Mikey and Nicky

Nicky has shut himself in a hotel room and calls his friend Mikey. He has stolen money and believes the boss has hired someone to kill him. Mikey comes. Over the next night the two of them wander the streets of Philadelphia: a bar, a bus, a cemetery, old girlfriends. Mikey keeps stepping away to make phone calls. The subject is not the mob but how bad a thirty-year friendship is. Nicky is selfish, crude and has always humiliated Mikey, and Mikey has always swallowed it. Over one night they each say so. The form is very close to improvisation: long scenes, overlapping speech, handheld work in dark streets. Elaine May shot the same scenes with several cameras running for hours. The production story is as famous as the film. May went far over budget, shot several times the footage used on Gone with the Wind, and lost final cut when she missed her delivery date. When Paramount seized the film she had two reels hidden in a garage in Connecticut; the studio traced them but had no authority to search outside the state. Paramount put its own cut into a handful of cinemas and it was badly received; the version seen today is a later restoration. Peter Falk plays Mikey, John Cassavetes plays Nicky and Ned Beatty the hit man. Who it is for: viewers who like seventies American independent cinema and acting built on improvisation. Who it is not for: anyone looking for sympathetic characters; both men are difficult and the film never softens them.