Jonathan Lethem and John Hodgman will discuss John Carpenter cult classic at IFC Center
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
Tuesday, December 21, 8:00
www.ifccenter.com
John Carpenter’s 1988 sci-fi horror comedy, THEY LIVE, puts on sunglasses to reveal corporations’ and government’s subliminal control of the populace, then brings in wrestling star Rowdy Roddy Piper (HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN) as John Nada to try to save the day from a growing force of aliens. The cult classic, which also stars Keith David (THE THING), who gets into one of the great all-time movie fights with Piper, takes on social consciousness and public responsibility; “Homelessness and poverty aren’t just happening to one kind of person these days,” Carpenter (ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, HALLOWEEN, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13) said when the film was released. THEY LIVE is being screened December 21 at the IFC Center in conjunction with the publication of Jonathan Lethem’s (MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN, THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE) monograph on the film, DEEP FOCUS: THEY LIVE (Soft Skull, November 2010, $13.95). “THEY LIVE,” Lethem writes in the book, “lends itself to obsession. Howlingly blatant and obvious on many levels — some might ask, How many levels do you really think there are? — it grows marvelously slippery and paradoxical at its depths.” Lethem will be on hand to discuss the depths of the film with DAILY SHOW correspondent and fellow author John Hodgman (THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE, MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE) in what promises to be a rather unique event.
Based on the novel by Alberto Moravia, Bernardo Bertolucci’s gorgeous masterpiece, THE CONFORMIST, is a political thriller about paranoia, pedophilia, and trying to find one’s place in a changing world. Jean-Louis Trintignant (AND GOD CREATED WOMAN, Z, MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S) stars as Marcello Clerici, a troubled man who suffered childhood traumas and is now attempting to join the fascist secret police. To prove his dedication to the movement, he is ordered to assassinate one of his former professors, the radical Luca Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), who is living in France. He falls for Quadri’s much younger wife, Anna (Dominique Sanda), who takes an intriguing liking to Clerici’s wife, Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli), while Manganiello (Gastone Moschin) keeps a close watch on him, making sure he will carry out his assignment. THE CONFORMIST, made just after THE SPIDER’S STRATAGEM and followed by LAST TANGO IN PARIS, captures one man’s desperate need to belong, to become a part of Mussolini’s fascist society and feel normal at the expense of his real inner feelings and beliefs. An atheist, he goes to church to confess because Giulia demands it. A bureaucrat, he is not a cold-blooded killer, but he will murder a part of his past in order to be accepted by the fascists (as well as Bertolucci’s own past, as he makes a sly reference to his former mentor, Jean-Luc Godard, by using the French auteur’s phone number and address for Quadri’s). Production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro bathe the film in lush Art Deco colors as Bertolucci moves the story, told in flashbacks, through a series of set pieces that include an erotic dance by Anna and Giulia, a Kafkaesque visit to a government ministry, and a stunning use of black and white and light and shadow as Marcello and Giulia discuss their impending marriage. THE CONFORMIST is a multilayered psychological examination of a complex figure living in complex times, as much about the 1930s as the 1970s, as the youth of the Western world sought personal, political, and sexual freedom. In addition to this one-week presentation of a new 35mm print of THE CONFORMIST at Film Forum, 
Director Tamra Davis (GUNCRAZY) transports viewers back to the 1980s New York art scene in the intimate documentary JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD, which is having a special return engagement at Film Forum by popular demand. In 1986, just as the career of street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was exploding, Davis filmed him being interviewed by designer Becky Johnson, a revealing portrait that she put away in a drawer for more than twenty years. Davis finally brings out that footage, making it the centerpiece of this new examination of the ambitious, influential artist and musician who experienced massive success before falling hard and fast and dying of a drug overdose at the age of twenty-seven in 1988. Davis, a friend of Basquiat’s, conducts new interviews with many of the people from his inner circle, including art dealers Jeffrey Deitch, Larry Gagosian, Annina Nosei, Tony Shafrazi, and Bruno Bischofberger; Basquiat’s girlfriends Suzanne Mallouk and Kelle Inman; close Basquiat friends Diego Cortez and Fab 5 Freddy; NEW YORK BEAT cable TV host Glenn O’Brien; and fellow artist Julian Schnabel, who directed Basquiat in DOWNTOWN 81. Davis has also dug up amazing footage from the 1980s of Basquiat that shows him to be a unique, driven figure who used whatever he could — from broken windowframes and doors he’d find on the street to immense canvases — to spread his art and world view, which began with drawings in which he identified himself as Samo, criticizing contemporary art as “the same old shit.” Ultimately, though, it was his relationship with Andy Warhol that was the beginning of the end. JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD is a dazzling document of a fascinating time and a cautionary tale of success that comes too fast, too soon.
