No Picnic (1990)

• 68%
• 1990
• Drama
• Philip Hartman
• David Brisbin
• Anne D'Agnillo
• Luis Guzmán

A black-and-white love letter to pre-gentrification New York City, Phil Hartman's NO PICNIC captures a remote time and place - the East Village circa 1985, a vibrant, seedy neighborhood populated by musicians, pimps and poets. Macabee Cohen (David Brisbin), whose heyday as a rock musician is long gone, travels the city in a beat-up VW bus, supplying records to local juke boxes. His beloved Lower East Side neighborhood is in turmoil: rampant real estate speculation, tenants on rent strike, art invading the bars - "in my own neighborhood, I felt like I was in the middle of a party that I hadn't been invited to," he says. Mac's personal life is in turmoil, too: his girlfriend dumped him for the Air Force, his neighbor is pressuring him into a green card marriage, his father has left his mother for a younger man, and his brother is sending post cards from his sexual sojourn to all fifty states. Then a mysterious girl appears in his life, and Mac's obsession to find her becomes a quest of self-discovery, too - "I was looking for someone to save," he says, "to save myself.