by Alex Billington
April 12, 2026
Source: YouTube
“They’re pushing us east, man. From A to B to C to the East River.” Film Forum is re-releasing this iconic 80s indie film in theaters again starting this month. No Picnic is the 1987 film from Philip Hartman – a love letter to pre-gentrification East Village in NYC. This brand new 4K restoration will play again in NYC soon. Macabee Cohen, whose heyday as a rock musician is long gone, travels the city in a beat-up VW bus, supplying records to local juke boxes. His beloved Lower East Side neighborhood is in turmoil: rampant real estate speculation, tenants on rent strike, art invading the bars – “in my own neighborhood, I felt like I was in the middle of a party that I hadn’t been invited to,” he says. Mac’s personal life is in turmoil, too.Then a mysterious girl appears in his life, and Mac’s obsession to find her becomes a quest of self-discovery, too – “I was looking for someone to save,” he says, “to save myself.” So off he goes to find her… This features David Brisbin, Myoshin, Anne D’Agnillo, & Luis Guzmán, with appearances by Steve Buscemi, Richard Hell, and other fixtures of the Downtown music & art scenes (Rafik, Bleecker Bob). This looks like a unique, vibrant (even in B&W) time capsule capturing a realm of NYC that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s worth a watch.
Here’s the new 4K restoration trailer (+ poster) for Phil Hartman’s film No Picnic, direct from YouTube:
A black-and-white love letter to pre-gentrification New York City, No Picnic captures a remote time and place – the East Village circa 1985, a vibrant, seedy neighborhood populated by musicians, pimps and poets. Phil Hartman’s neo-noir comedy follows down-and-out jukebox operator Macabee Cohn, played with deadpan melancholy by David Brisbin, who wanders the cheap tenements, dive bars, and derelict streets of the East Village in search of a mysterious woman in a striped dress. No Picnic is written and directed by American indie filmmaker Philip Hartman, his very first feature film before going on to make Eerie in 1997. Produced by Doris Kornish. With cinematography by Peter Hutton. This initially premiered at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival then known as the U.S. Film Festival (where it won Best Cinematography) before later opening in limited theaters in July 1990. This new 4K restoration will debut again in NYC. Film Forum will play Hartman’s No Picnic in theaters starting on April 17th, 2026 this spring. Look any good?
