Event

CFS Presents MIRACLE MILE in 35mm

MIRACLE MILE
Directed by Steve De Jarnatt * 1988
Hip-to-be-square trombone player Harry (Anthony Edwards) and genuinely hip diner waitress Julie (Mare Winningham) meet cute at the La Brea Tar Pits, liberate a tank of lobsters, and plan a date after she gets off work at a quarter past midnight. The self-declared King of the Glenn Miller Impersonators naps too long and misses their date, but arrives at Johnnies Coffee Shop just in time to pick up a ringing pay phone. Wrong numbera panicked man in a North Dakota missile silo trying to warn his father of an imminent nuclear exchange. If its not a prank, Harry has 70 minutes to find Julie, hire a freelance helicopter pilot, and escape to Antarctica with the Johnnies night owls. This propulsive, real-time journey through nocturnal Los Angeles glows like an atomic Lite-Brite and gambols to the ambient drone of Tangerine Dream. Though it begins as a rom-com with a stealth agenda, this masterful and sharply funny thriller ultimately earns a place alongside such landmark social disintegration freakouts as Siegels "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," Romeros "Dawn of the Dead," and its East Coast contemporary, Lees "Do the Right Thing." A legendary script that floated around Hollywood for a decade, "Miracle Mile" finally detonated in theaters in spring 1989, the last fallout of Cold War cinema. Tragically and inexplicably, writer-director Steve De Jarnatts career would remain stuck in the TV tar pits, with this and "Cherry 2000" his only features to date. (KW)
87 min * Hemdale Picture Corporation * 35mm from Park Circus

Preceded by a Short Film: "Journey to Tomorrow: Communication" (Fern Field, 1983) - 20 min - 16mm