Film Screening: Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky (Paramount, 1976, 110 mins.)

Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky (Paramount, 1976, 110 mins.)

Post-screening discussion with film scholar, Todd Berliner.

Friday, September 13, 6:00 pm
Michelson Theater, 721 Broadway, 6th Floor

Elaine May’s gangster drama, Mikey and Nicky, has polarized audiences since its release. It bombed at the box office, and critics like John Simon considered it “one of the worst pictures of 1976.” Some years later, Stanley Kaufman hailed it as “one of the ten best pictures of the decade.” Although it alienated the mass audience that Hollywood films are normally designed to please, it has engaged a coterie of devoted fans for almost 50 years, with revival screenings at MOMA, the Lincoln Center, and countless other venues. Film scholar Todd Berliner will explain the film’s unusual appeal and May’s unorthodox directing methods on the notoriously troubled production. Elaine May couldn’t make a professional Hollywood movie, so instead she made a masterpiece.

This is an in-person event, open to the public. Prior registration is required. Non-NYU attendees will receive emailed instructions for building access and may be asked to present a government-issued photo ID upon arrival. NYU attendees must present their NYU ID.

Todd Berliner is Professor of Film Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He is the author of Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema (University of Texas Press, 2010). He is currently writing a book on Elaine May and Mikey and Nicky.