Wednesday, February 5 @ 7:30 PM / NEIU — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door
CHOOSE ME
Directed by Alan Rudolph • 1984
Fresh off a stay in a Las Vegas mental institution, Mickey (Keith Carradine) hightails it to Eve’s Lounge in Los Angeles, bragging of innumerable (and questionably credible) personal accomplishments and asking around for the bar’s owner, a former call girl named Eve. There does happen to be a former call girl named Eve working there (Lesley Ann Warren), and she does happen to own the bar, but she’s not the woman he’s looking for. Later that night, they kiss — but Eve goes home with another man (John Larroquette) while ducking a third paramour, Zack (Patrick Bauchau), and Mickey cozies up to another bar patron, Pearl (Rae Dawn Chong). Observing these travails is radio personality Dr. Nancy Love, the nom de guerre of Ann (Geneviève Bujold), who takes a special interest in Eve’s love life after the bar matron calls in to her program. The romantic roundelays among these characters and others play out with bitter humor and faintness-inducing sensuality, lit by neon signs perfectly reflected in fresh puddles and scored with classic bedroom jams courtesy of Teddy Pendergrass. Written and directed by the cultishly revered Alan Rudolph, Choose Me is frequently cited as one of the filmmaker’s greatest accomplishments and as one of the best American films of the 1980s, despite wavering availability on home video in recent decades. Projected, as this screening will be, in 35mm, it’s almost unbearably sexy. (CW)
114 min • Island Alive Releasing • 35mm from Park Circus
Preceded by: Alan Rudolph trailer reel – 10 min – 35mm
NEXT UP: THE UNKNOWN on Sunday, February 16 at the Music Box