Written and directed by Phil Hartman, the 1986 black-and-white film follows Macabee Cohn (David Brisbin), a down-and-out jukebox operator searching for a mysterious woman through the tenements, dive bars and streets of downtown Manhattan.
The cast includes Richard Hell, Steve Buscemi and Luis Guzmán, along with an assortment of downtown personalities.
Cinematographer Peter Hutton won a Sundance award for his work on the film.
The film, largely unseen for decades, resurfaced earlier this year with a new 4K restoration that screened at MoMA and Film Forum.
In an April interview with EVG, Hartman, also a co-founder of Two Boots Pizza, discussed his efforts to capture a neighborhood that was already disappearing in the mid-1980s.
Rather than confining the production to a few locations, Hartman filmed more than 100 characters in more than 100 locations.
As Hartman told us, "We were truly blessed to capture a time and place that deserve to be celebrated, not forgotten."
According to Filmmaker Magazine, "No Picnic" made $123,000 during its 12-week screening, making it one of the Film Forum's top repertory runs of the decade, beating out Federico Fellini's "8½" ($120,000), Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai" ($103,000), and nearly equaling Satyajit Ray's "Days and Nights in the Forest" ($127,000).
You can read our full interview with Hartman here.
Great movie!
ReplyDelete