McQUEEN MEANS COOL!
Steve McQueen: racer, pilot, carnival barker, lumberjack, chain-gang convict, counter-cultural hero, movie star. And above all, one cool dude. Steve McQueen’s best films featured the actor as a laconic hero, tough but reluctant to use his strength, stylish, secretive, and possessing a great inner strength. The Heights presents four of his greatest films, and Quentin Tarantino’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, with its great "Steve McQueen" cameo.
THE GETAWAY
June 6, 2024, 7:30 p.m.
McQueen is D McCoy, a criminal mastermind four years into a ten-year sentence. When his wife, Carol (Ali McGraw), visits, he tells her to do what she can to get him sprung - so she agrees to get Doc to help with a half-million-dollar heist organized by corrupt businessman (and parole board member) Jack Beynon (Ben Johnson). Nothing goes as planned, the bodies fall, and Doc and Carol make a beeline for Mexico to save their skins. Director Sam Peckinpah captured the intense chemistry of real-life couple McQueen and McGraw all the while keeping the stunning brutality of Jim Thompson's source novel.
DCP - Warner Bros.
THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR
June 13, 2024, 7:30 p.m.
Thomas Crown (McQueen) is probably the coolest millionaire ever. Suave, a sportsman and man-about-town, he's also the brains behind a stunning heist that nets him and his compatriots (who never discover their leader) a sweet couple million. Enter Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway), a sharp insurance investigator hungry for the 10% commission to bring the culprits to justice. When she meets Crown, sparks fly and soon Vicki begins to question her motives. THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR was a massive hit, which, along with BULLITT that same year, cemented McQueen's status as the king of the box office.
DCP - Park Circus
THE GREAT ESCAPE
June 20, 2024, 7 p.m.
1942, behind enemy lines. A cunning group of Allied POWs have escaped from camps one too many times, and so they're rounded up and kept under lock and key by the brutal Colonel von Luger, who threatens instant death for anyone who dares try again. Does that stop them? What do you think? Despite being a star-studded ensemble picture, Steve McQueen steals the film as Captain Virgil Hilt, the irreverent American who loves motorcycles.
DCP - Park Circus
ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD in 35MM
June 27, 2024, 7 p.m.
We're bringing back this ode to late 60s Hollywood on glorious 35mm, just as it should be seen, and just to highlight Damian Lewis' brief but memorable turn as Steve McQueen. The story of Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth's (Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, whose chemistry is amazing) attempts to revive Dalton's flagging career is really an excuse to pay homage to the Southern California world that Quentin Tarantino loved, and so do we.
35mm print - Sony Pictures.
BULLITT
May 30, 2024, 7:30 p.m.
Steve McQueen was never better than in this iconic 1960s cop film that was the very definition of cool. Tasked with protecting a witness from the mob, pressured by a powerful Congressman, Bullitt (McQueen) tries to keep it all under control. But when he's double-crossed and the witness is murdered, Bullitt pretends the witness survived, and has the body kept under wraps in the hopes of flushing out the killers. McQueen produced this film and changed the lead detective from a frumpled cop into a fashionably dressed man-about-town, a jazz-loving hipster with a stunning girlfriend (Jacqueline Bisset), and whose quiet manner radiated confident masculinity. Featuring one of, if not the best, car chase scenes ever, BULLITT should be enjoyed on the big screen.
DCP - Warner Bros.
