So romantic.īE: The director kindly joined me on the phone to talk about her experiences in the early 80s in New York making these films. Last January, she was in Mexico City then Seattle. Roberta: No, you see see Jim follows Susan all over the country. Leslie: Who's Susan? You know, these people? Paul: Anyway, I thought maybe we could go back down there, I got some tapes and a tape deck.We could just sit around and listen to music.īE: Seidelman's second film, Desperately Seeking Susan, starred newcomer Madonna, playing a Lower East Side hipster, who becomes an object of fascination to a bored, New Jersey housewife, played by Rosanna Arquette Paul: Yeah, I told you that before, remember? Paul: Well, I got a van down by the Westside Highway. In her debut feature Smithereens, Seidelman follows the character of Wren, a teenage New Jersey punkette, freshly arrived in the big city, played by Susan Berman. So I actually as a child rarely went to New York City, but I always kind of had my dream version of what New York City would be like.īE: Back in the Autumn of 2017, the director's debut film Smithereens and its follow up Desperately Seeking Susan was shown across the Barbican cinema screens. Susan Seidelman: New York was maybe only an hour and a half away from the town I grew up in, but it was a world apart.
DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN ARCHIVE
I'm Ben Eshmade and on this week's archive exploration, we embark on a journey in our time machine back to back to the scuzzy streets and broken dreams of 80s New York City with director Susan Seidelman. Bringing the jacket home, Roberta’s yuppie husband is less than pleased: “You bought a used jacket? What are we – poor?” Thus, the theme of thrifting present throughout the film is suddenly rendered a political statement representing an antithesis to the money-obsessed capitalist culture of the 1980s.Ben Eshmade: Hello and welcome to Nothing Concrete, the Barbican podcast.
Exchanging her jacket for the dazzling footwear, Roberta – who by this point has been following Susan's movements in complete awe – buys it for herself. So naturally, when Susan arrives in New York, she immediately embarks on a second-hand shopping trip, falling in love with a pair of sequin boots in the window of her go-to store ‘Love Saves The Day’. She has a particular penchant for gloves, which she refuses to take off – even to snack on Cheese Doodles – and presents as someone who has tripped and fallen into a clothes rail at a thrift store at all times. Susan is never not clad in kitschy clothes – she seems permanently to be draped in the sheen of polyester and lycra, with an abundance of lace and the clinking and clacking of multiple trinkets following her wherever she goes. Director Susan Seidelman cast the queen of pop to play a character who “floats through the funkiness in which she lives as if she were a princess” – an attitude which, without a doubt, we should all desperately seek.ġ. Ultimately, the escapism she craves arrives in the form of Susan (Madonna) – a wayward drifter embodying the spirit of cool-girl nonchalance – who Roberta discovers advertising a meet up in Battery Park via the lonely hearts section of a New York City tabloid. The film chronicles a surreal journey of self-discovery experienced by the timid Roberta, played by the then up-and-coming Rosanna Arquette, who is searching for something beyond what her placid and unfulfilled life as a yuppie housewife is offering.
Her first filmic role in Desperately Seeking Susan is one that encapsulated her signature style on screen – and subsequently, the delightfully over-the-top nuances of the decade. When considering such references, it’s an impossibility not to visually summon the spirit of an icon who arguably defined the excesses of 80s fashion: Madonna.
From Anthony Vaccarello’s debut at YSL (where he cast a nostalgic eye back to an era of gold lamé and gargantuan tasselled earrings), to the over-exaggerated shoulders at Céline and Balenciaga (hinting at the padded silhouettes of wall-street power dressing) and not forgetting the club kids at Marc Jacobs (despite his collection being heavily inspired by the undoubtedly 00s figure Lana Wachowski) where there was a palpable hint towards the gaudy ensembles of Culture Club’s Boy George. On the runways of S/S17, the sartorially gluttonous codes of the 1980s were a pervasive influence.