During the 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival, our Reel Impact Silent Auction included four opportunities to be a programmer for a day. First winner up? Catherine Reeves, who chose the films Chinatown and The Decline of Western Civilization. Read the interview below to get to know Catherine and why she selected these two films!

What’s your name?
Catherine Reeves

Tell us something fun about yourself?
I was commissioned by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Big Science (IASBS) to create an Equinational Map Projection which depicts each country as a square of the same size.

What’s your relationship with Milwaukee Film?
I saw my first Milwaukee Film Festival screening at the 3rd festival and have been a member for over a decade.

What’s your favorite thing about being a Milwaukee Film Member?
It’s super hard to pick just one thing because it’s all the pieces that come together to help maintain and build film culture in Milwaukee. The one I most often plug to potential new members is the monthly Members-Only Screening because it is a unique benefit that hits on so many of the key elements of Milwaukee Film: the opportunity to see something unexpected, community, film as an event, etc.

What movies did you pick?
Chinatown (1974) and The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)

When did you first see these movies?
I first saw Chinatown when I was in elementary school in the late 1970s. It was on broadcast TV with commercials and the TV set was probably 25 inches. My dad was excited to see it so I sat down and, despite the terrible viewing conditions, I was sucked in immediately and sat in stunned silence through the end of the credits.

I missed The Decline of Western Civilization when it played for four days at The New Loft (the local repertoire theater in Tucson) in 1982, but my sister told me about it in great detail and we had the poster hanging on the wall of our kitchen for years. After seeing the band X live, the movie was on my ”must see” list for a few years until I found it on VHS. I eventually obtained a bootleg copy after it was out of print.

A photo of the front and back side of the New Loft cinema "Now Showing" poster Catherine mentioned in her interview.

Who are your favorite actors in your selected movies and why?
One of the things I love best about Chinatown is that it is a fully realized world filled with so many amazing characters that only have one or two scenes but live on in my mind because they each appear to have a full backstory (e.g., Perry Lopez [Escobar], James Hong [butler], Burt Young [Curly], Fritzi Burrr [secretary], Allan Warnic [clerk], etc.) but Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway are inescapably the center of the film and their performances are both stunning. Both are able to quickly flip between calm, cool and in charge, and achingly vulnerable. And of course John Houston’s portrayal of Evelyn’s father is haunting.

The Decline… only has actors in as much as the fans and performers put on a show for the camera while also letting Spheeris into their lives. I personally love the home interviews with Exene and John Doe.

In ten words or less, tell us why we HAVE to see these movies!
CHINATOWN: “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown”

Nicholson/Dunnaway smoldering neo-noir set in 1937 LA
(You can leave out the first names and shorten LA to make it under 10 :))

THE DECLINE…
“Spheeris presents: Fear, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Germs, and X.”

Dive into the LA punk rock scene that reshaped underground music

Now expand on that: Why did you make these your Programmer for a Day picks?
I grew up spending part of every summer in LA and loved the idea of a Los Angeles double feature that explored two such divergent pictures of the city: a romanticized, languid, historic depiction of its seedy underbelly and water politics contrasted with an in-your-face, at-the-time current-day, frenetic documentary of a hyper-local music scene.

Chinatown is in my top three films and is soooo beautiful, with such amazing cinematography but I’ve never had the chance to see it on the big screen so it’s my dream pick. I can’t wait to see what additional details pop when seeing it in the theater.

The Decline of Western Civilization is my favorite music documentary (and I just discovered it’s #6 on Rolling Stone’s “70 greatest” list). The Punk Rock label was stuck on music coming out of a number of geographically distinct cities, each originating in their unique local culture while incorporating/interpreting information shared via underground networks, fanzines and local record stores. This film captured some of the key LA bands and the DIY local scene while it was still a small community playing a handful of clubs and releasing their music on independent labels. When it came out it helped provide connective tissue to like-minded people in similar but different scenes across the country. Now, it captures a unique moment in time in amber.

Any words of wisdom you’d like to impart?
I didn’t try to summarize all the historic significance and critical acclaim of Chinatown (Academy Award nominations, Robert Towne, Robert Evans, the last-minute replacement score that kinda makes the film).  There are a couple podcasts that would make good recommended listening:

  1. What Went Wrong: Chinatown (with Paul Scheer) for a look at the behind-the-scenes stories
  2. Unspooled: Chinatown with guest Hadley Meares (Series that initially covered the AFI top 100)

Join Programmer for a Day Catherine and friends at the Oriental Theatre on Saturday, September 12 at 2:45 PM to see Chinatown. Then, come back to the Oriental Theatre later that day to see The Decline of Western Civilization at 6 PM. Tickets to both films are on sale now!