The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, January 4-10
Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971)
Directed by Floyd Mutrux
LA dope fiends, pushers, hustlers, and petty thieves come in and out of focus in Mutrux’s pseudo-documentary. The people are real (all of them except ex-Father Knows Best star Billy Gray, who would be wrongly accused of being a heroin addict), the scenarios scripted. Mutrux’s heavily researched and remarkably assured debut plays like a precursor to Martin Bell’s observational documentary Streetwise (1984). Dusty should’ve launched Mutrux’s career. Instead, the movie merely froze it. Warner Bros. distributed Dusty, but had a change of heart. They shelved the film after only a week in theaters. They equated Mutrux’s non-judgmental approach to heroin use with endorsement.
Ever since its early-90s revival run and its home video premiere on the Warner Archive label in 2009, Dusty’s small following grows. More and more viewers see a film that captures a time when free love, the cultural revolution, and the hippie movement sours. Tanner Tafelski (January 9, 7pm at the Alamo Drafthouse)