The Plot Against Harry

Wednesday, November 15 at 7:30 PM — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door

THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY
Directed by Michael Roemer • 1969
Harry Plotnick (Martin Priest) can’t catch a break. A schlemiel goes to prison for nine months and comes out a schnook, a small-time numbers guy who can’t even reconstitute his racket because his rivals have taken over the street. Harry’s parole officer won’t let him drive a car without her permission, Harry’s goyish doctor advises against sex because of his enlarged heart, and Harry’s brother-in-law can’t even take his money to save a flagging catering business without the rabbi’s sign-off. With only a provisional foothold in the straight world, Harry embarks on his own chintzy twist on tikkun olam, handing out mink coats and charity contributions to restore his place in his family and his community. A deadpan comedy where business is conducted at a bris, a dog-training session, a golf course overlooking the expressway, and other realer-than-real shindigs, The Plot Against Harry zigzags across New York with devil-may-care abandon. After the acclaim for writer-director Michael Roemer’s first feature, Nothing But a Man, a forward-looking Seattle TV station with a production sideline offered him a blank check to make whatever he wanted. The result was The Plot Against Harry, cast mainly with white collar nonprofessionals (auditors, psychoanalysts, etc.) and loosely plotted without any conventional conflict. It’s a workaday gangland situation comedy, but it neither parodies the genre nor plumbs it for artificial thrills. Guns are never drawn once. Prospective distributors were baffled and the film had to settle for a one-week run at Seattle’s Blue Mouse Theater in 1971. King Screen Productions took a Plotnick-esque tax write-off and the film languished until 1989, when a telecine operator’s guffaws confirmed to Roemer that his obvious masterpiece was funny after all. (KW)
81 min • King Screen Productions • 35mm from The Film Desk

Preceded by: ”Goldman v. Silverman” (Josh and Benny Safdie, 2020) – 6 min – 35mm

Introduced by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum!