Penn’s strangest and most allegorical work, showing the influence of both Kafka and the French New Wave, MICKEY ONE is a surreal fever-dream of a film, centering on the unlikely figure of a mob-involved stand-up comic (Beatty), fleeing for his life through a nightmarish, down-and-out urban landscape. Disorienting, ambitious, and blackly comic, it is unique both in Penn’s oeuvre and in sixties American cinema.

Plus:Robert Breer HOMAGE TO JEAN TINGUELY’S HOMAGE TO NEW YORK (1968, 10 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Among MICKEY ONE’s gallery of eccentrics, perhaps the most conspicuous is the mysterious, mime-like figure whose elaborate mechanical sculpture destroys itself in one of the film’s strangest scenes. Representing an unlikely homage to the visionary French artist Jean Tinguely, it seems only fitting to pair it with Breer’s later tribute to Tin-guely’s work, a record of the birth and death of his famous auto-destructive sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art.

***On November 21 ONLY: Tom Surgal, son of MICKEY ONE screenwriter Alan Surgal, will join us for the screening.

Tom Surgal is many things. Powerhouse percussionist in the high energy duo WHITE OUT; director of music videos for bands like Sonic Youth and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion; all around nice guy. As the son of MICKEY ONE screenwriter Alan Surgal, Tom visited the set as a child and has many memories and anecdotes related to this strange gem of a film. He will share some of these with us this evening.