This post has been updated with information about a possible protest.
This post has been updated to note the screening was pulled.
This post has been edited to clarify the relevant Twitter account.
Someone’s nose got bloodied
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fairfax Cinema—the rebranded Cinefamily entity—will open next week with a 35mm run of “Uncut Gems,” the new Safdie Brothers movie starring Adam Sandler. Yet inaccuracies in THR reporting left readers scratching their heads, and roiling anger over the Cinefamily scandal spilled into social media and may have caused the filmmakers to rethink their plans.
The THR article inaccurately repeats the Harkhams’ claims that Fairfax Cinema is a “new… venue” unrelated to Cinefamily, and that the Harkhams were merely Cinefamily’s “landlords.” As this website has reported, from day one the Harkhams had full effective control over all Cinefamily operations, finances, and governance.
(This website initially suspected THR had been pranked by one of the many Fairfax Cinema parody accounts. It seems, however, that Sammy Harkham did actually describe his inspiration for the neon sign as coming from “Russian graffiti from 1991 or 1992 on Instagram” and “a diagram of a certain kind of moss I saw at the Museum of Jurassic Technology.”)
A bar with no alcohol license?
Earlier on Tuesday, a Twitter account associated with filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie had tweeted about the Fairfax Cinema run. Later that evening the tweet was deleted, leaving plans for the L.A. screening unclear. Some on social media pointed out a personal relationship between the two sets of brothers, while others pointed to an infamous incident at a 2017 Cinefamily screening of the Safdies’ film Good Time.
On Wednesday morning, this website received an unsolicited email from “a former Cinefamily volunteer… interested in organizing a protest of the new rebranding of the theater.” We will continue to track any such developments.
It is not clear how Fairfax Cinema plans to operate legally. They have no certificate of occupancy for the recent renovations. They have claimed food service operations, yet have no food service license. They have claimed alcohol service, yet have no alcohol permits.
This is not the first planned opening for Fairfax Cinema. Earlier this fall, preliminary announcements of a November soft opening (screening Zia Anger’s “My First Film”) appear to have led nowhere.
This website has reached out to the Harkhams for clarification. We have also reached out to A24, the studio releasing Uncut Gems.
UPDATE: Late Wednesday afternoon, the L.A. Times reported the screening was pulled:
The film’s distributor, A24, confirmed the movie would not be playing at the theater and that the Safdie brothers would not be programming a series there.
Theater owners Daniel and Samuel Harkham said in an interview Wednesday that they still plan to open on Dec. 25, but had not yet finalized the programming.