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Punk Rock Film 'Smithereens' Makes Ann Arbor Debut Tonight

Punk Rock Film 'Smithereens' Makes Ann Arbor Debut Tonight image
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Day
22
Month
October
Year
1983
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Punk rock film 'Smithereens' makes Ann Arbor debut tonight

By Bill BROWN

NEWS SPECIAL WRITER

Most have heard the expression “one man’s food is another man’s poison.” When it comes to Susan Seidelman’s 1982 film “Smithereens” (screening tonight in the “A” room of the U-M’s Angell Hall by Cinema 2), that expression might well be changed to “a film buff’s delight is often the film director’s misfortune.”

The situation is this:

Since “Smithereens” was produced by an independent filmmaker, it had been originally selected for inclusion in the “Director’s Fortnight” portion of the the Cannes International Film Festival. However, when Gilles Jacob, the Festival’s executive director, came to New York to screen films for the main competition, he was so impressed with “Smithereens” that he moved it into his own portion of the festival — right alongside “Shoot The Moon,” “Missing” and “Hammett.”

Even though Seidelman’s film went on to become the surprise hit of every international film festival from Cannes to Telluride, Seidelman was subsequently unable to convince a national distribution company to take a chance on it. Consequently, “Smithereens” never made it to a commercial theater in the Ann Arbor area. And that’s Seidelman’s misfortune. The flip side, of course, is that Ann Arbor audiences can now see her highly praised film for roughly half the original cost.

“My idea was to capture the crazy energy of the rock clubs, the sleazy bars, and the tenement lofts,” Seidelman said. “I wanted to people the film with characters who were products of the mass culture of the 1970s and ’80s, kids who grew up on rock ’n’ roll.

“The design of the film is strongly influenced by cartoons, pop art and the colorful trashiness of New York’s urban landscape.”

Though granted that her film is about the punk scene in New York City, Seidelman claimed that “it’s about something broader - the fragmented nature of life in the 1980s. It could have taken place in another setting.”

“Smithereens,” which was Seidelman’s first feature-length film, tells the story of Wren (Susan Berman), a 19-year-old girl from New Jersey who is far too aggressive and spunky to fit into her staid surroundings. After her landlady kicks her out of her apartment, Wren begins to haunt the rock discos of lower Manhattan in the hope that she will get a job as a record producer. The obstacle preventing Wren from attaining her goal is that Wren can’t sing or play an instrument. As the film progresses, it becomes painfully clear that she doesn’t even have any inate talent or untapped ability.

Eventually, Wren encounters Eric (brilliantly played by punk rock singer Richard Hell), a successful musician on his way to Los Angeles. Possessed of the darting, half-narcissistic, half-predatory eyes of a professional hustler, Eric exploits Wren and later sends her down the path (held the final freeze frame) of prostitution and drug addiction. In both a literal and a figurative sense, she has gone to “Hell.”

The title “Smithereens” describes not only the fragmented content of Seidelman’s film, but the manner in which it was made. After raising $25,000, Seidelman, then a 27-year-old graduate of New York University’s film school, began shooting in the summer of 1980. But at the end of the second week, Susan Berman fell off a fire escape during a rehearsal and broke her leg.

“We stopped shooting for four months while Susan was in a leg cast,” Seidelman recalled. “During that time, I begged, borrowed and stole the money we needed. As soon as she got out of the leg cast, we resumed shooting, but only interiors. It was winter and we had to wait another four months to shoot in the summer again.”

Unfortunately, these problems show up in the final product. “Smithereens” plays far better as a series of evocative vignettes than as a coherent narrative. And without Hell’s outrageously self-mocking performance, those vignettes would have lost a lot of their satiric force.

Yet despite the limitations of working as an independent filmmaker, Seidelman claimed at the time of her interview that she would continue to work outside of Hollywood. “By working independently,” she said, “you generate a real energy. When you don’t have a lot of money and can’t afford a lot of equipment or location fees, you have to be resourceful."

Tickets for the film, which is being shown at 7, 8:40 and 10:20 p.m., are priced at $2 and can be purchased at the hall at the time of each showing.

'My idea was to capture the crazy energy of the rock clubs, the sleazy bars and the tenement lofts. . . '

— Susan Seidelman