Smithereens (1982)

Smithereens (1982)

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“Everyone’s a little weird these days; it’s normal.”

Synopsis:
A self-serving, would-be singer (Susan Berman) in New York City pursues a punk musician (Richard Hell) while managing and manipulating interest from a van-owning artist (Brad Rinn).

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

  • Aspiring Stars
  • Homeless
  • New York City
  • Punk Rock

Response to Peary’s Review:
Peary notes that in this “impressive low-budget independent film directed by Susan Seidelman” — who leapt to fame a couple of years later with Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) — the director more accurately portrays Greenwich Village as “realistically, an ugly, hellish, unfriendly place where offbeat characters are too stoned, crazy, and selfish to help out their kind.” He describes Susan Berman’s “young refugee from New Jersey” as a drifter/grifter with “no money, no apartment, and no friends who will help her out” given that “most everyone has had enough of her grating personality, her lies (usually about needing no one), and her shameless taking advantage of anyone she thinks may help her.”

She’s “forced to live in a van with a nice guy (Brad Rinn) from Montana but she keeps disappointing him with her disloyalty”:

— and while “he wants her to go away with him… she’s planning on going to LA with a young singer (Richard Hell of the punk band, the Voidoids) — not seeing the signs that Hell (who is broke) is using her as she uses everyone else.” Touché.

Peary writes that while “we keep expecting Berman to wise up so she can enjoy a little happiness — we could use a little relief as well” — “Seidelman won’t let her” since “she wants to draw an accurate portrait of the typical Village loser.”

Peary points out “technically, the film is fairly polished — Seidelman composes her shots well, creating striking tableaux by situating her strangely dressed and coiffured characters in the frame with colorful props (Rinn’s van, for instance) and bizarrely designed or graffiti-colored walls.”

However, while I appreciate the effort Seidelman put into her debut indie film — made on a shoestring, with plenty of support from local artists and ample shooting delays and challenges — I’m hard-pressed to see it as anything but an unbearable downer featuring an utterly unlikable protagonist. It may be realistic (it sure reads that way), but I struggled to make it through to the end.

Notable Performances, Qualities, and Moments:

  • Good use of location shooting

Must See?
No, unless you’re curious to see Seidelman’s debut.

Links:

2 thoughts on “Smithereens (1982)”

  1. First viewing (7/12/21). Skip it.

    ’80s indie flick that probably had some traction in NYC (where it was filmed) – and maybe some other large cities – when it was released. Presently, it appears largely to be a forgotten film.

    A rather downbeat tale (is it supposed to be partly darkly humorous in some way?) about a young woman who is a user of other people and only occasionally peripherally self-aware. Basically she’s a pathetic person in the habit of casually lying about herself and her reality.

    It’s interesting that Seidelman grew up near Philadelphia. Peary is noted as saying the director more accurately portrays Greenwich Village as “realistically, an ugly, hellish, unfriendly place where offbeat characters are too stoned, crazy, and selfish to help out their kind.” I lived in Greenwich Village from the late ’70s to the mid-’80s (the period of this film) and, to me, describing Greenwich Village in that manner is not only misleading, it’s bizarre. That decade was a particularly wonderful time to be living in the Village. It could really only be descriibed as “ugly, hellish”, etc., if you were a serious drug addict (in a few specific areas) or the like. On the other hand, I was always wary of Philadelphia and would feel creeped out whenever I went there. So maybe Seidelman placed a little more of Philadelphia’s vibe on NYC than she should have done.

    How did they even *market* this thing?

  2. Interestingly, the usually squeamish Leonard Maltin rates this highly:

    ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

    Gritty little character study of selfish, self-assured, rootless hustler Berman, and her vague dreams of success as a punk-rock band manager. Solid characterizations and simple, fluid direction; the sequence with the hooker and her chicken salad sandwich is memorable.

    I personally don’t have any interest in seeing this one, it sounds insufferably grim.

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