Nostalgia Costs Five Cents and Tastes Like Pie
A documentary by a former Seattleite serves a slice of American history.
But First
Check out two new episodes of While You Were Sleeping in Hebrew School:
Zionism, BDS, and American Judaism with Paul Burstein
and
Mizrachi Women as Creators of Jewish Experience with Loolwa Khazzoom
‘The Automat’ Is a Study in Nostalgia
This week I have the pleasure of sharing an interview with Lisa Hurwitz, formerly of Seattle and now of New York, whose documentary film The Automat debuted at the Telluride Film Festival last year and is sweeping up accolades at film festivals around the country. It will screen at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival on March 27, with Hurwitz in attendance. Hurwitz spent several years working at the Seattle Jewish Community Center in the Arts+Ideas program after graduating from The Evergreen State College.
The Automat studies what was essentially America’s first fast-food chain, a stylish cafeteria restaurant where patrons popped in two nickles and pulled a meal (Salisbury steak, lemon meringue pie) out of a little window. The level of nostalgia for this bygone experience is so strong that none other than Mel Brooks stepped up to guide Hurwitz through the filmmaking process (“there are film festivals all over, but do they show this kind of thing?” he ponders aloud in one of the early scenes). He even wrote and performed a theme song for the movie.
What is it about cafeterias? I distinctly remember the magical conveyor belt of trays while going to work with my father in the late 1980s. I had never seen anything like it in efficiency and technology. And who doesn’t reflect fondly on those pale green partitioned lunch trays of public school? One of the things that stood out about the Automat, too, was its ability to cut through race and class. This wasn’t just an elegant room with a quirky way of delivering food. It was a gathering place. It was to the early 20th century what McDonald’s was to the early 1980s — the hangout place with cheap and good food, where you could come as you are. Could we be as nostalgic in 50 years for those orange floors and red trays and yellow plastic seats? And would McDonald’s have come to be without a predecessor like the Automat? Indeed, one of the original Automats was converted into a Burger King.
Alas, nostalgia can’t be imported. Automats were so beloved, numerous attempts have been made to restore them even in the last few years. But who wants the clunky original, when apps very nearly deliver our meals into our mouths for us? It’s like pining for drive-ins and monorails. Special and odd communal spaces have been largely replaced by the special and odd space of the internet.
Hurwitz’s interviews with luminaries like Colin Powell, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Carl Reiner show just how powerful the Automat is in American memory, and how it contributed to the trajectory of American history. Don’t miss it!
To start at the end, how are you feeling about your film getting such positive response?
My mind is kind of blown, because we didn't think that this was going to happen, that the film was going to be so well received and that we were going to be expanding to more theaters and that so many film festivals were going to be contacting us. It feels like everything's falling into place, and we didn't expect that to happen during Covid. Obviously like it would be way better to be doing this in non-Covid times, because the film would be doing even better. But considering that it's Covid, it's unreal.
Do you think that Covid has shaped or formed people's responses to the film?
Well, for sure, this is a very comforting, nostalgic film. And so in that sense, this is a great time for people to be experiencing it. So many people have come up to me after screenings to say, this was my first time back in the theater since before Covid, and I am so happy that it was to see your film, and they just express their appreciation and how much the film touched them. I think that coming out of Covid, it definitely changes the way that some people are viewing the film.
And how about the general response? There are the people who are nostalgic for this because they lived it, and then there's all of us who did not go to an Automat, because we were born too late or in the wrong place.
I get emails from people every day, and I meet people at screenings, and the biggest group of people that are talking to me are people who used to go there and they're just elated to be able to relive these memories. It really takes them back. It's really pleasurable for them to go on that trip back in time to decades ago, wherever they were at that point in their lives. So I'd say that's number one. And then number two is really people saying, I never knew about this, but my parents told me about it. “I'm so happy that now I get to finally understand like what they were talking about. It's like I got to be there with them.”
The New York Times review was also sort of interesting about how it sort of skirts race. This was a place where everybody was welcome, and everyone such fond memories, but there's also these other conversations that are happening now that weren't happening before 2020.
I wasn't looking to make a hard hitting film. I was looking to make a film that was going to bring people joy and kind of be a time capsule for the Automat. He wanted the film to be something that it's not, and I respect that. That's how he feels. I think a lot of people were just reading that and they were kind of like, what? It's true, this film was not Summer of Soul, and I never intended it for it to be Summer of Soul.
It's important to understand that in New York, in the Automat story, diversity meant immigrants. And in the Philadelphia side of the story, it meant racial. We talk more about women coming into the workforce and that they need a place to eat. We talk about immigrants coming to America and needing a place to eat and to work.
Going back to where I should have started, how did you come up with the idea for The Automat?
The inspiration had to do with being a student at Evergreen and eating in the Greenery, which is the school cafeteria there. I loved being there. It was such a wonderful place for me. And I began researching the history of cafeterias in the Evergreen library, and that's when I came across the Automat.
It was just really just a hobby, and I didn't have high expectations for it. It was something kind of over the course of 10 years, it was a time when I was going through college and I was living on my own for the first time. I had my first pet and had a few boyfriends. It was just this period in my life where I had the space to take something on like that. It was a period where I worked underneath other people. I wasn't in charge in those places, but the film was something of my own that I had complete control over, and it was mine. t was just a passion and there wasn't really so much pressure. It wasn't always joyful. It was difficult at times.
But what was the process like? “Okay, let me just send an email to Mel Brooks’s assistant and see what happens.” And then they say yes. Suddenly you realize that something is working, and then you have the responsibility to do it well. I could be projecting onto you, but along the way you got these incredible interviews and all these people willing to participate in this passion project. At some point were you like, wait, “I’ve got something here”?
I knew that it was an important story to tell. Sometimes other people around you are not onto to it yet. You just have a feeling about something. And I just had a premonition from the very beginning that this was something worthwhile. I always knew it was worthwhile, but as soon as I found out that Howard Schultz — it was very late in the production of the film that I learned that the Automat was a key place for Howard Schultz in his imagining of Starbucks. As soon as I knew that, that was when I was like, yep, Lisa, you are right. Because whether you like Starbucks or not, you can't deny the importance of Starbucks as one of the largest food and beverage businesses in the entire world. It's undeniable at that point that there's something interesting here. That's not one of the big reactions people have. The big one is really about people going back in time to relive their earlier years.
What are some of the standout moments from making the film?
Definitely the interviews. After they happen, it’s like, did that really just happen? I was on the phone with Mel Brooks the other day, and it's like so normal, and yet I know that it's not normal. So, one of the takeaways for me from this whole thing is just that like, anything is possible, and you just never know what's going to happen. When I interviewed Howard Schultz, he said something to me that didn't make it into the film but that really stuck with me. He said that you can't take your success for granted. You have to work at it every day. That’s a principle that he lives by. I love that.
What’s next for you?
I actually am in development on a romcom, and I'm really very excited to try this. It's totally different, but I feel like I've learned a lot about the business and my style. And I think that it's a not out of character for me to take a big leap. People are saying, Lisa, you just figured out how to make a documentary. Why don't you stick to documentary for a little while? It's like, why should I do that?
On March 27, Lisa Hurwitz will join the screening of The Automat at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival’s Sunday Brunch+Film at 11 am at AMC Pacific Place. The film will also be available for virtual screening through April 10.
This Week Last Year
Community Announcements
Check out the Seattle Jewish community calendar and the virtual calendar.
This week’s parasha is Vayikra.
Candlelighting in Seattle is at 5:51 p.m.
Get your Girl Scout cookies from the Seattle Hebrew Academy troop! They will be selling outside QFC U Village and Leschi Market this Sunday 10-12!
Shoutouts!
Mazels to the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and its Jewish Community Relations Council—staff and lay leaders for its effective advocacy in the WA legislative session just concluded—yasher koach! —Linda Clifton
I pray for the safety of Ukrainian Jews. —Stuart Kaufman
The WSJHS Welcomes our new Archivist, Marissa Hiller. She can be contacted at archivist@wsjhs.org She has much work to do but will look forward to hearing from the community to welcome her! —Lisa Kranseler
Mazal tov to Barbara Mackoff on her upcoming birthday March 17! —Jeremy Miller
Mazal tov to Pesha Kletenik on being appointed Head of School at the Manhattan Day School in New York. —Connie Kanter
Paid monthly/annual subscribers can submit unlimited shoutouts, memorials, and announcements. The editrix has the right to moderate all content. Send them to thecholentseattle@gmail.com.
Thank you, Emily. You writing makes me want to attend the screening at SJFF and make me wish I have been able to eat in an automat. We didn't have them when I was growing up in Seattle. We did have Brenner Brothers Bakery but that'll be for another Cholent column (hint, hint.)
I patronized automats often, in both New and in Philadelphia (the place of origin). In fact, when I was a college freshman in 1959., there was still an automat building on campus. I lived in New York in 1961 and 1962. The automat became a place from which we could steal trays. We would take them to Central Park, where we use use them as makeshift sleds. Great fun until I came down with pneumonia from all that exposure. Still, I wouldn't have missed it. The other memory I have of the automat is their neverending supply of nickels the cashiers had. No matter what denomination the bill you passed into that cage, you eere given exactly that amount in nickels. Wonderful memories!