Neon Dreams Cinema Club: Elaine May's MIKEY AND NICKY
The Royal Cinema
608 College St, Toronto, ON M6G 1B4, Canada
Ontario
43.6553504
-79.41458169999999
Neon Dreams wraps up our “Spectacular ‘70s” season by inviting you to revel in the rare pleasure of seeing a grimy gangster thriller told through a female lens. Set in the mean streets of Philadelphia over the course of one debaucherous night, writer/director Elaine May delivers a very different crime flick--one as much about about toxic masculinity and fractured relationships as it is about two best friends on the run from a hitman.
If you don’t know Elaine May, know that she was a renegade filmmaker shut out of the studio system for refusing to play nice. With MIKEY AND NICKY she shot over 1 million feet of film to capture natural performances from John Cassavettes and Peter Falk, an unconventional (and expensive) approach that worked beautifully, but angered the predominantly male studio heads. When they attempted to take the film away from her she famously, as comedian Patton Oswalt describes, “stole the print from the studio, hid it in her garage like a punk-fucking-rocker, and stared the studio down to put out the version she wanted.”
Although she won the battle and the film was released with her vision in tact, she lost the war as too much bad blood caused the film to be buried and forgotten for decades. Now, thanks to a brand new digital restoration approved by May herself, we are able to experience this powerful film theatrically in a way that few people had a chance to in 1976.
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This screening and others are made possible thanks to our wonderful sponsor Hollywood Suite. As always this will be a fully licensed event featuring a fabulous on-screen pre-show. Be sure to arrive early!
