RandomCha

Over Memorial Day weekend, here are two cool events you won’t want to miss:

• An Evening with Michael Glover Smith: a double feature at Spectacle

Saturday, May 25 at 5:00 pm at Spectacle in Brooklyn

“In keeping with recent events with independent filmmakers currently forging their own paths – Nuotama Bodomo, Ricky D’Ambrose, Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn, Amir George – Spectacle is pleased to invite Chicago-based film critic and director Michael Glover Smith to our humble theater to present the New York City premiere of two recent works: Mercury in Retrograde (2017) and Rendezvous in Chicago (2018).” (Michael is, of course, producing Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago.)

• Barry Gifford’s Dream Double Feature: Pickup on South Street + The Strange One

Sunday, May 26 at 1:00 pm at The Metrograph

“I chose The Strange One because Ben Gazzara’s Jocko DeParis is as mean and sadistic as my platoon leader was when I was in the Air Force Reserve at the University of Missouri in 1964. Years later, when I heard that he’d been shot down flying a mission in Vietnam, I was not displeased—not that I was necessarily rooting for the Viet Cong, but I couldn’t help but feel they’d done the world a favor by taking him out of the count. And I chose Pickup on South Street because Thelma Ritter is my favorite actress and this was certainly her greatest role—when I met Sam Fuller I thanked him for giving her such great dialogue and he said, ‘She was the only actress I could think of who could explain her predicament with just the look in her eyes.’”—Barry Gifford