Building community one film at a time

Filmgoers can see new releases at Grail Moviehouse each week, but in late 2022, owners Davida Horwitz and Steve White felt as if something was missing from their programming.

Around that same time, local music journalist (and Xpress contributor) Bill Kopp also sensed a void in his life.

“What I discovered during the [COVID-19] pandemic is similar to what a lot of other people discovered: Community is a whole lot more important than we might have realized,” Kopp says. “We kind of took it for granted because it was always there if we wanted it. And then suddenly, when it wasn’t, you miss it.”

Kopp chatted with the Grail team about collaborating on a monthly music film series; they liked the idea, and Music Movie Mondays was born. A little over a year later, it was joined by Masterpiece Mondays, featuring classic films with an introduction and postscreening Q&A led by Grail employee Michael Wheeler, and the genre/cult-film series Cinemania, co-hosted by Wheeler and Tye Krebs.

The Grail owners, as well as Kopp and Wheeler, recently spoke with Xpress about building community through these series and the joys of experiencing movies with a captivated audience.

Rock steady

Music Movie Mondays launched in December 2022 with the documentary In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50. Kopp, Horwitz and White set modest expectations for the initial screening — and were pleasantly surprised when all three screens at Grail sold out.

The three collaborators quickly worked to capitalize on this success and keep the momentum going.

“My series combines their expertise of knowing about movies and the [film] industry with my fanatical interest in music. It dovetails nicely,” Kopp says. “Their expertise is really, really critical because figuring out what [films] we can get and what things we can’t get, it’s a whole different ballgame.”

Since its launch, Kopp has hosted roughly 20 installments, including the most recent screening of Aretha Franklin‘s concert documentary Amazing Grace.

Before each film begins, Kopp asks how many people have been to a previous event. He says it’s normal for half of the crowd to raise their hands. Once the film concludes, anyone from the three screens who wants to stay around for a Q&A and discussion with Kopp convene in Screen 1, which seats 60 people.

“The only thing more fulfilling than interviewing people and writing about the music and stuff that I’m really into is having conversations with people about it,” he says.

In Kopp’s research about each film for the postscreening dialogue, he strives to include interesting trivia about the production and the artists involved in it. He also is sure to contextualize the movie so that attendees can more fully appreciate and understand the material. For example, with the fictional This Is Spinal Tap, he noted that only one other “mockumentary” had been made before Rob Reiner’s 1984 comedy: the 1978 Beatles parody All You Need Is Cash.

When the film is about a historical band or artist, Kopp asks the audience if anyone has seen the featured acts live. If someone has, he asks them to briefly recount their experience and what they remember most from the performance.

“I just light up when people share that and the other people there love that, too,” he says. “It lights a fire: When one person says, ‘Oh, I saw this’ or ‘I remember the first time I saw this film,’ then other people are like, ‘Oh, I remember, too!’ It’s certainly not a lecture — it’s a conversation. I’m a moderator. My job is to spark conversation, and that’s what these have turned into.”

Helping him on a few occasions are notable guest speakers. Legendary Asheville-based soul vocalist Sidney Barnes lent his expertise to the discussion on Wattstax, a documentary about Stax Records’ 1972 benefit concert in honor of the seventh anniversary of the riots in Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. For the documentary What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?, Kopp recruited the band’s founding bassist, Jim Fielder. And after the screening of Stand by for Failure: A Documentary About Negativland, he was joined by band members Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker.

“It’s an endless assortment of things to choose from. And it’s not all rock ‘n’ roll,” says Kopp, who’s now planning screenings nearly six months in advance. “The momentum is there, and it just keeps building and building.”

The Wheel(er)house

With Asheville being such a music-centric city, the Grail team wasn’t sure if other types of film series would prove successful. So they started with such classic Universal Classic Monsters films as Bride of Frankenstein and Creature from the Black Lagoon in October 2023.

“And that’s when we realized that we could stick Michael on at the end with that little extra feature,” says White, who found a willing participant in the knowledgable Wheeler. “People really appreciate that because they like that perspective.”

Masterpiece Mondays debuted in January with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, and Cinemania also launched that month on a Monday (the lone day each week when the Grail is closed for regular operations) with the 1977 Japanese film House. Despite these films’ widespread availability, the turnout for each screening was encouraging.

“The majority of the titles we show, people can watch at home — and that still doesn’t deter them to come out to watch them,” Wheeler says.

Additional Masterpiece Mondays selections have included The Lady Eve, Double Indemnity, Sullivan’s Travels, Magnolia and The Night of the Hunter. Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express is slated for Monday, Aug. 26, at 7 p.m.

Cinemania has continued with Re-Animator, Deep Red, Django, Lady Snowblood and Sleepaway Camp. And on Sunday, Aug. 18, and Monday, Aug. 19, Grail hosts multiple screenings of the “so bad it’s good” cult classic The Room with the film’s star, Greg Sestero. As of press time, tickets have already sold out for some of the screenings.

“We tried pretty hard to not be like a film course at school,” Wheeler says. “We try to pick stuff that’s appealing, that you want to see and that you maybe have not seen. And then also not be pedantic about it.”

White says the crowds for Cinemania skew younger because the titles are “more provocative and out there” but notes that Masterpiece Mondays is beginning to attract a greater number of Gen Z viewers.

“It’s presented in a way of, ‘Maybe you’re going to love it and maybe it won’t be your total thing, but it’s something you’ve got to see and you’re going to learn a little something,’” Horwitz says.

Adds Wheeler, “As long as we can keep it balanced with old Hollywood and new stuff, I think that’s appealing because we’re not just showing the same few things over and over again.”

Wheeler begins conducting research on each film approximately three weeks in advance of the screening. He starts with available literature, then moves on to reading old reviews, criticism published over the years about the films and mining what he calls “the depths of Wikipedia.”

“Luckily, a lot of it’s general knowledge that I’ve somehow retained over the years,” he says.

And even the new information that he gleans in the process sticks — and he’s able to recall it all without the aid of notes. So far, attendees have responded most enthusiastically to behind-the-scenes anecdotes and stories about the making of the films but are also proving adventurous about other production aspects.

“They’re very interested in the technical side of it, to a degree,” Wheeler says. “If you can explain how [the filmmakers] did certain scenes on a layman’s level, that appeals to a lot of people.”

Like Kopp, Wheeler makes sure to include historical context, such as the impacts of filmmaking during World War II and the conditions that led to so many memorable movies being released in 1999.

In turn, their series are helping fill the void left by late Xpress film critic Ken Hanke’s Asheville Film Society screenings each Tuesday, and his weekly Thursday Horror Picture Show, both of which featured insightful introductions by the encyclopedic scholar. And the postscreening discussions carry on the tradition of the Asheville Movie Guys conversations at the Fine Arts Theatre with Bruce Steele and this writer, which have been on hiatus since the COVID-19 pandemic.

With Masterpiece Mondays and Cinemania, attendance has steadily grown to the point that, as with Music Movie Mondays, multiple Grail auditoriums are necessary to meet demand. And with each film, Wheeler is reminded why it’s important to offer such opportunities.

“The screenings that we had of Rear Window and Night of the Hunter, when you have people who haven’t seen it before and you hear their gasps and their reactions and laughs in a packed house — there’s nothing better than that,” he says.

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