Obit (film)

Obit
Directed by	Vanessa Gould
Produced by	Caitlin Mae Burke, Vanessa Gould
Music by	Joel Goodman
Cinematography	Ben Wolf
Edited by	Kristin Bye
Production company	Green Fuse Films
Distributed by	Kino Lorber
Release date	April 15, 2016 (2016-04-15) (Tribeca)
Running time	93 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$315,049

Obit is a 2016 documentary film about the obituary writers at The New York Times.

Obit is the first documentary to look into the world of newspaper obituaries, via the obituary desk at The New York Times. Writers are interviewed as they research and compose obituaries, including one for William P. Wilson, who coached John F. Kennedy on his historic TV debate with Richard Nixon, and one for Dick Rich, who developed ground-breaking advertising for Alka-Seltzer. Along the way obits for many other people are discussed, with accompanying film clips of their lives. Writers attend editorial meetings and struggle to get their lede just right in time for the 6 pm print-edition deadline. The lone keeper of the Times' morgue files, too massive to move to the paper's new building, describes its functions and shows off some of its treasures, including "advances" — obits written well before a person dies and kept in a locked filing cabinet. One was prepared in 1931 for Elinor Smith, a early aviatrix who the Times apparently did not expect to live long. When she died in 2010, age 98, her advance informed the obit desk almost 80 years after it was written.

Obit premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 15, 2016. The film was released theatrically in New York City on April 26, 2017 at Film Forum and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, and in Los Angeles on May 5, 2017 at the Landmark Nuart. Obit's release expanded in May and June 2017, playing on 100 screens theatrically in the United States and Canada, including an 8-week engagement in Washington D.C., and 6- and 7-week engagements in New York City, Philadelphia and Berkeley, California.