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Sunday Matinee: Under the Roller Coaster (2005)

Posted in film, video, tagged Coney Island, documentary, film, Fred Moran, Freddy Moran, house under the roller coaster, Lila Place, Mae Timpano, Thunderbolt, Under the Roller Coaster on February 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The house under the roller coaster in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” was the real life home for 40 years of Mae Timpano, who shares vivid memories of good times and sad in this 2005 documentary by Lila Place. “If the wind was blowing towards the house, I heard everything going on in Coney Island,” says Timpano in the film. For most of those years under the Thunderbolt, her companion was Freddy Moran, who owned and operated the famed coaster built by his father over the Kensington Hotel in 1925. She recalls the two of them going for swims to the end of Steeplechase Pier at 2AM after she got off work as a waitress.

“Mae’s story is a window onto a lost world and makes us think about the importance of place in a new way,” says the film-maker. In addition to Timpano’s candid reminiscences, the 16-minute documentary includes interviews with family, friends and historians as well as old news clips. Moran tells a TV reporter asking about changes in Coney Island: “Roller coasters are a very, very stable element of the amusement business and I don’t see any way they’re going to be replaced by anything else and give the same feeling.” But after Moran died in 1982, the coaster closed and would never reopen.

Timpano was a spirited survivor who lived alone in the house for several more years. “I got used to the quietness,” she says, just as she had gotten used to the clatter of the roller coaster passing overhead and finding wigs and dentures lost by riders in her backyard. Horace Bullard, who bought the Thunderbolt and other properties with the dream of rebuilding Steeplechase Park, once said of Timpano: “She’s Miss Coney Island. When you get close to her, you get sort of the feeling of what Coney Island used to be like.”

Timpano, who died five years ago, outlived the coaster and her former home, which were controversially and illegally demolished in 2000 on the orders of Mayor Giuliani.

“Under the Roller Coaster” won a number of awards including Best Made in Coney Island Film at the Coney Island Film Festival (2005) and Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Short at Slamdance (2006).

Sunday Matinee: Super 8 Movie of Coney Island in 1970

Posted in video, tagged 1970, Astroland, Astrotower, Coney Island, Playland Arcade, Super 8, Wonder Wheel on February 2, 2014| 1 Comment »

In 1970, a German tourist on his first trip to New York shot this Super 8 film in Coney Island. It offers a tantalizing glimpse of the Bowery’s original arcade architecture, since destroyed by fires, and the Playland Arcade on the Boardwalk, where Nathan’s is now. You’ll also see Astroland’s Skyride and Astrotower as well as Ward’s Fairyland Park-now Deno’s Kiddie Park. Only the Wonder Wheel, which is emblazoned with a banner saying “Our 50th Year,” and the Cyclone roller coaster, look the same today. Just wish the film was longer!

Video of the Day: Philomena Marano’s “Take Me There”

Posted in art, video, tagged animation, Bensonhurst, Coney Island, cut paper collage, Philomena Marano, subway on December 20, 2013| 2 Comments »

ATZ has featured Philomena Marano’s artwork in the past, but missed seeing this delightful cut-paper animation “Take Me There” (2011) until she posted it on Facebook as a holiday greeting. The short film was produced by Mary Nittolo of The Studio and features music by Carol Lipnik. Marano, whose cut-paper collages and prints celebrate Coney Island’s rides, games and signage, recently moved back to the South Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst, where she grew up. Childhood train rides to Coney Island inspired the piece, the artist says…

Growing up, I can’t remember ever NOT going to Coney Island. It seemed like we took that elevated train to the beach every day. We’d board the train at the 79th Street station (at that time, early on it was known as the “West End” or “T” line, later it became the B and is now the D), We were just 6 stops away from Stillwell Avenue. The ride seemed so short that in my young mind I imagined that the elevated train was an extension of the roller coaster! One and the same. I lived 1 1/2 blocks from the elevated line and even when we weren’t riding, the rumbling overhead was still the roller coaster, high above New Utrecht Avenue.

Marano’s prints are for sale at Coney Island USA and Tabla Rasa Gallery in Brooklyn and Smart Clothes Gallery and City Lore in Manhattan. Pendants featuring images from the artist’s Coney Island series are available online via her Philo-mania store.