Last night, just a couple dozen people braved the rain and cold to help kick off the first Greenpoint Film Festival with the premiere of Jonas Mekas’s new documentary, “My Mars Bar Movie.” The film, which Mr. Mekas, 88, said he had recorded during trips to Mars Bar over the course of fifteen years at Anthology Film Archives across the street, begins with a close-up of the archivist and filmmaker’s first name carved in the bar, followed by admiring shots of an insect-ridden fly strip and then the first of countless clinking tequila glasses.
Throughout the documentary, Mr. Mekas’s camera darts frenetically – almost kaleidoscopically – from the graffiti on the walls to the ceiling fan to the pinball machine to a cigarette perched in an ashtray (later in the movie, after years have passed, bar-goers complain about having to smoke outside), stopping only occasionally to concentrate on the stoney-eyed female bartenders and the international array of fellow filmmakers and artists that serve as Mr. Mekas’s drinking companions.
In an early scene, Giuseppe Zevola, a friend from Napoli who is described on Mr. Mekas’s Website as a “lover of life and wine and beautiful women,” recites in Italian a passage by Roman heretic Giordano Bruno while Mr. Mekas’s son looks on (upstairs neighbor John Vaccaro also makes a cameo). If that sounds dull, rest assured it’s not long before a burly, tattooed regular is standing on the bar, dropping his trousers in a show of full frontal (mid-afternoon) nudity. “We’ve already seen it,” drawls the unfazed bartender. “It hasn’t changed. It’s the same damn weenie.” (In another scene, a bartender half?-jokes, “Everybody get naked, let’s go! Well, Jonas, please keep your clothes on.”)
Surprisingly, there aren’t many scenes showing the dive in full chaotic swing. Though Mr. Mekas does a fine job of evoking the many moods of the bar from day to night (“Ah! The lazy summers of Mars Bar!” reads one title card), disorder, when it comes, is usually glimpsed outside. In one scene, through the window, we see Second Avenue roped off with police tape while a crowd watches fire trucks at work. Instead of investigating or explaining, Mr. Mekas marvels about how at Mars Bar, you can “have a drink and forget about the busyness of the city.” In another scene, he spots an apparent subway fire at the end of the block, only to stroll into the bar. He’s amused that no one knows what’s going on, or cares to find out.
Throughout the film, Mr. Mekas says very little, though he does share an anecdote about how he paid $14.95 per month in rent when he moved to Orchard Street in 1953, and then moved out a few years later when the landlord had the nerve to up the rent to $19. Mostly, this film lets the chatter of the barflies, the clinking of glasses and the blare of the jukebox speak for itself, and the result is a portrait of a warm, embryonic place that, in Mr. Mekas’s words, “is always there, and you can come to it and go and leave it and come back to it. You can always return to it – it’s never really closed.” Which adds a particular sorrow to the final scene, of the shuttered bar shot from across the street on a dreary, rainy day, its facade reading “Thanks for the memories.”
After the screening, The Local spoke to Mr. Mekas about the film.
When did you start coming to Mars Bar?
I bought Anthology’s building from the city in ’79. You saw the guy in the corner always sitting there [in the movie], the owner. He said he opened in 1982. We were already doing construction work. We opened to the public in ’89. We were over there – it was our bar. So the footage goes back 15 years or so.
How often did you go?
In the film, it looks like we were always there [laughs]. But at least once a week we were there, just to interrupt our work for a drink or two. Because we always had visitors from other countries – filmmakers, etc. We made this tradition – to say goodbye, we’d go there and have tequila.
Who were some of the characters in the film?
Some worked at Anthology, and there were some musicians, some local regulars that were always there almost every day. And visitors from Italy, Japan, Russia. There is a really wide variety.
What did you like so much about the place?
It was very unique. There was not, and there still is not, a bar like that downtown – maybe somewhere in Brooklyn, but I don’t know where. It was like something left over from ’60s, ’50s. It came into existence later, but it had this quality… It seldom had electricity and it was real messy and the people were, you know… and the jukebox. It was like no other bar. [The owner] is planning to open it somewhere else, but I don’t think it’s possible to recreate. Even the waitresses that served there – each one was a character. It was messy and anything-goes. It just so happens that I like places like that. I don’t like clean places. So that’s why we adopted it.
When did you stop going there? The footage seems to drop off at a certain point in time.
I began phasing myself out from Anthology about seven or eight years ago, because I had a very knowledgeable staff and I decided that after giving 50 years of my life to promoting the work of others I would now concentrate on my own work. I’m still a part of things at Anthology, but only when it’s really needed. Now I’m mostly doing my own work. I’ve moved to Brooklyn now and don’t have to go everyday. I used to live in Soho, so I was very close. I go there once or twice a week for this and that.
How did you feel when you found out Mars Bar was closing? Have you found a replacement for it?
It was sad because, okay, there is a restaurant, Lucien, that was and still is another place where we can go with visiting filmmakers from other countries and drink and eat. Mars Bar was only drinks, and very cheap – not the best quality. So there’s a little emptiness. We don’t know where else now… There is Dempsey’s [laughs]… Actually, maybe there is a little Russian place [Anyway Cafe], but it’s not the same.
As you were filming, did you know you would use this footage for a movie?
No, no. I keep filming everywhere I go. It’s the same with Andy Warhol: I kept taping and then when Andy died and Beaubourg Pompidou was organizing the first big show, they asked, “Do you have some footage? Could you show some of it?” I said, “Why not?”, which gave me occasion to collect all the footage I had of Andy and make a little film. So it’s always been when some real occasion arises. So now Mars is gone – I have all that footage, why not share it with others?
“My Mars Bar Movie” will be shown again on Saturday, Oct. 29 at the Greenpoint Film Festival. A q&a with Mr. Mekas will follow.
