Rockets Redglare!

Director: Luis Fernandez de la Reguera

Institute History

  • 2003 Sundance Film Festival

Description

In the 1980s, New York swelled with underground artists whose fringe sensibilities ultimately propelled the burgeoning independent film movement forward. At the cockeyed center of this gritty performance world was a lovable, melancholy character actor/comedian/raconteur: Rockets Redglare—a "con man with a soul," as Jim Jarmusch calls him. Interviews with Redglare's now-famous colleagues Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe, Julian Schnabel, Matt Dillon, and Jarmusch, along with his own stories of survival and heartache, raunchy exploits, and poignant triumphs, reveal the interior struggle of a self-destructive artist on the margins of society. This intimate, raw documentary also captures beautifully a zeitgeist we've not had a clear perspective on until now.

— Caroline Libresco

Screening Details

Credits

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