Film Forum

Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Philip Hartman graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, where he founded the P.U. Film Society and was film critic for The Daily Princetonian. After selling several screenplays in his early 20s, he opened the Great Jones Cafe on the Bowery, a pioneering Cajun restaurant that became a downtown cultural hub for 35 years. Using earnings from the restaurant, Hartman wrote and directed NO PICNIC (1985), with executive production by Wim Wenders’ company Grey City. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won Best Cinematography (for Director of Photography Peter Hutton), and went on to screen internationally and have a record-breaking run at Anthology Film Archives. To finish NO PICNIC, Hartman co-founded Two Boots, the Cajun-Italian pizza chain that grew to multiple locations nationwide. He later opened the Pioneer Theater, Two Boots Video, Mo Pitkin’s, and The Levee. His subsequent films include EERIE on the Erie Canal, starring Felicity Huffman, Will Arnett, and Luis Guzmán, and the short In Bed With…Paul Bridgewater. Always active in the community, Hartman founded initiatives including the Downtown Historic Plaque Program, the East Village Softball Association, Howl Festival, and the East Village Film Fest, which commissioned work from Steve Buscemi and Jim Jarmusch. He lives in Brooklyn and continues to write, with current projects in film and publishing.

Long-time New York based journalist Mark Jacobson is known for his work in the Village Voice, New York Magazine, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He is the author of several books including The Lampshade—a holocaust detective story from New Orleans to Buchenwald and the novel Gojiro. His journalism has been the basis for the film AMERICAN GANGSTER and the TV show Taxi. He is the founder and curator of the KGB Journalist Reading Hour, a New York tradition now in its 34th year, which is almost as long as Jacobson has known Philip Hartman.

Related Films