The grit and glamour of 1982's 'Smithereens' coming to Metrograph in the days ahead

"Smithereens," the dark comedy from 1982 filmed in part in the East Village, makes a return engagement this weekend (and next week) to the Metrograph, 7 Ludlow St. between Hester and Canal.

The film, which marked Susan Seidelman's directorial debut, is set in the East Village (and other downtown locales). Wren (Susan Berman), a suburban New Jersey native, is eager for downtown fame, plastering "missing" posters of herself on the subway and elsewhere. She sees a meal ticket in Eric (Richard Hell), the hot guy with a short attention span in a band. And there's the too-nice Paul (Brad Rijn), who pursues the uninterested Wren. Love!

Go here for showtimes. You can read the EVG interview with Seidelman from 2016 here.

And a making-of featurette for you with Seidelman and Berman ...

Free tonight: Richard Hell, the 1980s in 'Smithereens'

From the EV Grieve inbox...

The Seward Park Branch Library is pleased to announce the first program of the Lower East Side Heritage Film Series: the Eighties. Tonight at 6:30 in our Community Room. In this installment of our FREE monthly series we will be showing on VHS:

Smithereens (1982, 89 min., VHS)

Susan Seidelman directs her first feature film: Wren is nineteen and determined to break into punk rock. The pieces of her world are scattered over Lower Manhattan: a grungy Lower East Side apartment, the abandoned train yards along the Hudson River, and the helter-skelter world of East Village rock clubs. It doesn't matter that Wren can't sing, write songs, or play an instrument. She's desperate to make the scene, and desperation makes people do dangerous things.

Starring Susan Berman, Bran Rjin and Richard Hell. With music by the Feelies, ESG, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

Seward Park Branch Library
192 East Broadway

And here's a trailer of sorts...



And here's an article that Seidelman wrote for Filmmaker magazine about making the movie.

In case you're wondering why some SATC fans are now into Richard Hell

Many excellent posts from yesterday at Ephemeral New York. The post on Tom Verlaine at the Peppermint Lounge was of particular interest to me. As the post notes, "The Peppermint Lounge is preserved forever in all of its grunginess on DVD in a scene from the great 1982 movie Smithereens."


Wow. This film fell off my radar. I like the director, Susan Seidelman. So I took a look at the movie online. Look at the new box for the film, which stars, among others, Richard Hell. From the director of Sex and the City! She directed three episodes of the show in 1998. (There were 94 episodes in all.) A bit of a stretch for the marketing folks to try to make that connection. Still, however cheesy, the thought of some SATC fans tuning into Smithereens -- thinking the two may possibly be related -- puts a smile on my face.








Here's what KultKlassics had to say about the film.