When you've got Netflix streaming or Apple TV, it's easy to forget that going to a movie used to be an actual event. But at the Castro Theatre, the lost art of live cinema music is still going strong thanks to organist David Hegarty, who's been playing intermissions there for the past 33 years. And he'll continue to do so tonight at a free screening of '60s classic Elmer Gantry as part of Turner Classic Movies Road to Hollywood Road Tour (which culminates later this month at the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood).
NBC Bay Area did a great video piece on Hegarty, who's convinced he still has "the best job in the world." Watch him play bits from Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, A Place in the Sun and Cinema Paradiso on The Castro's Wurlitzer organ, a real pipe organ from the 20s, where the music-making is strictly mechanical (meaning no speakers) and the music comes out of pipes.
Go see him live tonight at the free 7:30 screening, and check the Castro's schedule for future performances.
