Part of Weekend Classics
What if that date you thought would never end didn’t? When an uptown New Yorker innocently meets a downtown girl, he’s uncontrollably drawn into a vortex of wild, malevolent and paranoid adventures. Paul Hackett’s (Griffin Dunne) terrible night happens in the SoHo area of downtown Manhattan when he goes to keep a date with Marcy (Rosanna Arquette). Nothing in his humdrum life as a word processor has prepared him for his surreal encounters with Marcy — and her far-out artist roommate Kiki (Linda Fiorentino), cocktail waitress Julie (Teri Garr), ice cream vendor Gail (Catherine O’Hara), and June (Verna Bloom), who lives in the basement of a nightclub. Now, Paul longs only for the safety of his upper-East Side apartment — but will he ever make it home?
Approved by editor Thelma Schoonmaker, this new digital master from the Criterion Collection was created from the 35mm original camera negative, which was scanned in 4K resolution on a Lasergraphics Director film scanner. Director Martin Scorsese’s personal 35mm print was used as color reference. The original monaural soundtrack was remastered from the magnetic track.
“A film that is so original, so particular, that we are uncertain from moment to moment exactly how to respond to it.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (Oct 11, 1985) “Martin Scorsese transforms a debilitating convention of ‘80s comedy — absurd underreaction to increasingly bizarre and threatening situations — into a rich, wincingly funny metaphysical farce… Scorsese’s orchestration of thematic development, narrative structure, and visual style is stunning in its detail and fullness; this 1985 feature reestablished him as one of the very few contemporary masters of filmmaking.” —Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader “A caffeinated black comedy with an emphasis on speed. With a small crew and a tight shooting schedule, Scorsese transformed limited means into a staccato burst of creative energy.” —Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club
