Sullivan’s Travels. 1941. USA. Written and directed by Preston Sturges. With Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, William Demarest. 35mm print courtesy of NBC/Universal. In English. 90 min.
Bruce Goldstein was already a seasoned film programmer who had worked at the Thalia, Carnegie Hall Cinema, and Bleecker Street Cinema when he was hired by Film Forum director Karen Cooper in 1987 to run the theater’s second screen at its Watts Street location. Goldstein decided to focus exclusively on repertory programming, despite the threat to the form posed by home video. His first Film Forum calendar opened with the five-week series Bigger Than Life: Movies in Scope and the monthlong series Widescreen Japanese Masterworks, both featuring films that at the time could not be viewed in their proper aspect ratio at home. When Film Forum moved to its West Houston Street location in 1990, Goldstein launched the repertory screen there with a Preston Sturges retrospective. “I wanted Sullivan’s Travels to be the very first rep title in the new theater,” Goldstein told Jake Perlin in an interview. “Because it hits just the right philosophical note—that entertainment is as important as art.” In the film, Joel McCrea stars as John Sullivan, a disillusioned Hollywood director tired of making trifles like Ants in Your Plants of 1939, who plans to travel the country disguised as a tramp as research for a serious social drama called O Brother, Where Art Thou?.