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.

RBG: Legal Jedi knight

RBG (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

I know what you’re thinking.

A documentary about an 85-year-old U.S. Supreme Court Justice? How interesting could that be?

Boy, are you in for a surprise.

During her twin careers as Columbia Law School professor and American Civil Liberties
Union general counsel, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was welcomed at the White House by
President Jimmy Carter.

Documentarians Betsy West and Julie Cohen have crafted a film that’s every bit as compelling as a political thriller, and fueled by a subject every bit as captivating as a seasoned Hollywood star. RBG is shrewdly assembled: not merely a biographical study of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but also an absorbing analysis of the degree to which her work has changed the nation in which we live.

The contrast is both droll and fascinating. In person — via clips extracted from various interviews and lectures — the diminutive Ginsburg is quiet and seemingly shy, to the point of near invisibility. You’d expect her to be the timid individual seated by herself in a distant corner, during a noisy party: the person everybody would overlook.

And yet she blossoms into a true Jedi warrior when discussing law and — perhaps more important — justice.

Her age notwithstanding, Ginsburg is indefatigable; she must be one of the lucky souls able to survive on just a few hours of sleep each night. She’s also a quiet hoot, despite the repeated insistence — from many of the individuals interviewed during the course of the film — that her husband Martin is “the funny one” (which is quite true, but still...).

West and Cohen open their film with a hilarious series of voiceover rants about Ginsburg, likely from right-wing radio commentators, who make her sound like the spawn of Satan.

We’re then eased gently into aspects of her daily routine, which include personal appearances, case prep and research, and workout sessions with trainer Bryant Johnson. (Eighty-five and lifting weights! Talk about empowerment!) Her children, Jane and James, supply tantalizing details; a session with granddaughter Clara Spera — as they page through scrapbooks — is quite endearing.

As the film progresses, West and Cohen periodically cut back to the brilliant speech Ginsburg prepared and read, during her confirmation hearings. She was nominated by President Clinton and took her seat as an Associated Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 10, 1993; all these years later, as Clinton looks back, he’s clearly still in awe of her. (Although not his first choice, he confesses that he decided to put her forward a mere 15 minutes after meeting her.)

Equally intriguing is the respect paid by political adversaries such as Orrin Hatch, who was the Republican ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the aforementioned confirmation hearings.