JF by RG
From movie palace to Kingdom Hall
Here’s my much-missed pal Joseph Failla scoping out the lobby of the Stanley Theater in Jersey City, some time in the 1980s. The photo was taken by My Close Personal Friend Ron Goldberg™, clearly an accomplished photographer, and more recently the author of the terrific short story collection Next Year In Paterson. Joe and Ron were on a location scout. Along with entrepreneur Nelson Page, they were aiming to produce a low-budget motion picture, titled The Scream Palace according to Ron and Terror Behind the Screen according to Nelson. Ron would write the script, Joseph would contribute story ideas and visual treatments, and Nelson would produce. And the Stanley would be the haunted movie joint. I don’t know why I wasn’t involved, especially since I’d introduced a couple of the parties to each other, but I don’t recall being particularly out of sorts about it, so I won’t complain now. The project was ultimately unrealized, but more than half the fun of such undertakings is the dreaming anyway, especially when accompanied by Italian food. As Nelson said in conversation the other day, “Everybody in the deepest part of their soul has a horror movie in them, they really do.” I know what he means. He reminded me that the story was to be based on that of the turn-of-the-20th-century theater impresario David Belasco, to be renamed “Horvath” for the picture. (“Horvath” is really a great horror movie name, I must say.)
Joseph died in February of 2022. Nelson went on to several triumphs, including managing the Lafayette Theater in Suffern, N.Y. (featured in David Chase’s Not Fade Away; on weekends Nelson would do rep screenings, and it was a wonder to see the likes of Anatomy of a Murder and The Ten Commandments on its huge screen) and building his dream movie house in Fort Lee’s Barrymore Film Center, where we held a memorial to Joe some time after his passing. He’s now retired, and we’re planning lunch some time.
Below, the Stanley today — it was restored by the Jehovah’s Witnesses and is now a Kingdom Hall. (This development would not have pleased Joseph.) And below that, a plaque commemorating Joseph near the administrative offices of the Barrymore.
