TERRY ZWIGOFF IN PERSON AT THE METROGRAPH
The Metrograph, New York's delightful repertory cinema in Manhattan's Lower East Side, presents a weekend with acclaimed indie director Terry Zwigoff, who will join the Metrograph team all weekend in person, as well as a Q&A with Steve Buscemi and the New York premiere of Bad Santa: Director's Cut.
Zwigoff never seemed to belong to the careerist, wheeler-dealer world of the Sundance indie, and that’s part of his charm. Catapulted to prominence with Crumb, his instant classic documentary on underground legend R. Crumb, Zwigoff went on to reel out a trio of blackly-comic fiction films which all together offer a jaundiced, screamingly funny portrait of the 21st century America that had paved over the folk culture he celebrates and cherishes.
Friday May 19th 6:45pm 9:15pm
GHOSTWORLD (2001 / 35mm)
Terry Zwigoff in person at both screenings, joined by Steve Buscemi for a Q&A at the 6:45pm show and an introduction at the 9:15pm show.
The first film adaptation from the work of cartoonist Daniel Clowes, Ghost World is a post-apocalyptic survival film set in the suburban AnyAmerica of 2001. Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson co-star as two too-smart girls using caustic wit to shield themselves from the toxic effects of living in a cultural wasteland, discovering an amiably creepy kindred spirit in the form of Steve Buscemi’s weedy record collector. A modern-day comic classic, and an anthem for opting out.
Saturday May 20th 2pm
LOUIE BLUIE (1985 / Digital)
Q&A with Terry Zwigoff, which will include a preview clip of his upcoming Amazon Series “Budding Prospects”
Zwigoff found his way into filmmaking through a love of traditional music and a desire to document those responsible for keeping those old sounds alive. His first feature, which finds his love for out-of-time eccentrics already established, is a portrait of Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong, a self-taught folk artist, peerless story-teller, and member of perhaps the last black string band in America.
Saturday May 20th 4pm
ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL (2006 / 35mm)
Terry Zwigoff in person.
Zwigoff’s reunion with screenwriter Daniel Clowes has fresh-faced Max Minghella as an incoming undergraduate with dreams of Picasso-like conquest, until his idealism is confronted with smooth-operator pseudo professor John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent’s splenetic rummy failed artist, and a campus strangler on the loose. A deft mixture of psychological thriller (particularly Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street) and pretense-popping satire, taking on the gallery industrial complex.
Saturday May 20th 9:30pm
BAD SANTA (2003 / DCP)
New York premiere of the Director's Cut / Terry Zwigoff in person.
In this holiday standard, Thornton plays an alcoholic, grab-assy safecracker who makes his living by posing as a mall Santa once a year and then making off with the accumulated Christmas-season loot. Zwigoff’s filthy-funny lowbrow laff riot evokes both Redd Foxx and The Little Rascals. With snot-nosed Thurman Merman, the least-lovable scamp of all-time, and the dream team of Tony Cox, Bernie Mac, and John Ritter.
Sunday May 21st 5:15pm
CRUMB (1994 / 35mm)
Terry Zwigoff in person.
R. Crumb’s work as the breakout star of the underground cartooning scene was plenty well known before the appearance of this intimate, deeply melancholy, years-in-the-making documentary, but Zwigoff’s film revealed the deep well of pain and family dysfunction that Crumb’s work draws from, with his brothers Max and Charles treated as characters every bit as worthy of attention and compassion as their more famous brother.
Program notes by Metrograph NYC.