Documentary waxes nostalgic about iconic Automat restaurant chain


Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Ruth Bader Ginsburg sing praises of New York’s former Automat

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As a child, I could never understand why my mother used to rhapsodize about the Automat, a kind of self-service cafeteria in New York.

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To me, feeding coins into a slot to unlock food displayed behind a window evokes visions of thick vending machine coffee or stale Danishes in cellophane.

But for my mom, who spent several years raising four small children more than an hour outside of Manhattan, where my father worked, the Automat represented a rare day off, when she could visit the art museum and eat a meal she hadn’t cooked herself.

“It was a New York thing,” she said, recalling how she’d imagine herself as an aspiring writer living in the Big Apple as she sat in the bustling restaurant.

Turns out Mom isn’t the only person with fond memories of the Automat.

Colin Powell holds a picture of himself at the Automat circa 1943.
Colin Powell holds a picture of himself at the Automat circa 1943. Photo by Courtesy A Slice of Pie Producti

Comic genius Mel Brooks, late actor Carl Reiner, late United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and late US Secretary of State Colin Powell are among the luminaries who sing the praises of the former Horn & Hardart restaurant chain in the documentary The Automat, screening Monday at 7 pm at Cinéma du Parc.

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Brooks, 95, even penned and performs a theme song for the film, “At the Automat.”

What is it about the former restaurant chain, founded in Philadelphia in 1902, that moves former customers to lyrical heights?

“This was such an egalitarian place,” said filmmaker Lisa Hurwitz in an interview from New York.

The Automat director Lisa Hurwitz.
The Automat director Lisa Hurwitz. Photo by Kristina Bumphrey /StarPix

“It was part of the fabric of daily life in New York and Philadelphia,” added Hurwitz, who will be in Montreal to take part in a Q & A with the audience following Monday’s screening.

Inspired by mechanized restaurants in Germany, Horn & Hardart, which boasted art deco interiors with marble counters, grew to become the largest restaurant chain in the US in its heyday, even though it only operated in those two cities.

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For a nickel in the 1950s, you could get an excellent cup of coffee from a spout shaped like a dolphin.

A few more coins produced hot dishes from Salisbury steak to mac and cheese.

Invisible attendants kept the wall of brass-and-glass compartments stocked with piping hot plates of food.

At 32, Hurwitz is too young to have dined at the Automat, whose last restaurant closed in 1991. The first-time filmmaker hatched the project as a university student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where the cafeteria became her second home.

“That got me thinking about cafeterias,” said Hurwitz, who researched the topic in the library, where she came across a PhD dissertation on Horn & Hardart by technology historian Alec Shuldiner, who appears in the film and is a co-producer.

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While working as a projectionist and film festival director at a local historic movie theatre, Hurwitz met Jaws screenwriter Carl Gottlieb.

Gottlieb later spotted Hurwitz’s Kickstarter campaign for the documentary and contacted her to say the Automat had been an important place for him.

“I’m having dinner with my friend Mel Brooks tonight,” he told her. “Do you mind if I tell him about your project?”

Mel Brooks drinks coffee at the Automat in the early 1950s.
Mel Brooks drinks coffee at the Automat in the early 1950s. Photo by Carl Reiner /Courtesy A Slice of Pie Productions

“I got so lucky that I loved the Automat,” Hurwitz said of Brooks, creator of funny movies including The Producers and Blazing Saddles.

Starbucks shaped founder Howard Schultz, a Brooklyn native, explains in the movie how the iconic restaurant his business vision.

Ginsburg and Powell shared their love of the Automat after Hurwitz contacted them by letter in the hope they’d remember it.

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She was not expecting the wave of critical acclaim that has greeted The Automat, which garnered a 98-per-cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.5 out of 10 on IMDB and 3½ stars on RogerEbert.com.

“The delight of ‘The Automat’ … is its blend of social and intellectual history with its anecdotal history … its depiction of a largely lost aesthetic of daily life,” the New Yorker wrote.

“I was just hoping to play film festivals,” she said of the film, which in addition to Monday’s screening will be shown at Cinéma du Parc starting Friday.

AT A GLANCE: The Automat will screen Monday at 7 pm at Cinéma du Parc, 3575 Parc Ave. A Q&A will follow. It will also screen starting Friday. For information and tickets, visit cinemaduparc.com or call 514-281-1900.

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