Robert Altman was just another up-and-coming Hollywood wannabe when he made his second feature That Cold Day in the Park at West Vancouver’s Panorama Film Studios back in 1968.
When it was originally released the film was a critical and financial disaster but his next movie, M*A*S*H, turned his career around. Altman then returned to West Vancouver, with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in 1970, to make the iconic Western, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, for his newly established production company Lions Gate Films.
That Cold Day in the Park, shot with B-movie/American New Wave legend László Kovács (Easy Rider, Hells Angels on Wheels, Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie, Five Easy Pieces) behind the camera, has since been reassessed as a neglected early work of a master filmmaker and will be screened at Pacific Cinémathèque this weekend in a new 35mm print as part of the UCLA Festival of Preservation.
For more on UCLA Film & Television Archive go here for an interview with UCLA film preservationist Ross Lipman http://www.nsnews.com/entertainment/pacific-cinémathèque-screens-first-films-in-shirley-clarke-restoration-project-1.367514.
