MIRACLE MILE WITH DIRECTOR / CAST IN PERSON
Catch the inspired cineamtic fever dream with cast and Director in person at The Metrograph.
The Metrograph is New York's Lower East Side presents a 35mm print plus special Director and cast appearance of the highly underrated cinematic fever dream MIRACLE MILE (1988)
MIRACE MILE (1988 / 87min / 35mm).
Jazz musician Anthony Edwards is walking on clouds, coming off of a successful first date with waitress Mare Winningham, when a voice on the other end of a ringing pay phone informs him that the U.S. has just entered into nuclear war and The End is Nigh. What follows is a frantic real-time scramble up and down Wilshire Boulevard, in hopes of making the most of what may be the last night on earth. An utterly singular independent vision from writer-director de Jarnatt, who will be on hand to discuss his romantic, doom-tinged fever dream of L.A.
Written by De Jarnatt fresh out of American Film Institute for Warner Brothers, the film was well known around Hollywood for a decade, with American Film Magazine calling it one of the ten best unmade screenplays in 1983. Warner's, of course, wanted a large scale feature and especially not in the hands of a first-time director. De Jarnatt optioned it himself, buying the script for $25,000, rewrote it and the studio offered him $400,000 to buy it back, which he refused. The oddball mix of romance, nuclear war and the film's downbeat ending scared away major studios, however Hemdale Films eventually gave De Jarnatt $3.7 million to make the film.
Steve De Jarnatt, Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham in conversation with Bilge Ebiri.
Contains program notes by Metrograph.
TERRY ZWIGOFF IN PERSON AT THE METROGRAPH
Join the acclaimed Ghost World Director at 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.
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.
SUTURE & THE MAKIOKA SISTERS AT THE METROGRAPH
Director Steven Soderbergh and film historian Ian Buruma present two stunning works of cinema art.
New York's Metrograph presents two special screenings with in person appearances, highlighting two essential pieces of cinema.
Saturday May 13th 7pm
SUTURE (1996 / DCP)
Directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee in conversation with Steven Soderbergh following the film.
Lumped in with the then-contemporary “neo-noir” cycle but actually quite unlike anything else on the scene, Siegel and McGehee’s brain-twisting murder mystery in sordid black-and-white widescreen has Dennis Haysbert as the classic fall guy, stricken with amnesia after his near-identical half-brother (Michael Harris) swaps their identities and pins a family murder on him—all this before a plastic surgeon called Renee Descartes (Mel Harris) shows up. A cult item whose advocates include Steven Soderbergh, who will be on hand to plumb the depths of its mysteries with the filmmakers.
Saturday May 13th 2pm
THE MAKIOKA SISTERS (1983 / 35mm Print)
Introduced by critic and historian Ian Buruma
Among the greatest Japanese films of the 1980s, Kon Ichikawa’s wistful adaptation of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s novel about the four daughters of a prosperous Osaka family in decline, set in the before-the-storm year of 1938, is a movie marked by moments of unspoken longing and overpowering beauty (a parade of gorgeous kimono fabrics, a viewing of the spring cherry blossoms) born forth on an anachronistic-yet-somehow-perfect synth score. At once a touching requiem for both the prewar era and classic Japanese cinema.
The Makioka Sisters is presented by Metrograph and New Directions in celebration of the official launch of two major discoveries by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki: an early novella, Devils in Daylight, and his astonishing final work, The Maids—now available in English. Both will be available in the Metrograph book store.
Program notes by The Metrograph.