Why We Celebrate Art House Theater Day…

By Ryan Hill, ArtsQuest Programming Director

Art House Theater Day – which is being celebrated nation-wide this Sunday – is not unlike Record Store Day. Both days are there to remind you that there are people who care about and enjoy certain forms of art as much as you do, and that both of those forms can and should be savored, appreciated and discussed and/or argued about with other fanatics. Just as you could count on the staff at your favorite record store to recommend a band that you don’t know you love yet, those of us who program art house cinemas hope that we’re introducing you to filmmakers, actors and genres you’ll soon obsess over.

The Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas will be taking part in AHTD for the second straight year by screening a couple one-day only films, playing some acclaimed short films and giving everyone who comes through the door special FBAC buttons!

The one-day only screenings include advance showings of LUCKY, a film that, with the recent passing of its lead actor Harry Dean Stanton, is now a tribute to his long career. It follows the spiritual journey of a 90-year-old atheist and the quirky characters (one of whom is played by David Lynch) that inhabit his off the map desert town. Lucky is an incredibly beautiful movie that has grabbed the spirit of indie cinema, refusing to let go.

We’ll be kicking off the day with REVOLTING RHYMES, based on the much-loved children’s book by Roald Dahl, which takes the classic fairy tales of Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, The Three Little Pigs, Jack & the Beanstalk and Cinderella, then mixes them together and serves them with a mischievous twist. It’s not often you can introduce your children to your favorite indie theater, but Revolting Rhymes gives you that chance.

Finally, every feature screening on Sunday (with the exception of Revolting Rhymes) will kick off with a selection from OP-DOCS, the New York Times’ Emmy-winning documentary film series. Highlighting both emerging and established filmmakers and artists, the short documentaries of OP-DOCS explore the most important issues facing our world.

Finally, I want to specifically note that Art House Theater Day was created by members of the Art House Convergence, a group of art house cinema operators that started getting together in 2008, when 25 people got together in Midway, UT, before the Sundance Film Festival, and has since exploded to having 600 exhibitors, film festivals and allied organizations attend the 2017 edition. I’ve been going since 2012, and it is hard to imagine what the FBAC programming slate would look like without the immeasurable lessons I’ve learned at each one. I’ve gone from wide-eyed attendee to panelist to host of trailer competitions while receiving nothing but support along the way, including a solid partnership with the programmers at Renew Theaters (they run the County, Ambler, Hiway, and Princeton Garden Theaters), the Bryn Mawr Film Institute and the recently-renovated Colonial Theater in Phoenixville. If you’re down their way, please take some time to see a movie at any of their beautiful theaters. If you’re on vacation, find the local art house (trust me, there is one) and take in a matinee. These are all people, like us here at ArtsQuest and the FBAC, who want to preserve cinema and the cinema-going experience in its purest form. That is what the Art House Convergence and Art House Theater Day are all about.

Join us for Art House Theater Day at the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas on Sunday, September 24!

A Stand-up Guy: An Interview with Tom Green

By Ben Youngerman, ArtsQuest Marketing Manager

You know Tom Green from his innovative, anything-goes run as the most unpredictable personality on MTV, and his unforgettable, deliciously loony roles in uproarious film comedies including Road Trip and Freddy Got Fingered. The multi-talented Canadian comedian, actor and broadcaster was a viral sensation before the dawn of social media.

Currently, in the role of a stand-up comedian, Tom Green travels the country connecting with fans and cultivating a new generation of followers.

Before he comes to the Musikfest Cafe presented by Yuengling on October 22, Green spoke with us on his way back from vacation while getting ready to hit the road on another stand-up tour!

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ArtsQuest: We’re excited to have you kick off and headline our inaugural SteelStacks Comedy Week in October! Have you been to our neck of the woods before?

Tom Green: You know what, I was in Bethlehem earlier this year. But it was Bethlehem, Palestine.

AQ: In Bethlehem, PA you’ll be playing in front of the Bethlehem Steel Blast Furnaces where they made steel for World War II, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building.

TG: That’s amazing. That sounds like a great history there. It’ll be neat to see that.

AQ: Most people know you from television and films. What is your background with stand-up comedy?

TG: I’ve basically been on tour for ten years now, pretty much full-time. I haven’t seen my home in ten years; I’ve been touring so much. I’ve been doing 300 shows a year, frankly, doing more stand-up comedy than most stand-up comedians working today.

I started doing stand-up comedy thirty years ago when I was a teenager in Canada. I wasn’t actually touring or doing stand-up while I was doing The Tom Green show on MTV so a lot of people at that time may not have known me as a stand-up comic.

But it’s going great, I’m having a blast. I’m fortunate enough to have incredible fans all around the country and all around the world who have been very supportive of my stand-up. I have sort of a cult following for certain things I did over the years like my movies Freddy Got Fingered and Road Trip and The Tom Green Show. But also I have a whole new fan base who basically know me for my stand-up now.

AQ: What do you enjoy most about stand-up?

TG: Well, just performing itself is a real adrenaline rush. It’s very active and exhilarating thing to do more so than making a television show or making a film. You know, it’s exciting and you almost literally get addicted to it.

But I certainly love seeing new places. Like I said, I was just in Bethlehem, Palestine and touring all over the U.K., Australia, Scandinavia and all over the United States and Canada. It’s great going to new places I haven’t performed before. Meeting new people in different parts of the country who have grown up watching my show and movies and are now seeing me on stage for the first time. It’s a lot of fun!

AQ: I was a fan of your MTV show when it originally aired. I recently re-watched some of your Tom Green Show field pieces on YouTube. I found them to be just as enjoyable in 2017. Was the goal to make a show that had that evergreen material?

The show was considered, I’m told, to be ahead of its time. We were doing self-contained, outrageous comedy video pranks and sketches sort of before anyone else was doing that guerilla format, homemade video. So it’s sort of worked perfectly for the YouTube generation, if you want to call it that.

I think it’s been a big factor in making my touring successful because there’s so many different things I’ve done over the years where those videos have that evergreen quality like you mentioned. They’re almost brand new again to a whole new generation of people right now. So it’s a lot of fun.

AQ: What was the creative process for The Tom Green Show? How much of it was planned in advance and how much was you improvising in the moment?

TG: I’d say if you wanted to break it down it was 50/50. We would always create a scenario or stunt or sometimes it would revolve around a costume or revolve around a concept or a location for a prank. Then I would go out and improvise within that. Other times we would go out on a road trip and just travel around America and just look for outrageous or weird things. So it was a bit of both, you know? I think the show was a mixture of what we picked up when we were on the road shooting the stuff we planned. We had writers that were back at the studio. I worked with the writers and I wrote a very large portion of the show myself. Before we went to MTV we did the show for five years and I wrote the whole show myself with a couple of my friends and edited the show myself. It was a mixture of all sorts of things.

AQ: Your Instagram feed has been a lot of fun to follow. What’s it like having a production crew in the palm of your hand, nowadays?

Yeah, you know, it’s amazing. I grew up shooting video and studied broadcasting at school. I think it’s helpful when you’re shooting video with your phone to have a little bit of understanding of filmmaking and editing and shooting. But if you have at least a limited ability you’re able to make some pretty cool movies just inside your phone.

Whenever I travel I shoot these little short films, just with my phone and edit them in my phone and post them every day. It’s pretty cool. I’ll be shooting some stuff for sure when I’m out in Pennsylvania, absolutely!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYe12Hbh1EH/?hl=en&taken-by=tomgreen

AQ: What are your thoughts on social media and the viral culture we have today?

TG: I have a love-hate relationship with social media. I talk about this in my stand-up regularly. I think there’s a lot of humor to be mined from how social media has changed our lives. I’m sort of, in many ways, addicted to it, frankly, because I use it for my touring to promote my shows and let people know when I’m in their city. I also love making videos and really like photography. So I’m on there so often.

But you see all the different pitfalls from it, frankly, just from the sheer amount of time you become consumed in your phone. It’s a cause of constant annoyance to me because I’m literally angry at myself for being on my phone so much. You just find your self addicted to, you know, let me read my comments on my Instagram page on the last video I made. I’m a 46-year-old man and I’m looking at my Instagram page like I’m a teenage girl. Frankly, it’s a little bit embarrassing.

But, you know, I’m happy that I’m 46-years-old. I’m happy that I lived the first 30 years of my life without a cell phone. The first 35 years of my life without social media. I think I have a perspective that is good. I incorporate that into my show and draw comparisons between what life was before the internet, before cell phones. It’s definitely a great source of material. I think so many people are addicted to their phones these days and addicted to their social media and updating their pages and what they’re doing. Me included. I’m just getting back from a vacation now in Costa Rica and every day I’m posting some little tidbit of information. “Look, a lizard! There’s a lizard!” It is fun but it becomes all-consuming and maybe a bit too much.

AQ: Through the years you were on a lot of late night programs. What’s your favorite late night memory that you have?

TG: I have a few favorite memories, it’s hard to pick which one stands out the most.

I’ll say I was a huge David Letterman fan. I got to guest host The Late Show with David Letterman once. I got to host Saturday Night Live. I was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, I was on there over 25 times. I feel very fortunate that I kind of lived my dream as a kid just to be a guest on Letterman and then I got to host the show and I got to host SNL. It’s been an incredible opportunity to do all of those things.

AQ: What is it about Canada that produces so many ground-breaking comedians?

My observation on it is, that as Canadians, we are different. We’re very proud to be different, you know. We don’t consider ourselves to be the same culture. There are so many parallels and things that are similar about Canadian culture. We watch a lot of the same television shows, sports, things like that. We also have many differences: we are big hockey fans, we were growing up in a very brutally cold winter environment which perhaps hardens you. It forces you to look for humor in things. I also think we have a British sensibility and a British sense of humor that is incorporated into our personalities. As well as French-Canadian sense of humor that is very silly.

Then from my own personal experience doing stand-up comedy and television and music in Canada. I was 28-years-old when I was picked up by MTV and moved to the U.S. at that point. I had been experimenting with comedy since I was 15. So for years I had actually been getting up on stage performing in Canada before anybody south of the border had even heard of anything I had done before. That’s true of all the Canadian actors and comedians you’ve heard of. They all worked in Canada before so the first time they come out and are seen in the U.S. they maybe have had a little more practice, tried a few things, experimented and failed a little bit more than people who are just starting out. So I think that’s also helpful, as well. It’s just sort of a great launching pad for so many great Canadian comedians.

We also grow up looking up to people who made it in Hollywood. I grew up watching so many Canadian people like Dan Aykroyd, Martin Short, Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Lorne Michaels and all those Canadian people in comedy who have done incredible things. You grow up as a kid seeing that and aspiring to follow in their footsteps so I think there’s a lot of that, too.

AQ: Anything else you’d like to tell the fine folks of Bethlehem before you visit for SteelStacks Comedy Week on October 22?

TG: We’re gonna have a great time! Follow my Instagram, because like I said, I’m on there all day. C’mon down to the show, we’re gonna have a fun time!

via GIPHY

Tom Green
Part of SteelStacks Comedy Week
SUNDAY, Oct. 22
8:00 pm
Musikfest Cafe presented by Yuengling

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Bands on the Big Screen! 5 Concert Films & Music Documentaries!

By Ben Youngerman, ArtsQuest Marketing Manager

Some bands and musical artists are larger than life. Lucky for you, we have two big screens at the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas to show their concerts and documentaries! You can see 5 concert documentaries about Pearl Jam, Slipknot, The Avett Brothers, David Gilmour and Black Sabbath at SteelStacks soon!

Slipknot: Day of the Gusano– 9/6 – buy tickets

Day of the Gusano documents not only a historic Knotfest Mexico City performance from Slipknot, one of the most exciting live bands on the planet, but delves deeply into the lives of the band’s fans as well. Slipknot’s fans, better known as “maggots,” are essential to the band’s legacy.

May it Last: Portrait of the Avett Brothers– 9/12 – buy tickets

Filmed with extraordinary access over more than two years, this film is a deeply intimate and revealing look at the Grammy Award-nominated North Carolina band fronted by Seth and Scott Avett. Directors Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio chart the Avett Brothers’ decade-and-a-half rise.

David Gilmour: Live at Pompeii– 9/13 & 9/17 – buy tickets

45 years after Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour filmed ‘Live At Pompeii’ in the legendary Roman Amphitheatre there, he returned for two spectacular shows. The performances were the first-ever rock concerts for an audience in the stone Roman amphitheatre, and, for two nights only, the 2,600 strong crowd stood exactly where gladiators would have fought in the first century AD.

Black Sabbath: The End of the End– 9/28 – buy tickets

The End of The End chronicles the final tour from the band who forged the sound of metal – Black Sabbath. After nearly 50 years together, the Birmingham band took to the stage for the last time in their home city, bringing down the curtain on their final tour ever.

Pearl Jam: Let’s Play Two– 10/3 – buy tickets

Let’s Play Two is a concert film that chronicles Pearl Jam’s legendary performances at Wrigley Field during the Chicago Cubs historic 2016 season. With Chicago being a hometown to Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam has forged a relationship with the city, the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field that is unparalleled in the world of sports and music.

Check out all of the upcoming special screenings at the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas!

Double the Fun! SangriaFest by the Numbers…

Cheers to summer! The popular SangriaFest returns to SteelStacks in Bethlehem Sat., July 15. Check out the 7 reasons why this year will be better than ever!

Bigger & Better: 10 Sangrias at 10 Serving Stations with 6 oz. Pours

For 2017, SangriaFest is double the fun, offering more serving stations and tasting sessions to reduce lines and increase enjoyment. Plus, each delicious recipe like Georgia Peach and the pomegranate and green tea infused Zen Sangria will be served in a 6-ounce pour, twice the size of the 2016 sample.

The wines will travel 4,700 miles just to get here

Before transforming into flavorful sangrias, the wine, which is imported by Bethlehem’s own South Italy Imports, will travel 4,700 miles from Treviso, Italy to SteelStacks.

Top it off with 100 lbs. of Fruit

Throughout the festival, you’ll find garnish stations with the perfect summer fruits to pair with your sangria. To accommodate our many guests, our kitchen staff spent hours prepping more than 100 pounds of fruit.

South Italy Imports has been bringing fine Italian products to the U.S. for 16 years

South Italy Imports has been in business for 16 years. It first supplied the restaurant industry with products imported from Southern Italy such as pizza sauce, whole peeled and chopped tomatoes, artisanal pastas and extra virgin olive oil, and in 2005, expanded by importing wines from the estate of Cantore di
Castelforte, its first vineyard.

Ovens reach 700 degrees to cook artisan flatbread

Pair your sangria sample with snacks from visiting food trucks like Fired Up Artisan Oven which serves up flatbreads topped with arugula & prosciutto, quail eggs & micro greens, roasted butternut squash & sage as well as Nutella & strawberries all cooked in a food truck oven that reaches 700 degrees. Other food trucks at the event include Sprout Stream by Sven’s Café and Dough Heads Waffles.

Play ball! Bocce dates back to 5000 B.C.

With our new Bocce ball courts, you can enjoy some R&R just as the Italians do but while Bocce as we know it today became popular in Italy in 1896, Egyptians played a form of Bocce with polished rocks as early as 5000 B.C. Other games on hand include beanbags and quoits.

Upgrade to VIP for 8 Exclusive Cocktails & Tasty Treats

With VIP Access Tickets, which are available in limited quantities, you can get early access to the event and the opportunity to sample handcrafted sangria cocktails designed by mixologists from 8 popular Lehigh Valley restaurants like Tapas on Main, The Brick, Edge, White Orchid, The Bayou and Historic Hotel Bethlehem. Enjoy complimentary snacks including Cheesesteak Spring Rolls, Retro Dogs, Mac and Cheese Bites, Fried Mozzarella, and Mini Pierogies. All VIP ticketholders also receive an official SangriaFest lanyard, SangriaFest sunglasses and have the opportunity to vote for their favorite drink as the “Best Sangria of SangriaFest 2017.”

SangriaFest
VIP: noon-1 p.m. & 5-6 p.m.
General Admission: 1-4 p.m. & 6-9 p.m.
SteelStacks

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Defending Champ Surf and Turf Truck Returns to SteelStacks for 2017 Food Truck Border Brawl

By Emily Cummins, Public Relations Coordinator

Named one of the best food trucks in the nation by The Daily Meal, one of the best food trucks to have at your wedding by NJ Bride and “Best Overall Food Truck” at the inaugural Food Truck Border Brawl at SteelStacks, Surf and Turf Truck of Hamilton, N.J. is popular to say the least.

Serving up lobster, steak and veggies rolls, as well as sides like Parmesan truffle fries and breakfast sandwiches with pork roll, its menu runs the gamut of flavor including every combination from hot and cold to sweet and spicy.

The truck was started by Cindy Matas and brother-in-law Adam Browne in 2012, and just five years later, the family business has expanded to a second truck in Tampa, Fla. and several “brick and mortar” establishments led by Matas’s fiancé Mike Barlettano including the new The Surf and Turf Market in Philadelphia.

“It’s a full service seafood market, with 100% fresh seafood that I handpick and cut every morning, and we plan to open two more locations in 2018,” says Barlettano, who’s also a licensed U.S. Coast Guard Captain and charter boat operator.

While the truck is mainly booked for private catering like weddings and parties, Barlettano says they do participate in select festivals.
“I love the Food Truck Border Brawl,” says Barlettano. “Our truck straddles Pennsylvania and New Jersey all the time, so we have the pleasure to know most of the trucks from both areas, but it’s a great way for some of the north Jersey trucks to get to know the PA trucks and vice versa. There’s nothing wrong with a little competition, and in the end it gives the customers an even better experience.”

Defending its title at the 2017 Food Truck Border Brawl, Surf and Turf Truck will face 19 dynamic mobile eateries from the Keystone and Garden states who will serve up delicious eats including Wisconsin fried cheese curds, sweet and savory empanadas, gourmet cupcakes and Korean fusion like dumpling bowls and kimchi fries.

In 2016, more than 6,000 people turned out for the Food Truck Border Brawl, and Barlettano says the crowd devoured more than 800 rolls in addition to countless orders of firecracker shrimp tacos and the triple-decker lobster grilled cheese.

Prepping that much food in a short amount of time is stressful on any chef, but inside the truck, the heat is on.

“Our truck is a very intimate experience to say the least! Everyone better like each other because it’s very close quarters,” Barlettano says. “But it makes you work more efficiently, and adapt to the limited amount of space. One thing we do have on our truck is a lot of refrigeration, so we are able to keep our product as fresh as possible.”

His personal favorite on the menu? The BLT lobster roll.

“Who doesn’t love buttery lobster with bacon and truffle oil,” he says. “We believe in simple combinations that play off each other well.”

For those interested in testing their skills at home, Surf and Turf Truck offers an easy recipe for its Signature Warm lobster roll.
“Get some fresh lobster, heat it in some butter, and steam some kale in citrus water. Put the kale and lobster on a toasted bun of your choice, and top with fresh chopped mango and jalapeno,” Barlettano says.

Or do the next best thing, and get a fresh lobster roll in person when Surf and Turf Truck returns for the Food Truck Border Brawl, presented by Provident Bank, June 10 at SteelStacks.

Food Truck Border Brawl
Saturday, June 10
Noon-3 p.m. & 5-8 p.m.
PNC Plaza
presented by Provident Bank

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