Hello, my name is Justin Klu, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, we are talking about the director, Susan Sidelman.

Director of the pilot episode of Sex and the City, by the way.

Whoa, so she's probably dining off of that to this day.

Oh my God.

Because you know that if you direct a pilot, or at least it was like that back in network syndication, you would get kickbacks if the series went to series. And every year after that. Presumably she's getting money from like the movies. Probably. I don't know. Could you set the style down for something? and that I remember hearing someone once say that

being the pilot director of something is like a great

payout gig. And it's a testament to Susan Sidelman that that's not even a thing people know about her. I don't even, yeah, I don't think so. I only found that out today. No, she's the director of, well, primarily what people will know are smithereens and desperately seeking Susan. And one of the few women in the 1980s and 90s to be consistently directing, you know, from those

art house origins. smithereens and desperately seeking Susan. And one of the few women in the 1980s and 90s to be

consistently directing, you know, from those art house origins, went on to consistently direct

mainstream studio comedies. Now, had you seen her most famous film Desperately Seeking Susan?

I had never seen it. Me either. I had seen smithereens before and I liked it. So I didn't

know what to expect this week.

Susan Sitalman has always been on my list of things to check out, to dive into more at some point. And I'm glad I did. This is one of those weeks. I'm going to admit where some of these movies, I wish I liked them a little bit more. Me too. But I watched so many in a Ron Howard-like bid, but I will not say that I came out of it like I did with Ron Howard where I'm like, why did they keep making movies?

No.

It was more like these movies aren't specifically working for me in the ways that they always are meant to, but I can see what is there and what she's trying to go for. And, you know, moreover, I think Smith, The Wien's is a great movie, and I think when you watch a number of these movies in close succession, you do see the commonalities. Oh, yeah, the thematic concerns run through almost all the movies we're going to talk about today. As well as certain of the stylistic consistencies, because something that was kind of

bothering me about these movies, like after Smithereens, because after Smithereens, she makes

desperately seeking Susan, making Mr. Wright, she devil, cookie, you know, that's the golden

run of Susan Sidelman.

A lot of these movies are plainly farcical.

A lot of them take heavy inspiration from screwball comedy, but they're moving at a pace that, you know, it's funny, when you read

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