Cult Films and Craft Cocktails with Boondocks

In the film “Pat and Mike,” Spencer Tracy famously if coarsely praised co-star Katharine Hepburn’s figure, saying, “There isn’t much meat on her but what’s there is cherce” (cherce being a colloquial pronunciation of “choice”).

Similarly, there aren’t a lot of listings on the Boondocks Film Society schedule for this summer, but what’s there … is choice.

Boondocks is a cult film screening/event programming enterprise run by Cornwall, Conn., residents Jeff Palfini and Cindy Heslin.

Events are scheduled about once every month. They center around a cult film classic, which is screened at a venue that is usually offbeat and/or unexpected. Usually there is some kind of food or cocktail element to the evening. Often there is some other form of entertainment, sometimes musical.

As the explainer on the Boondocks website says, “We’re talking full-fledged events, not just nights out at the movies.”

It goes without saying that COVID-19 messed with the past year’s schedule. But there have already been three 2021 screenings (“On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” “Empire Records” and “Serial Mom”).

Coming up on Wednesday, June 23, at 7 p.m., the featured film will be “Ghost World,” which is a favorite in my household — and which, like “Empire Records,” stars a young actress who will soon go from indy star to Hollywood Sensation (Renee Zellweger in “Empire Records” and, in “Ghost World,” the young Scarlett Johansson).

But the big draw, for my daughter at least, is star Thora Birch’s love interest in the film, the actor Steve Buscemi, playing yet another seedy but kindhearted loser (his specialty). Birch’s character and Buscemi meet at a tag sale, where Buscemi is selling vintage vinyl records. Romance and complications ensue.

The screening of “Ghost World” will begin at dusk, at an outdoor art park called Turnpark Art Space in West Stockbridge, Mass. Until the film begins, DJ MAC will spin old records (78 RPM, so in fact quite old).

The food will be provided by SOMA catering. At the pre-film happy hour there will be themed craft cocktails made with Bully Boy spirits and craft beer from  Collective Arts Brewing. Tickets are $16.

 The other film on this summer’s Boondocks schedule is Sam Shepard’s “Paris, Texas,” directed by Wim Wenders, and starring Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell and the very beautiful young Nastassja Kinski, who was possibly one of the most famous starlets in the world at that time.

This very indy film made from Shepard’s play will be shown in a fairly conventional venue: the drive-in theater at Four Brothers in Amenia, N.Y. 

The evening begins on Thursday, July 15, at 7 p.m. (there will be live music with William Lawrence) and the screening begins at dusk. 

For anyone who has not yet been to the drive-in, it is enormous fun and there is usually a great deal of car-to-car socializing before the screenings begin. The ticket price had not been set when this issue went to press, but it’s likely to be between $15 and $20.

For more details on these Boondocks events, and on future evenings out, go to www.boondocksfilmsociety.org.