ACE Presents: Mikey and Nicky with Elaine May

Director: Elaine May

1976 / 106min / DCP

For one night only in December, Metrograph welcomes writer-director Elaine May to be in discussion with editors Phillip Schopper, ACE, and Jeffrey Wolf, ACE, on the process of cutting her 1976 triumph Mikey and Nicky.

May’s mordantly funny character study of two small-time hoodlums and lifelong friends, perpetual troublemaker Nicky (Cassavetes) and his put-upon childhood pal, Mikey (Falk), who’s been bailing him out for as long as either of them can remember, on the run together through seedy after-hours Philadelphia from the criminal outfit they both work for, who’ve put a price on Nicky’s head. “One of the most innovative, engaging, and insightful films of [the 1970s]… May allows the improvisational rhythms of her actors to establish the surface realism of the film, but beneath the surface lies a tight, poetically stylized screenplay that leads the two characters, as they pass a fearful, frenzied night together, back over the range of their lives, from infancy to adulthood. At every step, May tests the two men’s affection against the conflicting demands of making a living and finding a measure of security in a brutal, unstable world; what emerges is a profound, unsentimental portrait of male friendship—and of its ultimate impossibility.” —Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader