Life Lessons

Three films in this program were completed when Martin Scorsese was a student at New York University and demonstrate the filmmaker's energy, humor, and penchant for direct address. Inspired by Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? follows the comic travails of a young writer reckoning with adulthood and partnership. It's Not Just You, Murray! is an expansive gangster picture in miniature-vigorous and economical. The Big Shave is an anti-Vietnam War statement from the confines of a bathroom. In Life Lessons, Procol Harum-blasting abstract painter Lionel Dobie \(Nick Nolte\) ignores the advice, "Get to know yourself a little better." -Jeff Griffith-Perham