Susan Seidelman 1980s Films Mini‑series: Smithereens (1982)

[00:00:00] From Los Angeles, California, the entertainment capital of the world, it's The 80s Movie Podcast. I'm your host Edward Havens, thank you for listening. On this episode we're going to start a mini-series on the 1980 films from director Susan Seidelman.

[00:00:22] Like last year with Martha Coolidge, I want to highlight at least one female filmmaker each year from the decade that made a significant impact on filmmaking and culture as a whole. And Miss Seidelman definitely fits that description. While most of the film world knows her from her

[00:00:38] second film, The Wonderfully Quirky and Charming Desperately Seeking Susan, which we'll talk about on our next episode today, we're going to take a look at Miss Seidelman's first movie, The Quirky but definitely not Charming, 1982 film, Smithereens. But as always,

[00:00:53] before we get to Smithereens, we're going to go a little further back in time. To December 1952, when Susan Seidelman was born in the Philadelphia suburb of Abbington, where she spent the first 18 years of her life, after graduating from Abbington High in 1969,

[00:01:10] she thought she was going to be a fashion designer attending Drexel University in Philly, minoring in, quote, the arts, unquote. She would take a film appreciation elective class where she would, like many her age in the early 1970s, discover the films of Ingmar Bergman and

[00:01:27] Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut and, like many her age in the early 70s, she decided she'd rather be a filmmaker. She would finish her studies at Drexel before moving on to New York University's film school in 1974. And two years later, she would write and direct

[00:01:44] her first project at NYU, a 24-minute short called And You Act Like One Too, about a married woman who on her 30th birthday decides to be unfaithful to her husband for the first time and picks up a strange hitchhiker who helps her conceptualize her values.

[00:02:02] Seidelman and the film would be nominated for a 1976 Student Academy Award, as well as a Gold Hugo for Best Short Film from the Chicago International Film Festival. After graduating from NYU with an MFA in filmmaking, the class before Jim Jarmusch,

[00:02:20] Seidelman would make a second short film, Yours Truly, Andrea G. Stern, about a teenager who documents her recently divorced mother's relationship with a new boyfriend who was just moved into the house. Two of the stars of And You Act Like One Too, Gillian

[00:02:36] Frank and Billy Wine, would also star in Yours Truly. The film wouldn't get as much attention in the world as her first, but it would open doors for her that would lead to her first,

[00:02:46] feature film. Seidelman had come up with the concept for smithereens during the heyday of the 1970s New York City punk scene, which by the end of the decade was starting to shift to the West Coast. Along with future Oscar-nominated screenwriter Ron Niswander, writer of the 1993

[00:03:04] Jonathan Demi film Philadelphia, Seidelman would write about a young woman named Ren, who runs away from her home in New Jersey in order to become a figure in the New York City punk

[00:03:14] scene, except she's a few years too late, as Los Angeles had already overtaken the Big Apple as the epicenter of the American punk scene. Ren bounces around from relationship to relationship,

[00:03:26] with both eyes on the prize of getting herself to the other side of the country by any means necessary, including mugging other women in the subway for money. From a young man traveling

[00:03:37] from Montana to New Hampshire in his van, to the former lead singer of a punk band who had one hit song several years earlier, Ren attaches herself to anyone she think can help her achieve her dream.

[00:03:48] By the end of the film, Ren is homeless, abandoned by everyone she latched on to, farther from achieving her dream than she was at the start, and possibly about to start turning tricks in order to survive. A fun movie this would not be. In the spring of 1980,

[00:04:05] Saddleman would start to cast the film as she raised the $25,000 she felt the film would cost to make. In the lead role of Ren, Saddleman would cast Susan Berman, a young actress who would be making

[00:04:16] her film debut. By the summer, the novice director had her cast, the money she needed, and a working 16mm camera to shoot the film with. But as one would expect with a bunch of first time filmmakers making a film in the still grimy and gritty New York City,

[00:04:31] without any permits or plans, and just trying to steal shots wherever they can, the production would go a bit chaotic very quickly. By the end of the first week of shooting, the production had already eaten up 18,000 of the $25,000 budget, with at least three more

[00:04:48] weeks needed to complete the shoot. And then the film caught a break. Literally. Susan Berman was working on an improvisation with one of her fellow actors in the film, which would involve Ren getting tossed out a window and trapped on a fire escape.

[00:05:03] While working on how Ren would struggle with the other actor to get back inside, Berman would fall off the fire escape and break her leg. It would take several months for Berman to recover from the accident, which would give time for Saddleman to work

[00:05:17] with what footage was already shot, and see how it was all coming together. And Saddleman realized it wasn't coming together at all. Changes needed to be made. First, Saddleman and Icewander would rewrite the script, making a number of changes to both scenes

[00:05:34] and characters. Most importantly, the character of Eric, one of Ren's benefactors, would more from being a Keith Herring Jean-Michel Basquiat like downtown street artist to a Richard Hell-like former punk rocker who had been a one-hit wonder years ago, looking to regain his former glory

[00:05:52] in Los Angeles. Once the rewrites were complete, Saddleman would release most of the actors pretty much only keeping Susan Berman. While trying to cast the role of Eric, Saddleman decided that maybe the best person to play a Richard Hell-like character was Richard Hell himself.

[00:06:11] If you don't know who Richard Hell is, let's stop for a second and get to know him. Originally born Richard Myers in Lexington, Kentucky in 1949, he along with his friend Tom Miller would

[00:06:25] take New York City by storm in the early 1970s when after changing their names to Richard Hell and Tom Verlane respectively went on to form a seminal punk band television. Not only did television inspire an entire generation of young musicians around the world,

[00:06:43] not only did they help churn CBGBs originally a live venue for country and bluegrass artists into the epicenter of the first wave of American punk rock, but it was Hell who would introduce many of the staples of punk rock attitude in clothing and appearance. The ripped clothing

[00:07:00] kept together by safety pins, the spiky air, the writing all over your jeans, that was all Richard Hell. Once best friends, Hell and Verlane would split when it came time to get ready for television

[00:07:13] to start recording their first album. Although they had written many of television's songs together, Hell was displeased with the direction Verlane wanted to take the band. Hell would leave television in early 1975 and start his own band Richard Hell and the Voidoids,

[00:07:28] whose drummer Mark Bell would soon be recruited to become Markey Ramone in the Ramones. The Voidoids would only record two albums in the 1970s, neither of which set the world on fire, but they would yield the song Hell would become most associated with, Blank Generation.

[00:07:45] By 1980, Richard Hell was getting tired of the music business and wanted to become an actor. His first film, which he co-wrote with German filmmaker Uli Lommel, would be called Blank Generation and would see Hell share the screen with future four-year-a-rize-only

[00:08:00] co-star Carol Bouquet as lovers who constantly break up and get back together. Okay, so Susan Seidelman has friends who have friends who know Richard Hell and, sure enough, Hell was interested in acting in this little indie movie,

[00:08:14] and because the exposure was important to him, he would take almost nothing monetarily for his work. By now, Seidelman had set a better budget for the film, $80,000. Some of which would come from investors who Seidelman was able to screen a rough cut of the

[00:08:30] already shot footage for, and some from a small inheritance left to her by her grandmother, who wanted to see Susie to achieve her dreams. Production would resume in early 1981 for another six weeks of shooting, and would finish up on schedule and, more importantly, on budget.

[00:08:52] Seidelman would spend the remainder of 1981 hold up in her apartment editing the movie by herself on a Steamback flatbed editor. When she felt she had a good cut of the film, she would call on her

[00:09:02] co-writer, Ron Nyswiener, to take a look at it. Nyswiener liked what he saw and made an interesting and unexpected request to Seidelman. Would it be okay if they showed it to Jonathan Demme? Now, in late 1981, Jonathan Demme is not yet the Oscar-winning director of

[00:09:19] The Silence of the Lambs. He's not yet the director of such films as Married to the Mob or Something Wild, and he's still a couple years away from making stop making sense with talking heads.

[00:09:30] At this point in his career, he is best known for making Melvin and Howard, which would have been Mary Steenburgen and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as his early 1970s work with exploitation King Roger Corman.

[00:09:43] But Demme was enough of a somebody that getting him to watch what she had so far would be a big deal. And it would be. Not only did Demme think the film was very good,

[00:09:56] he was able to clearly articulate why some parts of the film might not work so well, and with his suggestions, she would end up editing another 15 minutes out of the film. Demme would also be instrumental in connecting Seidelman with the New Jersey-based band

[00:10:12] The Thelies, which would give the director permission to use a number of their songs from their recently released debut album to act as a sort of underscore for the film. And Demme would also encourage Seidelman to submit the film to a number of film festivals.

[00:10:29] With what little money she had left, she would submit applications to a number of festivals around the world. In March 1982, shortly after she completed her final cut of the film, Seidelman would get a director from Pierre-Henri Delu, who was in charge of securing movies

[00:10:44] for the Cannes Film Festival's Directors' Fortnite section, devoted to independent films from emerging filmmakers from around the world. Delu would be in New York in a few days and wanted to screen the film for potential inclusion. A few days after watching the movie,

[00:11:00] Delu would call Seidelman inviting her out to breakfast. There, he would tell her she would likely soon get the word that the film would be selected but she would need to blow the film up to 35mm for the festival, then would probably want to secure additional funding

[00:11:16] for traveling to and accommodations near the festivals she might be attending. As luck would have it, Joy Parriths was sitting at another table with one of Delu's associates kind of listening in on the other conversation.

[00:11:29] Parriths was a sales representative looking for films to represent at Cannes that year and introduced herself to Seidelman after Delu and his associate left. Parriths was very interested in seeing the film and after screening was set up for her,

[00:11:43] Seidelman and Parriths would agree to let the sales agent represent the film at the Cannes Film Festival for worldwide sales should the film get picked up. A few days later, the call came in. Smithereens was officially selected for the 1982 Cannes Film Festival

[00:11:58] director's fortnight section. Parriths would commit $25,000 to blow the film up to 35mm and to hire a press agent for Seidelman and Susan Berman who would also be attending the film festival on the movie's behalf. At the time, all films selected for the director's

[00:12:16] fortnight were screened as a courtesy to Gilles Jacob, the director of the Cannes Film Festival itself. Jacob was so impressed with the movie he would personally ship the film from the director's fortnight to the festival's main competition, the Palm Door. Smithereens would

[00:12:33] become the first independent American feature film to compete in the main competition in the festival's then 35-year history and in 1982 the main competition at Cannes would see one of the best lineups of films from around the world ever. Lindsay Anderson's Britannia Hospital,

[00:12:50] Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, Vim Vendor's Hammett, Michelangelo Antonioni's Identification of a Woman, Jersey Skolmoski's Moonlighting, Jean-Luc Godard's Passion, Alan Parker's Shoot the Moon, the Taviani Brothers' The Night of the Shooting Stars and the two films that tied for the

[00:13:09] Palm Door. Costa Gavras is missing and Yol, a Turkish drama about five Kurdish prisoners who were given a week's leave to go home, which was so controversial in its home country that the

[00:13:21] government banned it from ever playing in Turkish cinemas. That's not bad company to be a part of for your very first feature film. Joy Parris was able to sell distribution rights to the film to companies in Australia, France and Germany, but it would still take another three months

[00:13:39] before New Line Cinema, still two years away from becoming the company that Freddy Kruger built, acquired the American distribution rights. New Line was able to secure the Waverly Twin in Greenwich Village, near where much of the movie took place to open the film on November 19th.

[00:13:57] And as luck would have it, not only did several other films, smithereens competed against at the Khan Film Festival open the same day, Yol would open on the other screen at the Waverly Twin the very same day.

[00:14:11] Now maybe it's because Yol was playing on several other screens in Manhattan that day, but smithereens would set a new Waverly House record in its opening weekend, grossing $15,327 while playing in a smaller 200-seat house, as compared to Yol's $13,738

[00:14:31] in a larger 350-seat house. In its second week, smithereens would hold up well, grossing $14,000 still in the smaller house, while Yol would drop to $12,000 in the larger house. Smithereens would play for months at the Waverly Twin long after Yol was replaced

[00:14:49] by several other movies. The movie wouldn't open in Los Angeles until January 14th, 1983, after a sneak preview of the film at Lemley's Royal Theater in West Los Angeles the Friday previous. New Line was writing high on the profits already generated from the film,

[00:15:07] from just its New York release that they would fly Susan Seidelman and Berman to Los Angeles to meet and greet filmgoers before the movie's prime 810 PM show on its opening weekend there. And it worked. At the 580-seat Royal Theater, the movie would gross $16,500

[00:15:27] in its first three days. Smithereens would also score well when it opened in Boston on January 27th and in San Francisco on February 11th. In fact, despite opening only on a handful of screens and

[00:15:41] only a few major markets, the film would gross more than half a million dollars by the end of April 1983. And this would give Susan Seidelman the cash she needed to make a second movie. And again, we'll get to that movie desperately seeking Susan on our next episode.

[00:15:59] Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon. Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Smithereens. The 80s Movie Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for idiosyncratic entertainment. Thank you again. Good night.