Critical Commentary, plus A New Theater in Sewickley

Our Sunday afternoon yesterday took us to the Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley and the recently opened Tull Family Theater.

The "Village Theater Company" was established in 2011 by the community leaders of Sewickley Borough as  non-profit entity that would provide not only a commercial movie theater to serve the Borough and other communities northwest of Pittsburgh, but one that would provide a venue for art films and documentaries that don't often find a home in this area.  In 2016, movie producer and Steelers minority owner Thomas Tull purchased the naming rights, and the Tull Family Theater opened its doors.

We found it to be a convenient and pretty cool place to see a movie when we went yesterday to see precisely the kind of  film that would never play at your standard multiplex.

"Obit." is a documentary from filmmaker Vanessa Gould that provides, as the poster says, "an inside look at life on the New York Times obituaries desk".  Regular readers of The Grandstander are well aware of my fascination with the news obituaries, which lead to my "Absent Friends" posts, and this film tells the story of how those news obits get produced, of both famous and unknown persons, often against a tight deadline, and just how difficult it can be to produce a summary of an interesting and important life in 500-800 words.   "I don't have enough time to write a short obituary" one of the writers laments.

"Isn't it depressing to write obituaries all the time?" these folks are often asked, but as obit writer Margalit Fox puts it, only a small part of an obituary is about a person's death.  Over ninety percent of the story is about the person's life, and that can be an uplifting thing.

The film speaks about things like advance obituaries (ones that are kept on file by a newspaper even thought the person is still alive), how a seemingly unknown photo can play a major part in an obituary (this involves a photo of a two year old Pete Seeger; you have to see the movie), and how an unexpected death that happens late in an afternoon, two hours before deadline, can throw a newsroom into complete turmoil (Michael Jackson).

Don't let a dreary term like "documentary" keep you away from seeking out this terrific and entertaining little film.  Well worth seeing, and it gets Four Stars from The Grandstander.

Also getting Four Stars is the Tull Family Theater.  We may be back there as early as this week to see another documentary that I have heard about called "Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story", and if we do get to it, I will tell you all about it here.  It is great that a facility like the Tull Family Theater now exists that will make it easier to find and view movies like this.  You can learn more about it at thetullfamilytheater.org