor/Victoria. It debuted there in January of 1935.
A few things to note about Pioneer. One, the theater rarely made money, this was much more a labor of love and an advertising/promotional thing than it was a for profit theater. The owner of Two Boots/Pioneer was Phil Hartman, not the actor. He kept that theater afloat partially due to his love of movies and because his restaurant across the street and the pizza place/video store above made enough to support the theater.
I knew two of the programmers, Ray and Leigh (Lee?), and both were incredibly nice to me and my girlfriend. Possibly because many times we were the only people in the theater, but that still didn’t mean they had to be nice to us. One time Ray invited us to bring our dogs by to run around the audience during a werewolf Halloween marathon to do a little William Castle-esque scare tactic. What basically happened was my dog went and found the food some customer snuck in and ate it all!
I saw some AMAZING films there, including my first viewing of The Last Picture Show with Peter Bogdanovich there for a Q&A, The Warriors (before it was a regular repertory film), Donnie Darko (The Director’s Cut) which played there midnights for what seemed like forever, and many rare, old, foreign, indie and horror films no one has ever heard off. I also saw some amazingly god awful stuff, but that was just part of the risk of seeing something made with no money, or no promotion, or even no story!
I remember seeing a modern silent film called Soft For Digging that was a horror movie with no dialogue. It was the director’s birthday, so he showed up and we all had cupcakes. I also saw the porn version of Re-Animator there, and remember the shock on the programmer’s face when he realized how hardcore this production was. The audience was filled with Burning Angel porn stars!
I cannot tell you how many times we hung out with people there, friends, actors, directors, and other fans of film. Judah Friedlander would show up sometimes, Larry Fessenden was there every week or two it seemed, and tons of guests would show up for Q&A’s and parties. Sometimes free pizza was even supplied!
As others have noted, this place was not a money maker, and gentrification did not kill it, at least the way it did so many other places. Two Boots, their first restaurant, was there before many other places, when the neighborhood was still considered bad by many people. Those of us that were there during the not so great times did not view them as the enemy, as we do most of the newer places now.
For a while the theater also ran The Den Of Cin, which you entered from the pizza place by taking stairs to the basement. There they showed some really cheesy films on a screen which was projected by a pretty terrible projection device, something you could buy for your home in the 1990s. I think they mostly showed VHS and DVDs from the rental place upstairs. They did that once a week and always had free pizza and it was cheap, like $5.
I could go on and on, but I will stop for now. It’s always sad to see a neighborhood place close down, and a movie theater at that.
@hardbop, mp775 is correct, it was the Loew’s Hollywood that was on Avenue A between 6th and 7th Street. He posted the link to this site, so here are a couple others with some pics to boot:
http://evgrieve.com/2009/09/little-bit-of-hollywood-on-avenue.html
http://evgrieve.com/2012/01/inside-old-theater-at-east-village.html
I was lucky enough to get into that theater before they tore it down, one day I might even post the pics we took!
This is the theater that debuted Viktor Und Viktoria, the German language original that was remade into First A Girl and much later, Victor/Victoria. It debuted there in January of 1935.