The Automat: Magic for a nickel

The Automat (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated TV-PG, and suitable for all ages

Available via: HBO Max, Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

There was nothing like the coffee at the Automat

Its aroma and its flavor was supreme

From a silver dolphin spout, the coffee came right out

Not to mention at the end a little spurt of cream.

 

The Automat at 21557 Broadway, in New York City, circa 1930s.

Viewers must wait until the end credits of director Lisa Hurwitz’s charming little documentary, to watch Mel Brooks sing those lyrics — along with additional droll verses — of the song he wrote to honor a topic obviously near and dear to his heart.

Brooks also gets considerable face time in this affectionate ode to what once was a gleaming jewel of progressive food service technology, and was for decades the largest and most popular restaurant chain in the United States … despite having locations in only two cities: Philadelphia and New York.

 

“This was by any measure,” notes Automat historian Alec Shuldiner. “The number of restaurants, the number of people served every day, the number of people employed. It was a true phenomenon of its time.”

 

Essential history and background commentary, as this film proceeds, is provided by Shuldiner, New York City historian Lisa Keller, and Marianne Hardart and Lorraine Diehl, authors of the 2002 book, The Automat: The History, Recipes and Allure of Horn & Hardart’s Masterpiece.

 

Hurwitz began work on this film in 2013, having been intrigued — while in college — by the communal nature of cafeteria food, and having discovered Shuldiner’s PhD dissertation, Trapped Behind the Automat: Technological Systems and the American Restaurant, 1902-1991. This prompted her deep, eight-year dive into the careers of Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart, who opened their first restaurant — a lunchroom with a counter and 15 stools, but no tables — in Philadelphia in December 1888.

 

The venue became a quick success because of their secret weapon: Hardart, raised in New Orleans, introduced Philadelphians to his home city’s style of coffee, blended with chicory. People couldn’t get enough of it.

 

Horn & Hardart incorporated in 1898. Four years later, inspired by Max Sielaff’s Automat Restaurants in Berlin, they opened their first U.S. Automat on June 12, 1902, in Philadelphia. The first New York Automat followed a decade later, after which this “mini-chain” exploded in number.

Ruby Sparks: Fantasy with a whimsical glow

Ruby Sparks (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity, sexual candor and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.17.12

Fresh, provocative concepts are one of cinema’s great treasures: unexpected delights — often in quiet, unassuming packages — that catch our fancy because they deserve to.

Initially, Harry (Chris Messina, right) assumes that his brother Calvin's
(Paul Dano) new girlfriend is nothing more than a figment of his
unbalanced imagination. But when Harry finally agrees to meet Ruby
(Zoe Kazan) — and realizes that she's a genuine, flesh-and-blood
woman — he's both captivated and genuinely amazed ... because he
knows that she first existed only as a character in Calvin's new novel.

They’re usually script-driven, sometimes a debut screenplay by a young actor flying beneath the radar ... but not for long. Think of Sylvester Stallone, stubbornly shepherding 1976’s Rocky to the big screen as a starring vehicle for himself. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and 1997’s Good Will Hunting. Sofia Coppola, and 2003’s Lost in Translation (not her first script, but certainly the Academy Award-winning effort that made her career). Michael Arndt, and 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine.

The latter also marked the directorial debut of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, a filmmaking team who cut their teeth on music videos and the MTV series The Cutting Edge before turning their deliciously quirky sensibilities to full-length features. They’re obviously selective, having waited six years before embarking on their sophomore effort.

And while Ruby Sparks certainly benefits from their capable guidance, this wonderfully idiosyncratic charmer will be immortalized as the film that transformed Zoe Kazan from a little-known young actress — you might remember her from supporting roles in 2008’s Revolutionary Road and 2009’s It’s Complicated — to a multi-hyphenate: star, writer and producer.

Until a few short months ago, Kazan probably was most famous simply because of her family name: She’s the granddaughter of celebrated director Elia Kazan (Gentlemen’s Agreement, On the Waterfront, East of Eden and many more), and the daughter of Academy Award-nominated screenwriters Nicholas Kazan (Reversal of Fortune and Bicentennial Man, among others) and Robin Swicord (The Jane Austen Book Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, among others).

Clearly, talent runs in the family. By the end of summer, we’ll hear the name Kazan and think of Zoe, not her parents or grandfather. And deservedly so.

Ruby Sparks is Zoe Kazan’s tart, unapologetically preposterous update of the ancient Greek Pygmalion myth, which concerned a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he created, after it came to life. George Bernard Shaw turned this concept into a 1912 play that eventually begat the acclaimed 1956 Broadway musical My Fair Lady, which has remained famous — as a film and stage production — ever since.

In Kazan’s hands, the sculptor becomes novelist Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano), a former literary wunderkind who sold his acclaimed first novel while still a teenager. But like other first-time author celebrities before him — Margaret Mitchell, J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee come to mind — the subsequent fame has proved stifling and artistically crippling. Now, a full decade later, Calvin still rides on the fame of his debut book, but he hasn’t been able to write anything new.