The Guy Can’t Help It



The screening room: Murray in his 7th and South home.

Ray Murray turned a failing rep house into a home video empire and the city’s sexiest film festival — by doing exactly what he wants.

by Sam Adams

part 1 | part 2

If it weren’t for the Supreme Court, Ray Murray could probably find work as a Cub Scout Leader — as long as the interview process isn’t too thorough. The president and CEO of TLA Video, Inc. and executive director of the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (opening its sixth season this week), Murray is a clean-cut, affable type who usually looks like he’s about to bust into a wide-mouthed grin. Compared to recently departed Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema Director Phyllis Kaufman, who handled the press with a lawyer’s reserve and often seemed hesitant to say anything which might be misconstrued by anyone, anywhere, Murray is unguarded, almost off-the-cuff. At times, it seems, he’s almost helpless not to talk, even when he knows he’d be better off keeping mum. "I probably shouldn’t say this," he’ll hesitate, "but…"

Of course, Murray will never get to help Troop 75 earn their merit badge in knot-tying, because he’s gay, and the Supreme Court recently ruled in support of the Boy Scouts’ excluding homosexuals. But even if Murray, 45, had a wife and 2.6 kids, the BSA might still balk at leaving America’s youth in his hands. This year’s Gay and Lesbian Film Fest, programmed solely by Murray, contains films about a relationship between a 29-year-old and a 15-year-old (both Eban and Charley and Queer as Folk), a pair of teenagers who conspire to murder a classmate and are then held hostage by a sadistic hermit (Criminal Lovers), serial killers (Psycho Beach Party, No One Sleeps), vampires (Vampire Lovers, The Lost Boys), werewolves (The Wolves of Kromer) and the usual smattering of borderline (and not-so-borderline) porn (Sex Becomes Her: The True Life Story of Chi Chi LaRue, Hard Love/How to Fuck in High Heels). Even in the non-mainstream world of gay/lesbian film festival programming, this is strong stuff; while many gay and lesbian film festivals select films by committee, and are often accused of rejecting films that might be controversial or simply not "gay enough," Murray deliberately seeks out films that challenge the audience’s notions of what is and isn’t "gay film."

But then, pleasing an audience isn’t Ray Murray’s first concern. Unlike the vast majority of reputable film festivals, PIGLFF is not incorporated as a nonprofit; last year, with attendance jumping from 17,000 to over 23,000, the festival turned a profit of $12,000, according to Festival Managing Director Thom Cardwell. (That against an overall budget of $175,000.) But that small windfall aside, Murray’s crowd-oriented programming choices mostly seem like a way of bankrolling the obscure, unpopular movies he really wants to see. His commercial instincts have been honed by years of programming repertory film at the old TLA and running the chain of TLA video stores, but when it comes to the Festival, his programming is sometimes less commercial than similar festivals’. Last year, French director François Ozon’s Sitcom — a pitch-black satire which features a household patriarch turned into a giant rat — drew unimpressive crowds to its four screenings; this year, the festival features not one but two Ozon films: Criminal Lovers and Water Drops on Burning Rocks. From a money-making standpoint, it’s not a decision that makes a lot of sense, but the reasons behind the programming choice are simple: Ray Murray loves François Ozon. "What can I say?" he says, a smile spreading across his face. "I like that dark, twisted stuff."



	A Ray and his dog: Murray and Star in TLA’s offices.

It may come as a surprise to learn that Murray — a man who’s devoted nearly three decades to the pursuit of all things filmic — didn’t start out wanting to be a film geek. In 1972, Murray, who was still in high school, moved out of his parents’ house in the Northeast and quickly found a job — projectionist — and temporary lodging at the Theatre of the Living Arts, then showing repertory film under the management of Al Malmfelt. But it wasn’t the eclectic mixture of classic Hollywood, highbrow imports and the burgeoning American independent scene that drew Murray to South Street. The reason, he recalls, was much simpler.

"I wanted to be a hippie."

"It was like the last gasp of hippiedom," he reminisces, taking a break from the festival’s hectic activities at a pub around the corner from TLA’s Second and Market offices. "I was a Catholic schoolboy from the Northeast. The TLA back then was so different — people were living in the dressing rooms. It had an amazing atmosphere."

Murray soon found that the days of patchouli and Jefferson Airplane were on their way out, but the TLA’s programming opened up new horizons all the same. "I wanted to be a hippie, and it was already past," he says. "But when I started seeing the films, I’d never seen anything like them. The most adventurous film I’d seen up to then was The French Connection. Then to see all these art movies; it stuck with me. It was a pretty wild place back then."

At the same time, Murray took the opportunity to come out, though he also dated women during his years at Temple. "I had bad experiences," he recalls, his voice dropping to a murmur, "so I started seeing women, just for a couple of years in college. Those were better relationships but not as fulfilling."

That confusing time, though, led to one of Murray’s most lasting relationships. Introduced by mutual friends, Murray met Claire Brown (now Claire Brown Kohler) at the TLA in 1977, and they dated for several months. "I thought he was great," Kohler recalls. "He had this whole mystique of working in the projection booth, in there with the machinery, and he knew a lot about movies. He had this savoir-faire about him."

The romance, of course, didn’t last, but the partnership did: Four years later, she and Murray, who’d since become the theater’s manager, headed a group which purchased the theater from its former landlord and incorporated themselves as Repertory Cinema, Inc. Shortly thereafter, they purchased the Roxy as well.

"In many ways, this [partnership] is like a marriage," explains Kohler, now TLA Video, Inc.’s Personnel Director and COO, and the Festival’s co-Volunteer Coordinator. "It still has that kind of basis — mutual respect. Ray is one of the most fair people in the whole world. He always looks at both sides of the issue. Sure, there are times when he’s dictatorial, but that’s true of any leader." (Recently, video store employees were surprised by a sudden decision requiring them to wear name tags, caused, Murray says, by an irate customer who was denied an employee’s name.)

By the early ’80s, the writing was already on the wall for repertory film. In 1985, the partners opened a video store next door to the TLA — the Inquirer’s headline read "TLA Opens Its Doors to the Enemy: Cassettes" — and just over a year later they put the TLA site up for sale. (They held onto the smaller, less valuable Roxy until 1990.) Repertory cinema wasn’t dead, but it was dying, and as Kohler said then, "Rather than be one of the last to go, we’re going out at this point when we can still hold our heads up high."

If there’s a lesson here, it’s that the TLA gang — a core group of partners who Kohler points out just celebrated their 19th anniversary together — respects the past but knows when to cut its losses. As the last few years have seen the home video market near saturation and large chains grow ever more aggressive in pursuit of the rental dollar, TLA is already looking to the future. Their online and mail-order business has grown from 5 percent of the chain’s revenue several years ago to a whopping 50 percent this year, and Kohler estimates next year’s take at 60-70 percent. And, she elaborates, "Almost all of that is gay and lesbian."

A walk through TLA’s new offices reveals how much the company has grown. Where their old space near TLA’s Locust Street store had the air of a warehouse only partly converted into office space — traveling from one room to another involved navigating a precarious chasm between towering shelves of boxes festooned with barely clothed, ab-sculpted men — TLA’s new space is ever-so-slightly upscale, a sign of their growth into a $6.7 million business. (Kohler projects an income over $10 million for 2000.) In Murray’s roomy, sunlit office, a gorgeous silver-toned poster of Peter Lorre in M hangs directly over his desk — a piece of cinema history, yes, but it also means Murray spends his days under the watchful eye of a tormented madman.

TLA’s booming Internet business is only the next step, Murray believes. With the demand for streaming Internet video, he predicts that instead of renting out tapes the company will be selling downloads. In February, he explained TLA’s decision not to build a new store near the University of Pennsylvania campus by telling the Daily Pennsylvanian, "I think video stores in 10 years won’t exist." Now, he says even 10 years is too pessimistic an estimate. "I don’t know how long it will take," he says, "but definitely not that long."

In fact, Murray says, he no longer has anything at all to do with TLA’s video stores, which are now run by Kohler and Murray’s brother Patrick. "Three months of my year is the Festival," Ray explains, "and the rest is the Internet."

part 1 | part 2