Desperately Seeking Susan
25th Anniversary Screening!
Thursday, September 23 at 7:30pm
In person:
Actress - Rosanna Arquette
Actor - Aidan Quinn
Director - Susan Seidelman
Screenwriter - Leora Barish
Producers - Sarah Pillsbury and Midge Sanford
Post-screening Q&A with director Susan Seidelman, screenwriter Leora Barish and other special guests! Following the screening and Q&A there will be a party at Shun Lee West, 45 West 65th Street. Tickets to the entire event, screening plus party: $25 General Public/ $20 Film Society Members. Screening only tickets: $12 General Public/ $7 Film Society Members.
“It's a New York movie that, like Times Square at 4 A.M. or Central Park at high noon, is available to everyone.”
—Vincent Canby, The New York Times
Three tantalizing words in a personal ad send a bored New Jersey housewife (Rosanna Arquette) on a screwball odyssey through lower Manhattan in director Susan Seidelman’s hilarious mistaken-identity comedy. In her first leading role, Madonna stars as the mysterious Susan, object of everyone’s attention and the lynchpin in a topsy-turvy plot that includes a jacket that either belonged to Elvis Presley or Jimi Hendrix. Piled sky high with iconic New York character actors (including a twentysomething John Turturro), it’s at once an iconic Eighties snapshot and a timeless Big Apple farce.
"For her second feature outing, which was partially inspired by Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating, director Susan Seidelman filled her cast with hipster extras, downtown personalities, and New York thespians. Notable faces include comedian Steven Wright; future indie mainstay John Turturro; future TV stars Michael Badalucco and Laurie Metcalf; punk singer Richard Hell, who also starred in Seidelman's Smithereens; and performance artist Ann Magnunson, who would star in the director's Making Mr. Right. The big dance-club sequence was filmed at Danceteria, the disco that helped launch Madonna's career. The scene, and the film, helped propel "Into the Groove," one of the singer's all-time club classics, into the charts even though it was actually a b-side to the single "Angel." Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Desperately Seeking Susan
Susan Seidelman, 1985, USA; 104m
