Part of Music City Mondays
Mon, Jun 29 at 8:00pm: Post-screening discussion with director (and Two Boots founder) Philip Hartman
Philip Hartman’s priceless artifact of New York’s pre-gentrification East Village follows down-and-out jukebox operator Macabee Cohn, played with deadpan melancholy by David Brisbin, who wanders the cheap tenements, dive bars and derelict streets of the East Village in search of a mysterious woman in a striped dress.
NO PICNIC premiered at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival, where Peter Hutton won the Best Cinematography prize for his gorgeously evocative black-and-white imagery, working with producer Doris Kornish, Emmy Award–winning director Mike Spiller as assistant cameraman, animator Lewis Klahr as boom operator, Christine Vachon as assistant sound editor, with assistance from, among other notables, Jacob Burckhardt and Jeff Preiss. Scored by Ned Sublette, the soundtrack features The Raunch Hands, Fela Kuti, Charles Mingus and Student Teachers.
Hartman, who had previously been a studio screenwriter, would later open the New York City culinary institution (and Nashville outpost) Two Boots with NO PICNIC producer Doris Kornish.
“A forgotten eighties NYC movie is back, scuzzier and better than ever. NO PICNIC captures New York's boho hipster Lower East Side on the edge of Reagan-era gentrification — and a new restoration just saved it from obscurity.” —David Fear, Rolling Stone “NO PICNIC does not look or sound quite like any other film, and that's more than you can say about most movies of any size.” —Caryn James, New York Times (Jul 12, 1980)
