Smithereens
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Once Upon a Time on the Lower East Side
In an excerpt from her new memoir, director Susan Seidelman reflects on the beginnings of her breakthrough 1982 feature Smithereens. bad girls (donna summer) I started to notice a certain type of girl hanging around the downtown club scene. I won’t call her a groupie, but she had elements of that. She was someone looking for excitement. Driven by a need to feel special, eager for recognition despite no discernible talent … and inclined to sleep with anyone in a band. Like me, she came from a place she wanted to escape. Bit by bit, I began to draw a […]
by Susan Seidelman on Jun 27, 2024 -
Susan Seidelman on Smithereens, Fashion Influences and the Early Days of Public Access TV
In the opening shot of Smithereens, a pair of checkered black-and-white sunglasses dangle in the frame. Self-starter Wren (Susan Berman) swoops in, grabs them from the owner and keeps pushing through the subway station as if nothing’s happened. Wren wants to be in a band, but she doesn’t have any discernible abilities besides her fabulously on-point New Wave fashion sense. When not working a crappy copy store job, she’s going to shows and plastering up Xeroxes of a black and white still of herself all over the city, trying to drum up some kind of attention for herself. She only has eyes […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 28, 2016 -
Sets and the City: On the History of Smithereens
Susan Seidelman’s landmark 1982 debut feature, Smithereens, recently made its Cable VOD debut on Cinetic’s FilmBuff channel. It will soon be made available on iTunes, Amazon VOD, and more. Seidelman reflects on the origins of her Manhattan indie classic as it finds new audiences today. I moved to New York City in the mid 1970s, to go to NYU film school. At that time the grad school was housed in a funky building on East 7th street and Second Ave — a space it shared with a rock club called the Fillmore East. The mid-to-late ’70s was a transitional time […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Oct 8, 2009
