Looking for Mr Goodbar (Brooks, 1977): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm
ICA introduction: A special screening of Looking for Mr. Goodbar with France-Lise McGurn, presented by MARFA journal. Set in the sexual frontiers of 1970s New York, Looking for Mr Goodbar features the late Diane Keaton as a well-ordered teacher by day and a restless thrillseeker by night, who looks for excitement through tempestuous hook-ups at singles bars to enrich her ordinary life and meets a brash Richard Gere along the way. The latest edition of MARFA pays a visit to artist France-Lise McGurn’s East London studio, featuring McGurn's collection of novelty furniture, magazine clippings, and large canvases propped up by tins of paint – one titled Looking for Mr. Goodbar. This event will continue with drinks at the ICA Bar.
MARFA is as much a biannual magazine as it is an intimate take on the current state of culture. The publication pairs together contemporary art, fashion, and whatever else takes their fancy into an eccentric visual and editorial experience. Spanning across twenty-five issues and many books over more than ten years, all is elevated but unexpected. Nothing is as it should be. MARFA collaborates with the VIPs of the creative world and partners pop with niche, old with new, the cerebral with the relaxed - all to create their inimitable aesthetic.
Peter Bradshaw wrote about the film in an article he wrote for the Guardian to coincide with the release of Gaspar Noe's film Love. Here is an extract:
Diane Keaton plays a teacher: here, specifically a teacher of
hearing-impaired children, a touch that accentuates her utterly
respectable, in fact, laudable life. She gets involved in casual sex
with men she meets in seedy bars. It ends in shocking violence. It is as
if female sexuality is always a natural fit for the erotic thriller or
crime thriller genre, and undoubtedly, Goodbar pathologises female
sexuality to some extent, indicating that for a woman to have an
interest in recreational sex is symptomatic of damage, and essentially
tragic in origin and destiny. The film has been occasionally reviled and dismissed, but is arguably
ripe for rediscovery as a confrontational exploitation classic from the
Martin Scorsese/Paul Schrader 70s. It is not available on DVD.
Here (and above) are the opening credits.
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