Blue in the Face

Blue in the Face (1995) is a Brooklyn comedy you can watch online on iFILM, co-directed by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster just days after wrapping Smoke — same set, same corner cigar shop, almost no script. Harvey Keitel is back behind the counter. The landlord wants to sell the place and turn it into a vegetarian restaurant. The regulars are not having it.

What follows is less a plot than a parade of voices. Madonna muses about Belgium. Lou Reed drifts through the neighborhood looking philosophical. Michael J. Fox and Lily Tomlin drop in. Jim Jarmusch says almost nothing and somehow steals the scene. Some characters address the camera directly about Brooklyn, about getting by, about things that matter to nobody but them. It's a film assembled from those small collisions.

Shot in four days on pure momentum, Blue in the Face holds together through the sheer energy of the cast and the specific gravity of that one Brooklyn block. Not a movie for people who need a three-act structure — absolutely one for people who love what cities actually feel like. Watch Blue in the Face online on iFILM.