Boxoffice Staff

Kevin Lally (second from right) with the Film Journal International team of Andrew Sunshine, Rebecca Pahle, Bob Sunshine. Image Courtesy Film Expo Group The story of Boxoffice Pro isn't complete without mentioning Film Journal International, the cinema exhibition trade publication that was in print for 84 years before merging with Boxoffice Pro in 2019. Lally grew up in Dumont, New Jersey, where he was a stone's throw from local movie palaces—the Claridge and the Wellmont, both in Montclair, were particular favorites—an assortment of smaller cinemas, and all the brilliant theaters to be found in New York City. Trips to the movies were frequent; as he grew, he graduated from Disney (“I’d say like 50% of what I saw as a child was Disney.”) to seeing the likes of Klute, The Godfather, and Hitchcock's Frenzy with his father, whom he describes as his “movie buddy.” Going to college at Fordham University in the Bronx brought Lally closer to the city's art house scene; he jokes that he “minored in repertory cinema.” He would go to Manhattan's Elgin Theatre, his all-time favorite cinema (it now operates as a dance theater, the Joyce), for special summer screenings of Buster Keaton movies. At Radio City Music Hall, he caught Abel Gance’s Napoleon with a live orchestra. “That was the heyday of Carnegie Hall Cinema, Bauer International, founded by Lally in 1987 and run until its closure in 2003, distributed films from Wim Wenders to Werner Herzog.”