"Keep Watching The Skies": The cast of "Off Beat Cinema" -- Tony "Bird" Billoni, Constance "Zelda" Caldwell and Jeffrey "Theodore" Roberts -- Buffalo, New York's long-running late show, very familiar particularly if you grew up in the Upstate New York area near the Canadian border. Set in the fictional Hungry Ear, a beatnick haven coffee house located in downtown Buffalo, the series arrived in wake of "Fright Night" and "The Cat's Pajamas," conceived by creators James Gillan and John Di Sciullo as a hip countervalance to the indundation of infomericals and syndicated repeats into the post-Eleven PM hours, once the very witching time of night, brought about by TV deregulation in the '90s. It initially aired on WKBW-TV Channel 7, shot at 7 Broadcast Plaza.
It was to be a thirteen-week experiment -- I can recall a local columnist and crumudgeon scoffing at the idea as just lame nostalgia for hipsters -- that would ultimately go strong for thirty-two years (!) and counting. The premiere episode airing on Halloween of '93 showcased "Night of The Living Dead" -- this was my first time seeing the movie, since becoming an annual showing -- setting the stage for a catalog of films running the genre spectrum of Horror, Sci-Fi, Exploitation, Art, Foreign Drama, Noir, Comedy, and Musicals. The show was a formative gateway for me, introducing me to the likes of "Plan 9 From Outer Space," "Nosferatu," "The Horror of Party Beach," "Metropolis," and "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians" as just a handful of favorite staples. The series is notable for featuring multiple hosts rather than a single emcee, previous cast members/habitués of The Hungry Ear including Eddie "Maxwell Truth" Dobosiewicz, Liz "Zeena" Honig, Matthew "Oscar Wild" Bauer, and Loraine "Luna" O'Donnell, with Nia "Spectra" Marcolini and Allie "Lana" Brady as new additions. It's one of the most distinctive and classy late shows, its snazzy aesthetic featuring hep-speak, Beat poetry, vintage fashions, jazz music (the instantly recognizable score for the show's duration comes courtesy of David Kane's Them Jazzbeards), the coffee house setting, and the black and white photography.
