At the heart of a nine-week film series celebrating the birthday of acclaimed filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is a 500-year-old Bolivian spirit with one wild origin story.
“A Man Under the Influence” has been running since Feb. 18 and features films hand-picked by Soderbergh to and screening at Nitehawk Cinema — alternating between their Williamsburg or Prospect Park locations. Each Wednesday, the popular Brooklyn theater screens a movie from a different decade, starting all the way back in the 1930s.
The “mind-altering” movies include an all-time favorite of Soderbergh’s — “Jaws” — as well as “Do the Right Thing,” “Trouble in Paradise,” “Fargo,” and more.
It’s a celebration of the director’s 63rd birthday, so naturally every screening is paired with a specialty cocktail cooked up by a different New York City bar that includes his favorite spirit: singani.
Poster for a screening of “Fargo” on Wednesday, April 1, as part of Steven Soderbergh’s “A Man Under the Influence” at Nitehawk Cinema — Williamsburg.
As the story goes, Soderbergh first stumbled upon the spirit nearly 20 years ago on the eve of a film shoot in Spain, as he and the cast and crew were preparing to make “Che.”
“The full version is that he was in Madrid doing a crew party to start a six-month shoot across South America,” Sarah Soderbergh, the director’s daughter and director of marketing for Singani 63, said Wednesday at Nitehawk Cinema — Williamsburg.
“At this party, the Bolivian casting director was in Madrid and found on the black market a bottle of singani and was like, ‘I want to give Steven a gift,'” Soderbergh explained. “[My dad] finished the bottle with friends that night. And then, the rest of the shoot, they got a mule train of people supplying singani. So the whole crew got hooked.”
The bottle couldn’t be found back home in the United States. So the director traced it back to its Casa Real distillery and convinced the Granier family to let him export the spirit. With their permission, he brought the grape-based brandy home and started Singani 63.
Singani is in its own class, literally. Three years ago, the spirit received official recognition in the United States by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau as a distinct type of brandy.
“I think the uniqueness is it’s a 3,000-year-old grape. It’s an ancient grape that was grown in Egypt that now grows in the Andes of Bolivia. I like to say that ancient alien soil activated an ancient grape in order to become the fossilized, liquid version of the national spirit of Bolivia,” Ricky Lyn, director of sales for Singani 63, said.
Lyn had the challenge of finding 10 bars up to the task of crafting one-of-a-kind cocktails for the cinephiles attending each screening. In the end, some of the most recognizable names across New York City were mixing up brand new cocktails for the birthday celebration.
Nubeluz at The Ritz Carlton, Nomad had possibly the toughest task: crafting a cocktail for the director’s all-time favorite film. Somehow the pressure didn’t prove to be too much for its senior beverage manager, Jopus Grevelink.
A huge fan of the film himself, Grevelink said “Jaws” was the perfect assignment to utilize an effervescent glass he’d recently stumbled upon. Light blue and nearly transparent, the fish glass became the perfect vessel for “We’re Going to Need a Bigger…”
“I always had this in the back of my mind,” Grevelink said of the glass. “When they were like, ‘hey, you’re going to have ‘Jaws,” I was like, ‘bingo.'”
It took roughly a week of experimentation for Grevelink’s team to craft the singani coktail, which includes velvety walnut orgeat, citrusy curaçao, fresh lime and floral hibiscus.
“Sometimes you need to sit down and enjoy the cocktail over the same amount of time that your guests will to understand how the cocktail like, evolves a little bit, how it makes you feel like halfway through,” he explained.
If you missed the Nitehawk happy hour, the drink is still being offered at Nubeluz for a limited time. And if a cocktail is not your speed, you can always drink it down like the director.
“[My dad] calls it the ‘Subwoofer.’ He drinks singani just on the rooks,” Soderbergh said. “We call that drink the Dr. Mr. Soderbergh, because we’re making fun of his honorary doctorate.”
The weekly film series celebrating the filmmaker’s 63rd birthday closes on April 15 with a screening of “Phantom Thread” at Nitehawk Cinema — Prospect Park.